Strikk Gothenburg

I was fortunate enough in January to visit one of my friends in Gothenburg, Sweden. Whilst there she  took me to a really beautiful knitting shop called Strikk. If anyone is ever in Gothenburg I highly recommend visiting this shop. It was a good size shop with lots of yarns to choose from. What I enjoyed was seeing a different selection of yarn to what they have in England. They do have some of the recognised yarns like Rowan and Debbie Bliss too.  I took full advantage of purchasing some yarn that I'd never used before and I'm looking forward to seeing what I design and make using it.



I also loved the waterproof fabric bag they put my purchases in. That was a very nice touch :-)


Hopefully I'll be uploading some further patterns soon with the yarn.

Here is a link to their online website for anyone that is interested.

www.strikk.se






They have some really nice patterns to knit as well although the instructions only come in Swedish I'm afraid :-( The staff are English speaking so if you had a query on any of their products you can phone them as they're only one hour ahead of us in England.

New pattern for sale on Ravelry

I'm pleased to announce one of my new designs has now been listed for sale on Ravelry.  I wanted to design a thick weight jumper for winter and love the Rooster Almerino yarn that I've used for this design. I found this yarn has a fantastic choice of colours and I especially love this pink colour called Brighton Rock.

Here is a picture:

Debbie Bliss Spring/Summer 2013 Magazine

I'm pleased to announce that my designs were published in the Debbie Bliss Magazine Spring/Summer 2013 which is currently for sale.

I'm so thrilled to see my work in there and I'm very thankful to Debbie Bliss for giving me such a fantastic opportunity.

Here are some pictures of my designs:









As well as my designs there are some other wonderful patterns and I especially love the 1950s inspired designs too.

Its a definite knitting magazine essential to have :o)

New York - New York!

It was recently my birthday and my wonderful boyfriend surprised me by jetting me off to New York for a couple of days.

We had great fun in the big apple shopping and eating. Unfortunately I only came across one yarn shop (within a fabric shop) in the city but they did sell some nice cotton yarn at a bargain price of $2 a ball.

I'm a big fan of Project Runway (and Catwalk in the UK) and I was lucky enough to find that they were filming that latest episode in Times Square:



They also had a big tv up which the general public were on and here is a picture of me and my boyfriend:



Lastly, I was able to visit the well renowned fabric shop 'Mood' which is used by the contestants in Project Runway. Below is a picture of me with some fabric I purchased:



It was a fantastic fabric shop over 3 floors and it was very easy to spend hours in this place. I managed to buy some upholstery fabric for a telephone chair which needs refurbishing. I'm looking forward to sharing the pictures of the chair once its finished.

For anyone thinking of going to New York, I would definitely recommend it. If you like vintage/record shops, its well worth a visit to Brooklyn. Its also cheaper there than Manhattan.

Creative Stitches and Hobbycraft Fair at the Brighton Centre

I don't know where the last month has gone and I can see that its been some time since I last blogged!

I've been extremely busy working on some projects for the Debbie Bliss magazine which has been a real pleasure and I'm looking forward to sharing the designs with you once the photo shoot has taken place and they're available for public viewing. Unfortunately I'm not certain of a date yet so will keep you posted.

In the meantime, I'm volunteering on teaching people how to knit at the Brighton Centre for the Creative Stitches and Hobbycraft Event which is being held there this weekend if anyone is thinking of going?

I'll be there tomorrow (Friday) from 1pm.

Here is a link to the event if anyone is thinking of going:

http://www.ichf.co.uk/

Childhood memories

I recently met up with one my friends and his daugther who is 7 years old. She is at that age where she loves playing with Barbie dolls and when I last saw her I promised her that I'd make some new clothes for her Barbie.

I remembered when I was a similar age and I also had barbie dolls which I had knitted clothes for. I was able to do this as one of my old neighbours was an avid knitter and she gave me some 1970s Sindy Doll knitting patterns.

The other year my mum was clearing out her loft and found my old knitting stuff from when I was a girl and amongst this was the doll clothes knitting patterns. I therefore used these to make the clothes for the modern day Barbie.

The first item I knitted was a cape (see below):

It was funny knitting this again as I remember knitting one when I was a little girl. I added beads for the front opening as buttons.

I next made a stripey dress with a white stand up collor - see image below:

Again I loved the colours I picked to make it. On the original instructions it said to just sew up the back but I decided to adapt the pattern and also make it into a coat as well by adding a garter stitch border on the end seams (see below)

It brought back great memories for me knitting these items and reading the instructions again. I even found an original post-it note attached to the pattern from when I was a young girl with tally marks from where I had counted the rows!

  

Debbie Bliss

I had the real honour yesterday of meeting up with Debbie Bliss to discuss doing some designs for her 2013 Spring / Summer Magazine.

I had a really lovely day at her home / studio and she also cooked me a lovely lunch.

Will keep you all posted when there are some further updates, but for now, I'm extremely excited about next year's magazine which looks to be fantastic.

In the meantime, Debbie Bliss's current Spring / Summer 2012 magazine has just been released in the shops so definitely worth treating yourselves too :o)