Ginger Knits UK

Another great piece from Laurie Pink via twitter. Thank you Laurie and Happy Pancake Day everyone.

A few weeks ago I went on a weaving course in the wildlife garden of the Natural History Museum in London. The weather was miserable but we were nice and cosy in a shed at the back of the garden, with tea and biscuits and wildlife outside the window (a cheeky robin and an even cheekier squirrel). The course was run by Caroline Ware who is the wildlife garden manager. We began with an overview of dyeing with natural dyes, including the effects different mordants achieve. While my garden is too small to grow woad and other dye plants I do use onions all the time as was taken with the warm brown colour the skins produce. Caroline also talked about sheep breeds and the different types of fleece they produce and had a few samples for us to fondle, some of which we would be using later. We then set up the peg loom which is one of those things which is straightforward when you know how. We used undyed fleece as well as fleece dyed with natural dyes to make chair covers. I had a go at carding...

The mystery UFO is on the back burner as I have decided to keep it. It was going to be a present but I like it too much and think I'll appreciate it more than the intended recipient. If I get bored with it I'll take it into the MSF office. You can see in the photo that it is made up of 12 colours, 4 squares in each colour making 48 squares in total (yes, there will be four light pink squares, this is a work in progress). If you look carefully you can also see some other components. There, that's all the clues I'm giving you. Any guesses? Leave a comment below if you think you have the answer.

I must admit I'm not getting much knitting done during the Ravelympics as I'm a winter sports geek. I was watching the moguls while trying to finish my socks and was so captivated by the men's and women's events that I had to put my knitting down. But finish my socks I did. They are the Vinnland pattern by Becca Compton and are fun to knit. I used the pattern chart plus my favourite toe up Evil Genius sock pattern from Yarmando . The yarn is Schoppel-Wolle Zauberball in Cranberries (1963)and is good to work with unless you need to frog. The single ply nature of the yarn makes it quite "sticky", though the stitch definition is good. The colour variations don't show up too well in indoor lighting but I think I'll have to wait til about April to get any decent natural light. You'll just have to take my work for it that they look good. I started these just before I went in to hospital for knee surgery last May. I got quite a lot of knitting done despi...

On Monday I went along to my first ever Stitch and Bitch London meeting. I was partly in my p/hop role as they were holding a yarn swap for MSF but I also went as a knitter and yarn swapper. I've written about the p/hop side of things over on the p/hop blog so I won't repeat myself here. I did take part in the yarn swap which brings me to stashbusting. One of my favourite interweb knitting friends, mostcurious , spent a lot of last year monitoring her stash, measuring the amount of yarn in vs the amount of yarn out. I kept on meaning to do this but my yarn buying habit went out of control. This year I'm on a self imposed yarn diet. If I need something specific to a project that I don't have in my stash I will buy it however that is all. No more impulse buys (ahem, unless they are in the sale). So to the maths. I'm not even going to add up all the meterage in my stash as frankly it scares me. What I'm going to do is monitor new yarn in vs yarn out. On Monday I s...