Let's talk goals a minute...

It's a shame a bin liner full of raw fleece is so unphotogenic, but goal number one is turning one of those, containing maybe a third of a llanwenog ewe's fleece, into yarn, before I bring home any more fleece.

This has been bumped up the priority list because, as part of participating in Open Farm Sunday with our friends at Court Farm Shop in Bishop's Cleeve, we get to buy fleece from the shearer, and meet people who have sheep and fleeces to spare. Mum has a portland fleece (from a ewe named 'Delight'!) in the attic with my name on it, as soon as I have space for it.


Other goals:
That cat embroidery from my previous post had turned into a patch and been attached to a jacket, but it needs more companions - I have two bi-flag themed patches in progress to join it, in hopes it'll be cool enough to wear a jacket when we go to Pride (It won't be, it's been over 26c here for the last week and a half with no signs of cooling down and I am SUFFERING).
So, those need to be a) finished, b) attached to the jacket in time for the parade on 14th July.

I haven't finished the Pincha shawl yet, but it'll be done by the time it's cool enough to wear a scarf as long as it's my project to take on the move.

Wedding crafts wise, I have one half finished crocheted vine, a couple of dozen paper flowers and a tree stump to work on eventually, but the more urgent thing is sorting out the art for invitations. I've done half of it, but perfectionism is kicking my arse over my amateurish watercolouring and I'm stalled.

There's a bunch of dressmaking and cosplay stuff just abandoned in a corner waiting for me to ease sleeves, shorten torsos and actually make space to cut things out, but who knows when I'll get any motivation for that.

And, being me I've taken on another project on a whim, this time roping in a little gang of other people. I'll pop some more stuff about that up here next time probably, once I'm ready to send things out.

In the meantime, I would love to hear about everyone's craft goals for the summer. Are you super organised and preparing for midwinter gift exchanges already? Are you drowning under dozens of half done projects like I am?

Don't try to appeal to my impulse control, I haven't got one.

If I were left unattended with a reasonable income and plenty of storage space, I'd probably pick up a new craft or artistic technique about twice a year at least.
 With attentive company, a fairly low income and a bit more than half of one small flat to store my things, it's a little less frequent but I still have slips. And when Hobbycraft send you a birthday voucher, put shiny things by their tills, and have one of the sales assistants give you a nice pitch for a line of kits I think a slip is entirely forgivable.

 Plus, now I've made this lovely thing! (Instead of many hours work on any of the other dozens of projects in progress stashed about my home.)

I sort of wish I'd timed how long it took. I could guess at an average of a couple of hours work on it a day since I started it just over a week ago, but it would be a guess and probably a conservative one.

Of course now the embroidering is done I'm not sure what to do with it.

We have enough throw pillows about, enough art hanging on the walls, and I don't really know how I'd go about turning it into a patch or where I'd put it once I had(if you've any advice on that though, do let me know).

The upside I can insist upon is that I can now make better use of the assorted embroidery threads I bought myself to make friendship bracelets out of many moons ago, and the stash that came in grandma's sewing box (though I wish I knew why she needed at least six shades of pastel pink).

Pincha scarf progress

The best part of a couple of hours on the train and an afternoon at your nan's house?

Plenty of knitting time.

Pincha shawl in a Devon Sun Yarns colour club exclusive set.

This is slightly less than half the scarf it will be. Variegated yarn has its problems and Pincha exists to make the best of it. Short row shaping forms one feather after another and breaks up a variegated colourway quite attractively.

Well, for a certain value of attractive. After my first couple of feathers I was very excited for how this one going to turn out, after about seven I was fairly sure I hated it? 

Now I'm up to a few repeats of the full colour sequence it's growing on me again,(and mum coos appreciatively every time she sees it) and I'm looking forward to having the finished scarf to show off. Hopefully that won't take too long, as it's conveniently a very good pattern to take on the go (as long as you make good use of stitch markers so you don't have to keep track of rows too closely). It's even been to visit a host of beautiful feathered friends at Birdland in Bourton-on-the-Water, like this Superb Starling whose plumage puts mine to shame.

It's a fun pattern to actually knit as well - I might even knit another one or two - maybe giant ones like this from Auduraka on Ravelry.

Crowning it

On Christmas morning my partner of three years proposed to me.

Being a) a person who is always either making things or thinking about making things and b) not wealthy, it was clear that a noticeable part of this celebration would be handmade and DIY. As of writing, I have started three wedding projects.

One of them is even finished - and what I'll be sharing today (Please don't panic if you find wedding stuff dull as ditchwater, there will be non-wedding projects covered here too).


A few weeks before the question was popped, chatting idly, a friend had suggested that a magical woodland theme might be cute. The image this evoked immediately was so clear and so, so me that the decision was made right there and then. I'll get on to the first project I started on later, but for now, here is my second project, and the first to finish.

I'd read about knitting with wire, but hadn't tried it. When I started looking at bridal tiaras and crowns for inspiration I had first thought of a laurel wreath like a Greek Goddess - since the bridal party aesthetic should evoke Titania's court in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Some research suggested that buying a nice one would be beyond my budget, so I had to think about how to make one.

Thus, knitted wire. I'd seen it talked about online; I'm a knitter above all else; and its organic quality of its shape and capacity to have extra decoration added seemed just the thing.

I bought some 36 gauge beading wire and started swatching.
This is in garter stitch on 3.5mm needles. The garter stitch concertinas up - so you have to use more wire to cover your space - and I found the density of the 'fabric' and how it felt to knit with less than ideal.

Switching to 6mm needles and stocking stitch I started to get a fabric I liked much better. You'll find even in something as stiff as wire, stocking stitch still curls up.

I knit on to the end of my reel of wire, added a few beads to see how they would look (lovely) and how practical it would be to add them into the knitted fabric as I went along (not very, for my taste), and started fiddling about with shaping it. Doubling up the bottom by folding the crown makes it sturdier, solves the stocking stitch curl issue, and I found it easy enough to secure the layers together when I went back to add in beads later.
Here is my prototype, modelled by the purplebird -

The fabric was still too diaphanous, but after a little more reading up I decided 24 gauge wire would do nicely and ordered a few reels in copper. While I waited for them to arrive I played with point shapes in some scrap yarn and settled on a broader point style for me and a sharper one for my partner.

Once I'd made my mind up, the knitting of each one took about three days, and beading them a couple more...
 And by gosh they are just what I was hoping they'd be.