Winnings

I'm pretty certain that the link was via Twitter, someone pointing out a competition, they're pretty common, I enter if I'm eligible and if I like the prize and then largely forget about it.  A competition with Knitbot? There would be tonnes of entries, I'd never win.

And then I did!

I did a random trawl through the spam filter, clicking on a few to say no, these are not spam, to find one that shocked me, I had won!

So I provided my address, joked that I could provide one that had what could pass for a Postal Code (work is within the Dublin numbered areas), if the postal workers couldn't cope with Irish Addressing, and got back an email to say that all was well.  Less than a week later I got a parcel, yarn individually wrapped and the book begging me to start knitting.  And then my hand decided knitting was optional... I'm looking forward to playing with this yarn, eventually.



Don't you love how the stickers feature a chickadee and a lark? The yarns I got, I love the colours and the richness of the dye and they are so soft.  Now they may or may not be knit into things from the book, but there are a few patterns that will be knit.

The advice on working with drape in the book is quite interesting and I will use it for other things and adapting patterns.  Featherweight is the cover pattern and is begging to be knit!  Some day, after I finish up a few long-standing projects.

I'm hoping that this week, now that my hand has mostly recovered, that I can get back to knitting, I'm in the middle of some crochet at the moment and this last one should be finishable, this one I have all the yarn for in one place.  But that's for another post.

Prizewinning

See the competition here that was me that won, that was.

Today the postie rang and it was my prize



it's a cute tin box, three skeins of Artesano Alpaca, two plastic needles, stitch markers and slide-on stitch counters. It's all pretty and cool and I'm so chuffed!

Frankfurt and area wool shopping

So I went to Germany to a wedding and of course I came home with wool. I did try to get German brands and as usual I picked up sock wool.

I went to Germany and visited two wool shops and was quite restrained (even my husband remarked about my restraint!)

First was in Frankfurt

Woll-Boutique Elflein, resulted in this loot (with two balls of some)



Wiesbaden resulted in this:

From Wolle Rodel I bought a few balls of cotton rich sock wool there.

Most is sock wool, whether or not all will become socks in the future is another question. Some was just rather cool wool that wanted to come home with me for me to play!

Basket o'cotton

Well actually I lie, it's a basket of cotton and cotton blends, all DK. I think there will be some modular tops made with this for the summer.

From the top


">From the side

Spinning

About 2 years ago my aunt gave me some fleeces, last summer my dad washed it and we carded it with carders I picked up on holiday in Sweden (if you're ever in Sweden you really should visit Scansen). I learned how to spin with a drop spindle recently from Chicwithstix and brought it with me to Galway with the intention of trying some of it. I also brought some longer staple yarn to see if I could get one of the spinning wheels operating in the house. There's about 4 or so of them, built by my dad, my brothers and some of dad's students (who didn't want them at the end of the year), built for a variety of leaving certs and curiousity by my dad to reproduce some wheels that caught his interest. They have never really been used and I failed to get the first one to work this weekend.

Still I did get some of the shorter staple yarn from my aunt spun, and plied!


It led to a near blister and it's not perfect, but for a beginner it wasn't bad. More practice when I go back again.

My little brother has a bag of my longer staple Leicester to play with, as he is determined to make the spinning wheel work and he has some time on his hands.

Yarn Winnings

I entered a competition by Knitcave or Knitcave1 on Twitter, selecting a colour called Hail as my favourite of her colourways.

It arrived this morning



it's more purple than grey in real life and is probably not going to be socks at the end of the day. It's too pretty to be socks.

Ravelympics Loot

Picked up today at the Saturday meetup, well I was in town. Dublin Knit Collective organised a draw and I did kinda load the bases with way too many entries!

Kool Kotton Pile

Most of the colours I have of the Kool Kotton Range, a few of them are enticing me to buy more to knit a full garment out of this Cotton and Acrylic blend.