Fibre 4 Fibres Giveaway preview 26

 By the time you read this, I will hopefully be hooked up to my next chemo infusion. I'm a little anxious about it all because I am hoping that the blood tests I had yesterday are going to be better than the last ones. I had an infusion of a bone protection drug last week, and oh my goodness, it didn't half make me feel poorly over the weekend. I was told that I might have 'mild flu-like symptoms' and they weren't wrong! I had a temperature of almost 40 degrees on Saturday and Sunday and felt like I'd been hit by a bus. Thankfully, on Monday, everything was back to normal again! I managed to get quite a bit of sock knitting done too, my chemo socks are progressing well and I've started the second one.

I can't tell you how thrilled I am with how my fundraising is going. I so appreciate every single donation that is made, and can't quite believe that in the next couple of weeks, all being well, the total should pass £6000. I have lots of prizes to give away, so even if I reach my £10,000 target, I will carry on with the raffles.

This week's raffle prize is all about colour. The prize includes a copy of Gradient Knits which has been donated by Search Press. To go with the book, I have tried to pick some gradient yarns, so that if you're the winner, you can have a go at some gradient knitting (or crochet!) There's a sock set of two 50g Opulence gradient yarn cakes from Knit Circus in the colourway Tropical Sunset, a set of five 20g miniskeins from Burrow and Soar, two balls of Mini Mochi 4 ply yarn, a Wee Sheeps yarn fade kit and a fun zipped project bag, both of which have been donated by Ruth and a pair of cute sheep progress keepers which have been donated by Hannah Daisy Crochet. Huge thanks to all the very kind prize donors.

I'm sure that you know the score by now, but I'll tell you how to enter anyway! You have a chance to win all these gorgeous prizes for a minimum donation of £2 - less than the price of a cup of coffee! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 27th September, closing at 23:55. To enter, go to my JustGiving page here and buy your virtual raffle tickets by donating £2 or more. £2 gets you 2 tickets, £3 gets you 3 tickets, £5 gets you 5 tickets and so on. The more you donate, the greater your chance of winning. You will need to leave your Instagram or Ravelry name, or tick the box to share your details with me when you make your donation, so that I can contact you if you are the winner. This is really important as I have no way of knowing who you are otherwise. Each week, I still get donations where no name or email is left, so if that person's number comes up in the random number generator*, I have no idea who it is! All your donations go the Myositis UK to help fund research into this incurable muscle disease, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your support. Every single donation is important. My fundraising efforts even got a mention in their latest news update, and that's thanks to you! Let's see how much we can raise this weekend! How close to the next milestone of £6000 can we get?! xxx

* I thought I should explain how I give people numbers. Each week, I set up a new spreadsheet. Each £1 donation gets one line of the spreadsheet, so I fill in each row with a person's name. If you donated £5, you would have five rows. The spreadsheet is filled in in the order that the donations are made.  As the admin of my Just Giving page, I can see all the donations with any message, email address and contact name etc that has been left (this is not all shown on the Just Giving page for anyone to view.) Then, once the raffle is over, I generate a random number using a generator on my phone, between 1 and whatever number is the last row of my spreadsheet that week. Once the number has been picked, I look at the spreadsheet to see whose name is in that particular row number.

Six months on ...

 When I wrote this blog post and this one back in March, I didn't expect, six months later, to still be having to stay at home, shielding. I know that officially, the government's shielding programme has been paused since August, because I'm still immunosuppressed and having chemo, my consultants have told me to carry on doing so. Apart from trips out to go to hospital appointments and blood tests, and more recently, to make use of the mobile post office van that comes to the village one morning a week, I haven't been out of the house at all. Six months, half a year - it sounds like such a long time. But I haven't sat at home feeling sorry for myself. I am quite happy with my own company, and I do have Flo of course to talk to! I have tried to fill my time with a variety of things. Knitting, crochet, reading, listening to audiobooks, sewing - just a few of the things I've done. More recently, I have been making a conscious effort to watch less television. It had got to the stage where the TV was on a lot of the time, more as background noise than actually paying attention to what was on. And believe me, if you've not experienced it, daytime TV is pretty grim! So I thought I'd celebrate the past 6 months with a few photos of happy things from each month. xxx

March 2020

Happy rainbow feet!

Flo basking in the sunshine

Daffodils blooming in the garden

April 2020

Celebrating Easter with a slice of Simnel cake baked by my neighbour's daughter

Enjoying the daily hooking on my temperature blanket

Receiving a beautiful gift from a friend

May 2020

Enjoying a loaf of bread baked by my friend Julia

Sewing flags for a celebratory display at my local hospital

Finally releasing my Mermaids' Playtime sock pattern

June 2020

New sock designs in the pipeline

Enjoying the scent of the lavender just outside my back door

Joining in with a mystery shawl KAL and making some lovely Instagram friends in the process

July 2020

Seeing my baby knits in use

Knitting myself a Love Note sweater

Planning to start up my Fibre 4 Fibres raffles again

August 2020

Chemotherapy (it is a happy thing as it is hopefully going to help me!)

My post-chemo tea and chocolate treat

Knitting myself a floofy hat (hopefully I will get to use it at some point this winter!)

September 2020

My first ever attempt at designing a sweater

Reaching halfway to my £10,000 fundraising target

Collaborating with Hayley from Ducky Darlings to create a sock design and sock set

Fibre 4 Fibres Giveaway preview 25

 Another blog post that I'm having to schedule in as tomorrow I'm back at the hospital again. Not for chemo this time, it's my week off. Instead, I'm having an infusion of a drug to protect my bones. Because I've been on steroids for a long time, this is to hopefully prevent osteoporosis from rearing its ugly head. I can do very well without throwing that into the mix thank you very much! I'm finding that it is taking me a bit longer each time to get over the side effects of each chemo infusion. I'm more than halfway through now though, so that's really great. I'm hoping my blood tests next week will show some improvement as last week's were not as good as everyone was expecting. Fingers and toes crossed it was just a blip and they will be heading in the right direction again and playing nicely! The chemo sock is growing; I managed to get quite a few rounds done while I was waiting for the doctor to see me. Once the cannula goes in, I read instead.

This week's raffle prize is absolutely gorgeous! If you have ever wanted to try out colourwork knitting or improve your skills, then this is the prize for you! The prize includes a beautiful original watercolour painting by the artist Emma Ball. I was so excited when she offered to donate a painting and the sweater-wearing puffin will brighten up any corner of your home. It's signed by Emma too. Emma is a knitter herself and has created a range of products for knitters and crocheters; she has also donated a yarny notebook and set of colour chart cards. To go with this is a really lovely book, Fair Isle Designs from Shetland Knitters volume 1, which I received from The Shetland Guild of Spinners, Weavers, Knitters and Dyers via my contact with Hazel Tindall. It's full of inspiring patterns with a range of difficulty - something for beginners as well as more experienced Fair Isle knitters. Of course, you need some yarn too, so there's 13 balls of 100% pure British wool which is perfect for colourwork knitting, and a large Jamieson & Smith tote bag to keep it all in. Julie from Wool Zone has also donated some Emma Ball puffin stitch markers and tin to complete the prize! There must be well over £100 of prizes here, not to mention owning an original artwork to boot! Thank you so, so much to everyone who has generously donated a prize.

How gorgeous is that puffin?! I would love to have it on my wall, but sadly I can't enter! But YOU can! You have a chance to win all these gorgeous prizes for a minimum donation of £2 - less than the price of a cup of coffee! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 20th September, closing at 23:55. To enter, go to my JustGiving page here and buy your virtual raffle tickets by donating £2 or more. £2 gets you 2 tickets, £3 gets you 3 tickets, £5 gets you 5 tickets and so on. The more you donate, the greater your chance of winning. You will need to leave your Instagram or Ravelry name, or tick the box to share your details with me when you make your donation, so that I can contact you if you are the winner. All your donations go the Myositis UK to help fund research into this incurable muscle disease, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your support. Every single donation is important. My fundraising efforts even got a mention in their latest news update, and that's thanks to you! Let's see how much we can raise this weekend! The most I have raised so far in one raffle is £443 - will this be the raffle to beat that total? xxx

Can't stop hooking!

 

I've taken this photo from my fellow Stylecraft Blogstar Lucy over at Attic24's blog. She has just released the most beautiful, happy blanket and I have fallen totally and utterly head over heels in love with it! I have neither the need nor really the time if I'm honest to be making myself another blanket, but I was helpless to resist it. You can find out all the details about the blanket and buy yourself a yarn pack too by taking a look at Lucy's blogpost here. As with all of Lucy's designs, it comes with fabulously detailed photo tutorials, so even if you are new to crochet, you would be able to manage this just fine! 

I've crocheted the first two rows of squares and they are all  joined with ends woven in (polishes halo!) and I've made a start on row 3. You can see these squares in the bottom photo. They need their ends woven in before the final two rounds of colour can be added. I'm trying to limit myself to 4 squares a day (there are 144 in total, plus a wide-ish border) but it's so hard to stop hooking! I'll share my progress in a couple of weeks! xxx

Presenting the 'It's Seagull o'clock' socks

 

There is nothing I like better when I go to the seaside than to get a bag of chips and eat them, sat overlooking the sea, savouring the salt and vinegary deliciousness along with the perfect golden crisp chips. That is going to be one of the first trips I make with friends when all this social distancing is a thing of the past. Of course, while you are enjoying your chips, there are bound to be plenty of beady eyed seagulls, just willing you to drop a chip. Some of them are even bold enough to swoop past and make a grab for one! That's the idea behind the 'It's Seagull o'clock' socks. The slip stitch pattern creates rows of gulls, sitting, watching and waiting for their opportunity. 

I first started playing around with the design using a sock set that I'd bought from Hayley at Ducky Darlings. The set was called Ice Lolly and I loved the citrussy-tropical feel of the colours.

The pattern is a four row repeat, and is much easier than it looks! The slip stitch creates little 'v' shapes; the kind of image that children draw when putting birds into their pictures. There are two heel flap options too - the traditional slip stitch heel and an alternative slip stitch and garter stitch heel which mirrors the pattern of the sock. 

Hayley liked the pattern so much that she offered to test knit it for me, and before I knew it, she had also created a sock set especially for the pattern. You can see her take on the design in the very first photo, along with the sock set. It's called 'Pesky Seagulls' and it is stunning. The sock set consists of a 50g skein of superwash BFL and nylon and two co-ordinating 20g mini skeins, so you can play around with heels, toes and cuffs. The possibilities are endless! 

You can purchase the pattern from my Ravelry store here (warning, this will take you straight to Ravelry) and just for this weekend, September 12-13th, if you use the code 'PESKY', you can get 25% off the pattern. As with all my patterns, I will donate £1 from each pattern sale to Myositis UK to help fund research into this incurable muscle disease. Hayley will have sock sets of 'Pesky Seagulls' in her shop from today and is offering free shipping on UK orders over £20 with the code 'cake'. I'm hoping that I will be able to snag a set for myself. Hayley has already gifted me one set which will be a prize for my fundraising. You can find the sock sets here. There are a few different combinations to choose from. Which one do you like the best?

I think you'll agree with me that Hayley has done an amazing job with the yarn. I love the tonal greys with speckles of golden yellow. Thank you so much Hayley, it was great fun working on this with you. 

You can buy the pattern here!

You can buy the yarn here!

You'll be able to keep that feeling of chips at the seaside all year round with a pair of socks knit in these. xxx