Southwold Summer Wrap Makealong starts today!

Good morning! Today is the start of the makealong of my Southwold Summer Wrap over in the Stylecraft Facebook MAL group. I'd love it if you would join me in a month of relaxed knitting. The pattern can be purchased from my Ravelry designer page here for £4, but if you use the code 'summerwrap', you'll be able to get 25% discount throughout July. All the proceeds from the sale of the pattern will be donated to my fundraising page Fibre4Fibres, where I'm aiming to raise £20,000 by the end of this year for Myositis UK to help fund research into this incurable muscle disease. 

After a bit of pondering, I've decided to make a bright version this time, and am using three of the colours from the Stylecraft Naturals Bamboo and Cotton range - Coral, Celery and Blush. My pattern is printed and I'm looking forward to making a start this afternoon while watching the tennis.

Just to tempt you, here are a couple of samples of the finished wrap. It's an easy knit and you'll end up with a gorgeous wrap with a beautiful drape. I hope you'll come and join in the fun! xxx

 

Fibre 4 Fibres Giveaway preview 64

It's Friday again! I'm not quite sure how! It's been a pretty grey and damp week here in Norfolk, not remotely summery. Fingers crossed for a bit of sunshine soon. This week's prize is a real beauty! The prize includes a stunning shawl which has been crocheted and donated by the lovely FloraHoneypot. Helen will be posting the shawl direct to the winner but has sent me some photos. (Please not that the brooch is not included in the prize.) As well as this shawl, there is a yarn kit with a pattern to crochet the Plankton scarf. The kit is from the Natural Dye Studio who are no longer dyeing yarn, so it's a chance to have something really special. I bought the kit from Fibre East some years ago and it's sat in my stash ever since. The kit contains both the pattern and the yarn to make the scarf; 5 50g skeins of Dazzle yarn which is 100% Blue Faced Leicester. Of course, you don't have to crochet the scarf if you win, you can use the yarn for whatever you like! There is also a luxurious skein of Natural Dye Studio Precious lace yarn which is 100% silk. It has an incredible sheen and will make something beautiful. To go with these, there is a notepad, pen, sticker and badge from LanaBou and a yarn ball progress keeper which has been donated by Hannah Daisy Crochet. Thank you for your donations.

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! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 4th July, 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 email address 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. Our next big milestone to pass is £18,000. Thank you and stay safe! xxx

Southwold Summer Wrap

Two new patterns in one week! What's going on? You wait ages for one new pattern and then two come along! I'm very happy to share my first shawl pattern with you. It's called the Southwold Summer Wrap and it's an asymmetric triangular shawl. It came about when I first saw Stylecraft's Natural Bamboo and Cotton yarn range. I fell in love with both the feel of the yarn and the colour range and knew that I wanted to knit something soft and with a wonderful drape to wrap around my neck on cooler summer days.

The beach is my happy place; whether it's a beach in Kos, in Cornwall, or much closer to home in East Anglia, it always makes me feel relaxed. Breathing in the fresh air and hearing the waves on the shore is so good for the soul. So I decided to choose three sea colours for my version - Ecru, Seafoam and Surf. One of my favourite things to do when I'm at the beach (apart from eating chips and/or ice cream) is to look for pieces of sea glass and I've gathered together rather a lovely bowl of treasures over the years. It followed that I wanted to add some glass beads to the shawl somewhere! 

I'm thrilled with how it turned out - it's lovely and long and so soft too, just perfect for wrapping around yourself when it gets a bit cooler in the evenings.

The beads are just what I imagined in my head. I got them from the African Fabric shop here. Of course, you can add any kind of beads you like, or you can choose not to add any at all! It's up to you. You don't have to use sea colours either. My test knitter made hers using the Stylecraft Naturals Organic Cotton yarn and chose bright colours reminiscent of the colourful beach huts that you often find on the promenades of seaside towns. She chose Citron, Leaf and Papaya for hers and I think it looks fabulous!

The Southwold Summer Wrap has been named after one of my favourite beaches in the East of England. Mr JK and I used to go down to Suffolk quite frequently, visiting Aldeburgh and Southwold. The wrap is made up of two different patterns - garter stitch rows and lace eyelet rows with some garter stitch stripes in between. It's a very straightforward pattern to knit and it's going to be the July project in the Stylecraft Makealong group on Facebook. It would be lovely if you were able to come and join in the fun! You can follow the colours used in the pattern or pick your own. Here are a few different colour combinations from the Naturals Bamboo and Cotton range. To see all the colours in the range, look here.

Here are a few possible colour combinations from the Naturals Organic Cotton range. To see all the colours, click here.

The pattern is available from my Ravelry pattern store here. If you are unable to access Ravelry but would like to buy a copy of the pattern, please email me - josiekitten123 at gmail.com and I will do my best to help you out. The pattern costs £4 and there's a special discount code which will give you 25% off throughout July. The code is 'summerwrap'. I will be donating all proceeds from pattern sales to my fundraising over on Fibre4Fibres, raising money for Myositis UK. The Makealong doesn't start until July 8th, so you've got time to get yourself organised with pattern and yarn. I'll be there, knitting another, more colourful version this time and it would be so nice to have your company too. xxx

 

PJ Day socks

I'm thrilled to be able to share my latest sock pattern with you. PJ Day socks were designed for those days when you want to stay in your pyjamas ALL day, cosied up on the sofa with a mug of hot chocolate (complete with cream and marshmallows obvs!), a soft blanket to snuggle into and your favourite film on TV. Mine is Sleepless in Seattle, by the way - what's yours?

The pattern is a 4 row repeat of a knit and purl stitch pattern that is not only easy to memorise, but knits up nice and fast, creating a stretchy fabric that hugs your foot. The socks are knit top down, with a heel flap and the wedge toe is joined using kitchener stitch. I used a skein of Norah George Super Sock yarn in the Muted Rainbow colourway for mine, but any sock yarn will work. You can buy a copy of the pattern from my Ravelry pattern store here, and if you use the code 'pjday', you'll get 25% off until the end of June. You've not got long! If you aren't able to use Ravelry, please email me - josiekitten123 at gmail.com and I will do my best to help you. I'm looking for an alternative place to sell my patterns and will let you know when I've got something set up. I am donating all proceeds from the sale of all my patterns to my fundraising for Myositis UK. I hope you like the pattern and happy knitting! xxx

 

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Sunday's raffle brings me to half way through this year of fundraising. I can't quite believe it, time is whizzing by. I still have lots of amazing prizes to give away throughout the remainder of 2021 and I have some truly incredible prizes to finish the year with a bang! I'm really excited about these and cannot wait to share them with you! (But not for a while yet as various bits and bobs are still getting sorted out!)

This week's prize has a purple theme and I love it! If you've been following me for a while, you'll know that purple is my favourite colour. I gathered together some donations and also had a rummage in my stash to find something nice for you. The prize includes a gorgeous, almost iridescent skein of Yarn Yarn Falkland merino wool which has been donated by an Instagram friend Meliryth. Shannon from Blue Fern Yarns has donated a skein of her superwash merino nylon sock yarn in the Wisteria colourway and it's so pretty. To go with those, there are two skeins of Malabrigo merino lace yarn in the Purple Mystery colourway - the yarn is a soft as butter! There is also a skein of Artesano Hummingbird yarn which is 100% alpaca. Mrs Lamb has donated a fun project bag with 'All you need is yarn and gin' printed on it! There is a cute pin badge and a set of 5 purple stitch markers and a yarny postcard from Lana Bou. Last but not least, there is a purple dpn case which has been donated by Ellie over at Craft House Magic. Thank you so much to everyone who has generously donated a prize.

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! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 27th June, 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 email address 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. Our next big milestone to pass is £17,500. Can we do it this weekend?! Thank you and stay safe! xxx

The Rainbow 'Socks of Doom' are done!

My May Rainbow 'Socks of Doom' are done and I have never been so pleased to finish a project in my life! You may remember I blogged about them a while back. They were knitted from a sock blank which although gorgeous to look at, I found a nightmare to knit as the yarn was so crinkly. The knitted fabric was very uneven and I hadn't spotted a dropped stitch until I was about to start the heel flap. A few rather rude words may well have been muttered at that point! I frogged the offending sock and put it into time out for a while. When I picked them up again last week, I decided that I didn't like the colour change down the foot that was the result of knitting a heel flap and gusset, so I frogged the other sock back to the start of the heel too. I knit long tubes and decreased for the toes before adding afterthought heels and I'm much happier now with the yarn gradient. I left them to soak for a long time, hoping that the water would help the crinkly fibres to relax. The finished socks do look neater, but still not as neat as if I'd used yarn from a skein. I hope that once they have been worn and washed a few times, they'll look more even. I can't say that I'm in a hurry to knit from a sock blank again, but if I did, I'd definitely wind it into a skein first and soak it to get it straight before knitting it. My June socks are finished too. I'll be sharing photos soon and hopefully a new pattern too. Keep watching! xxx

The sock blank was a beautiful two stranded tube that I bought from Mothy and the Squid. 

It caused me problems from the word go because the stitches in the tube had been split so that I couldn't unwind it from the end I'd started knitting from. So I had to go to the other end, cut the yarn and wind into two separate balls of yarn. Flo's assistance was much appreciated of  course!

I used stitch markers down the sock tube to keep count of the rows and couldn't wait to finish!

They had a lovely long bath in some warm water with a sachet of Soak in it.

Ta dah! Finished socks! The knitted fabric is a lot neater after blocking, but there is still room for improvement!

Love these matchy-matchy heels!

They are now in my sock drawer to be worn once the weather gets cooler.

 

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I've got a super-fun prize for you this week. My Instagram friend Ann donated a copy of the book 'Knitting with your Leftovers' so I thought it would be rather nice to put together lots of different yarns so that the winner can have fun making lots of the projects from the book. (You could even use it to get ahead with gift knitting - it's only 6 months until Christmas!)

As well as the book, the prize includes a ball of each of the new colourways of Stylecraft Special DK yarn. Another Instagram friend, Hannah, has donated two balls of Deramores merino DK yarn, as well a ball of Stylecraft Merry Go Round and another ball of Special DK. Another Instagram friend Annette has donated two balls of King Cole Opium yarn which has a lovely silky feel to it. Sue from Diss Wool and Craft Shop has donated a gorgeous ball of Katia lace yarn. My fellow Stylecraft Blogstar Julia who is Hand Knitted Things has donated a ball each of Adriafil Zebrino and Knitcol yarns, as well as two balls of Stylecraft Batik Elements, a ball of Bellissima Chunky, a ball of Special Chunky and a ball of Special Aran. There are also three balls of Yarn Stories yarn. If I've counted correctly, that's 20 balls of yarn! Of course you'll need a bag to keep them in, so there is a Stylecraft tote bag, a key ring and some gift tags, and a sweet stitch marker from Hannah Daisy Crochet. Thank you to everyone who has donated a prize in this bumper bundle! 

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! Are you tempted to try your luck? Here's everything you need to know. This giveaway will run this coming Sunday 20th June, 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 email address 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. Thank you and stay safe! xxx