The Anonymous Blueberry Muffin Thief Sews...

Oh boy am I glad this one is done! For the last year, my knitting nemesis has been the Sprite's Fen shawl , designed as part of the Shawl Society season 2 by Helen Stewart. It's a beautiful pattern, and I'm sure, in the hands of a knitter who isn't me, would be a swift and pleasant project. But this is me we're talking about, and I am not good with lace weight yarn!

Today at work I am mostly being grumpy and procrastinating by uploading all the patterns I have saved on this computer to my google drive, and blogging. It's too warm, my boss is doing my head in, and quite frankly I hate everything about this job apart from the bit where occasionally they remember to pay me. So the first thing to blog is going to be a pair of completely seasonally inappropriate knitted mitts! When I'm not crafting or working or sleeping, I do a thing called Live Action Roleplay (or LARP, or LRP, depending on who you ask). It's like a combination of Dungeons and Dragons mixed with historical re-enactment, and I've heard it described as cross country pantomime before. We run around the woods (or fields) dressed up as Elves and Dwarves and humans and fight monsters and do politics and fake!religion and have all sorts of fun. I have big LARP (Empire) that I help run and is terrifying and huge and is in a field and people pay lots of money for, and...

Ahhhh! It's nearly the end of the month and I haven't blogged ANY of my Q2 finishes! And I have managed some! So, quickly from the archives... This is a Taina shawl , a nice, free, simple pattern that I have made before. This time it was made for a co-worker's mother, after he went "ooh, my mum would like that shawl" at my Nudibranch Madness shawl. After some "I have no idea" confusion, we settled on a pattern, a yarn, and a price, and I scurried off to knit. It had to be finished by May 1st, which, due to life, I was slightly late on (knitting in a field full of mud, especially on a commission piece, is not a good idea, so he had to wait a couple of days) There's really not a lot to say about this. The pattern is simple and pleasing TV knitting, and the yarn, "Starlight Express" from AllsWoolThatEndsWool was soft and lovely to knit with; it didn't split and the stellina didn't annoy me like it often does! I ende...

I'm terrible at this blogging nonsense! I've got a pile of stuff to blog, but work is getting in the way of me processing photos and stuff. Oops. I do feel that I should probably try and engage a bit more, especially if I'm trying to advertise my shop more! So, in no particular order, what the fuck have I been up to recently?

This is the last of my FALQ1 catch up blogs! I'm exhausted, so this is probably going to be a short one unless I start rambling! These are Astra Mitts , pattern by Ambah O'Brien, part of the Astra set of hat (made over xmas), mitts and cowl (yet to be cast on) The yarn is DK in Towpath (green) and Cairn (grey) from RiverKnits , whose yarns are gorgeous.

It's another Finish Along quarter 1 finish! And it's a knitted thing that has been on my list to finish for fucking ever! It's a Hitchhiker :D Despite what some people I know might think, this is only the second one of these I've made. But it's a good pattern, and as someone addicted to pretty sock yarn but who hates wearing socks, pretty shawls like this are the way forwards!

This was probably finished in time for the last quarter of last year's FAL, but because I'm me, I couldn't be bothered to post it. This is the Rune Shawl , from last year's Shawl Society, and this is the 4th pattern from that collection that I've finished. The Vila and the Sprite's Fen are still in progress! This post is also the introduction of my new little helper, Jazz. I've been talking about getting a cat for AGES, and at the tail end of last year, while perusing the Cat's Protection League pages, I fell in love with a little tortie. After fighting my housing association (who hate answering their phones and giving straight answers) and her having an ongoing case of stress induced cystitis, I finally picked her up just after christmas, and she has been treading on things, jumping on my ironing board and chewing my circular needle cables ever since!

Let's try and keep the momentum going, right? I'm messing around with machine photos for work, so I might as well write a blog post. This pretty much brings me up to speed with the backlog. I've got one cushion cover left from the FAL Q4 list that I haven't blogged, but I'm currently working on stock and some projects that still have a long way to go, so there might be a bit of a lull. This is the Familiar Shawl , the last of the six patterns from The Shawl Society II this year. And I've got to say, I think it might be my favourite. Although that might just be because it took me about a week to knit, and I've been wearing it ever since.

I've got a bunch of short posts of stuff wot I 'ave finished recently to post, that have been sat with the photos prepped and nothing else for a while. First off, is the Wishmaker Shawl , pattern number 5 from the Shawl Society season 2. This is the second of the shawls from this set that I've finished, and while I do like the pattern, I ruined it with poor yarn choices.

Hi, my name's Beth and I have a very slightly ridiculous crush on Adam Driver. That's mostly irrelevant, because despite this yarn being called 'kylo ren' it is about as kylo ren-ish as a pumpkin. Mostly, it's pink. I mean it's black and pink, but that is very definitely pink, and not red. Who cares? Not me. Black and pink is an excellent combo, and it means when I turn up to the next fandom meet up I bother to show my face at, I'll have a silly hat.

This err, wasn't on the Finish Along list. Actually, a lot of what I'm working on at the moment wasn't. Oops?

There is no nudity in this post! Just sea slug awesomeness :D My first finish for the second quarter of the 2017 Finish-A-Long is my Nudibranch March Mini Madness shawl. Found here on Ravelry , this was an excellently quick and brainless knit, which I've managed to make obscenely colourful thanks to Mothy and the Squid's excellent nudibranch colourways. I'm trying to make an effort to have a bit more colour in my outfits, and this will brighten up anything I wear! It has a slight curvature where I bodged the tension adding the second mini skein of yarn, which I also added too early, but otherwise, a pleasing, lazy knit for lunchbreaks and evenings watching TV. I've been knitting a lot more recently; my sewing room is a mess and getting home in the evenings I just want to flake in front of trashy tv and not think too hard, rather than work around the piles of stuff lying around upstairs. I've spent a chunk of this bank holiday weekend trying to tidy up, ...

I'm still reeling at this week. It's sucked. First David Bowie and now Alan Rickman. Words can't express the loss. Work is driving me into the ground as well; we're just starting to deliver on a project 2 years overdue and it's all going mad. I've not got a lot of words, but I want to try and blog the backlog of christmas presents I made. This is a Falling Water scarf I made for my step-mum.

The last month or so has been a little bit hectic; lots of changes going on at work, and LARP is in full swing. Plus my birthday and various other bits and pieces mean that while I'm sewing plenty, I haven't managed to finish anything since the belt. I've got a bunch of patterns I want to try, I have a quilt top finished that just needs actually quilting (waiting for the backing fabric to arrive) and I'm in the middle of a super sekrit project that has to be done by the last weekend in August and is currently barely past the cut out stage. What I have managed to do is finish my Hitchhiker scarf that I started back in April. This was, as promised by the friend who gifted me the pattern, a simple and satisfying knit. I probably would have finished it ages ago were it not for my goldfish like attention span. This is 5 and a bit 50g balls of Patons Mirage DK (50/50 cotton viscose mix), knitted on 4mm needles (I think). It's super soft and squishy, and by some mira...

For which I do apologise. You know how sometimes life just gets in the way? Yeah, it's been that sort of month. Lots of stuff, lots of dipping in and out of projects, lots of not enough sleep. Actually, that's a given during LARP season. Behind the cut; a Polly top, some quilting blocks and some waffle. Not actual waffles, sadly. I don't have any.

I'm off to Empire for the long weekend. I have with me my sewing box (for helping fix stuff tomorrow before time in) and my knitting (for the periods of downtime I will probably have). Have a good easter weekend! 8 points down, aiming for 50 Sewing, Shakespeare and the Hobbit. 

To declare my Wurm hat finished! OMG so snuggly and warm :D Terrible hallway selfies are the best I can manage at the moment. Sewing post tomorrow, as the LARP shirt is nominally finished (I plan to hack the sleeves tomorrow) and I'm in the middle of cutting a Polly top (as in, I'm taking a brief brake to make a cup of tea in the middle of laying stuff out)

Someone has just agreed to pay me, nay, asked to pay me, for a squid! Colours and price have been agreed, now to order fabric and get going. I'm also considering making one in 'realistic' colours. I'm also trying not to pad the fabric orders just so I can get free shipping, unless it's stuff I actually need. I've got a Wurm on my knitting needles at the moment, a bag full of knitting needles that need sorting into sizes, and this weekend, along with trying to clean my kitchen after 2 evenings of manic baking this week, I'm hoping to finish the skirt muslin, work out what size it NEEDS to be (rather than what it currently is) and cut an actual skirt. I found some fabric that I think was supposed to be a draft excluder many years ago, but which is actually really nice cotton, and it would make a really cool skirt (that hopefully doesn't need a lining). This is just the front piece. While I am somewhat large in the hip department, this goes all t...

 This is the last of the presents I made this year. I did start another scarf for my step-mum, but that ended up being too much work and I ripped it out. Anyway, this is a 2 meter knitted scarf, which on Ravelry is known as the Pathfinder Fibonacci. Pathfinder, because the colours are as close to the ones we use for the LARP group as I could find, and Fibonacci because that's the pattern the rows are laid out in.

November was a bit of a fail. Let's just leave it at that. Work has been pretty horrific of late, and I'm not getting as much crafting done as I'd like and xmas presents have started to become a pressing issue. The squid suffered some setbacks last weekend, when it became apparent that the long thin tentacles were going to be problematic to stuff. It turns out (so shockingly) that the fleece has a lot more stretch than the quilting cotton, and so as I was trying to stuff one of them, the cotton started splitting. No matter. I have plenty of fleece, so the long tentacles will just be all fleece. We'll call it a feature? Maybe? I've spent the afternoon sewing up the shorter tentacles and the fins. They now need stuffing, and then once the long tentacles are done, assembly can commence. Other than the squid, the main thing I've been working on is the Fibonacci sequence scarf for R. He knows about (he had to ok the colours, and I work on it during g...