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Shetland Colour Story – Branches & Buds Pullover

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When we travel somewhere, I love to take lots of photographs. They are a wonderful reminder of our visit, the colours, the scenery, the awesome beauty of the place we are exploring. Every time, I look at the imagery it brings me back, I can almost feel the warmth of the sun on my face and the breeze catching my hair!

Later when I’m home I like to use my photos to help choose colour schemes for a project I’m working on. I create a collage of imagery and then I often prefer to use one of the closeup photos to choose a selection of colours.

For the Branches and Buds Pullover I used the photo of the peeling gate that had been taken beside Sumburgh Lighthouse on one of the days we visited it and walked around the building looking at the views over the perimeter wall.

Shetland Colour Inspiration 2[Read More]

Carbeth Sweater

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In January I cast on the Sunset Highway sweater. I was using 3 colours of sock yarn and I had problems getting the right tension in my swatch. Several swatches and several different needle sizes and I still didn’t have gauge… so in the end, I just cast on, which was a big mistake. I finished knitting the yoke, knit 10cm/4″ of the body and tried it on. Much much much too big. It would have easily fitted over 2 of me. So I carefully unravelled the yarn and started again. I cast on, a smaller size, I finished knitting the yoke, started down the body again, tried it on and it was still too big. So I frogged to the start of the colour work yoke, put the whole project into a box (now languishing on top of the bookshelf), and decided to check my emails. I still can’t work out where I went wrong with my Sunset Highway. It is such a beautiful sweater.

Early in January our very old oil boiler stopped working… in mid-winter. This winter has been surprisingly cold for Northern Ireland. Normally, it is milder and wetter. But not this year while we were dependent on a couple of heaters to stay warm… and my knitting mojo? After knitting 2 sunset highway yokes and not having anything to show for it, I was ready to shove it out into the snow!!

Into this, came a ray of bright sunshine from Kate Davies Designs – the Carbeth sweater. I read her email in my inbox. I looked at the beautiful inspirational photographs. I thought about how warm and cosy a chunky weight sweater would be. More to the point, I imagined myself warm and cosy wearing this chunky weight sweater! Of course, I also loved the shaping of the raglan on the yoke. But, what can I say, most of all I loved that this was going to be a warm sweater knit out of chunky yarn.[Read More]

Harry Potter’s Edinburgh

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This wonderful post was written by Neil last March when he was in Edinburgh for the Edinburgh Yarn Festival. I decided that I’d keep it to post now as EYF 2018 approaches. Wishing everyone who is lucky enough to be visiting Edinburgh and the Festival a magical time! Thank you Neil!

I couldn’t resist putting together this special Edinburgh blog post for you – especially if you are a fan of Harry Potter like Nicolette and I. A walk around Edinburgh imagining Harry Potter wandering through Diagon Alley or at least Edinburgh’s equivalent!

Edinburgh Castle

When Nicolette and I planned our visit to Edinburgh, I certainly hadn’t been thinking about the links the city has with Harry Potter.  I was concentrating on how to get to the Yarn Festival and what to see while I was there.

Nevertheless, the links to Harry Potter were just too considerable for me to ignore.[Read More]

A Celebratory Give Away

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The Knitting Squirrel is honoured to have been chosen by the Feedspot Panel as one of the top 20 Irish Knitting Blogs. It was so exciting when the email arrived during the week!

The eagle eyed among you will already have noticed the badge in the side bar on the blog.

Red Squirrel with peanut crumbs on his nose, Cairngorms, Scotland

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Joyride Sweater

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When I’m looking for a pattern to knit, my first port of call is often to pick up a big pile of knitting magazines and go through them, pulling out patterns that appeal to me. I do this periodically, and file any patterns that I may wish to knit and recycling the rest! As I was going through them, I came across Joyride sweater in an old copy of Knit Now magazine.

My New Year Resolution for 2017 was to knit a sweater for myself. But I wanted to choose the right pattern, as this was my first sweater for myself, so I didn’t want it to be too complicated a project.

Joyride Sweater 1

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A Crafty Killing

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Katie Bonner finds herself in charge of an artist co-operative and the chief suspect for the previous owner’s murder, in A Crafty Killing by Lorraine Bartlett.

Katie Bonner is young and ambitious.  She knows what she wants but instead, like many people, she is stuck in a dead end job with a nasty boss.

A Crafty Killing

Katie and her husband, Chad, split up over Artisan’s Alley, an artist co-operative in nearby McKinley Mill.  Chad invested all of their savings into it as he could see its potential.  But all Katie could see was a rundown shambles which was far from Katie’s dream project.  Then soon after Chad moved out, he was killed in a car accident.[Read More]

An Unexpected Sweater Journey

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What are my WIPs at the moment? Mainly sweaters. Which seems utterly extraordinary to me. I cannot really fathom it. I started 2017 with the aim of knitting one sweater this year. I haven’t knit a sweater for myself before although I have knit many Sasha doll sized sweaters. I’d never really been interested in knitting sweaters. They are a large project that take a lot of yarn and time to complete and not a project that I ever considered to be particularly portable. So I surprised myself when knitting a sweater became my New Year’s Resolution for 2017.

Joyride Jumper by Drops Design

Joyride Jumper by Drops Design

At the start of the year, in January, I was going through a pile of knitting magazines, tearing out any patterns that appealed to me when I came across the Joyride sweater designed by Drops Design. I ordered the Drops Karisma yarn online from Purple Sheep Yarns. And by the end of January I had almost finished the body. When it was set aside.[Read More]

Crofthoose Hat & Fingerless Gloves

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A follow-up photo story of the Crofthoose Hat and Fingerless Gloves designed by Ella Gordon. The previous post is a Shetland Colour Story – Crofthoose Hat & Fingerless Gloves and goes into detail about the yarn and colours chosen.

I am just showing how beautiful these patterns are when worn. I loved knitting these and adore wearing them even more when out for a dog walk on a cold Autumn day.

Crofthoose Hat & Fingerless Gloves[Read More]

Yarnfolk Festival of Wool Part 3

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The third part of our visit to Yarnfolk Festival of Wool in Whitehead. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

I was looking forward to visiting Lighthouse Yarns. I used to enjoy going to Lighthouse Yarns when it was in St Georges Market and had always intended visiting the new shop when it opened in Whitehead. It is a lovely cosy shop full of yarn, notions and gifts. I’m looking forward to a return visit when it isn’t quite so busy, which it was on festival day, with a busy workshop going on and full of festival visitors.

Yarnfolk Festival of Wool 2017[Read More]