Getting ahead in 2025 - and a visit to Porto

It's unlike me to have only one project on the go.  A flurry of finishing towards the end of 2024 meant my works in progress consisted of only one virtually-completed shawl.  

Time to cast on something new.

At home with us for Christmas, my daughter, Maddy, was in daily touch with her close friend, Emily, who was due to give birth very soon.  Not to just one baby, but to twins!  

I suggested I might knit a hat - or two. 

Baby Hat With Top Knot by Julia Taylor

Emily was very clear what she wanted for her yet-to-be-born baby girls - nothing identical and no pink!  Though this top knot hat is cute, the only other colour I had in the same wool was - you guessed it - pink!  Back to the stash.

Berry Baby Hat by Michele Sabatier

My other go-to pattern for new parents is the Berry Baby Hat.  I knitted two of these over the course of a couple of evenings using similar, but not the same, wool.  It's a good hat for tiny heads as the rolled brim can be adjusted as the baby's head grows.

With empty needles once more, and a holiday to Porto in prospect, I needed a portable travel project so I cast on another hat I've made many times before.

Tchaikovsky Hat by Helen Stewart

I knit most of the hat on the plane to and from our five day mini-break but Geoff captured me here on our final day, at a lovely cafe overlooking Porto, with my knitting just out of sight behind my right shoulder.  By the time I got home, I just had the decrease section to go.

This is a craft blog, not a travel one, but here's a snapshot of our trip to tantalise you.

Whilst Geoff and our pal, Dave, toured the Douro wine region for the day, my good friend, Caroline, and I toured the art district and visited a yarn shop!

It was hard to capture the beauty of the window display at Ovelha Negra but I took this close-up of the lichen clad branches with their woolly 'blossoms'.

Inside was a wonderful array of Portuguese and European yarns, covering every surface with colour.  It was all very inviting.

Sample garments showed off all the gorgeous yarns.  I loved the tiny jumper!

After a good look round, we met the owner, Joana, who made us feel very welcome.

The shop's own brand Portuguese wool had attracted me to visit in the first place and I chose this vibrant coral shade.  Ovelha Negro Victoria is produced with merino wool from Alentejo, towards the south of the country.  Portugal has a long history of wool production and merino sheep originated in the Iberian Peninsula.

With cabin-only luggage, I had to be restrained with my purchases but some complimentary Isager mohair silk made its way into my bag, as well as this skein of cheerful red Piopardo from Portuguese brand, Rosarios 4.  

Once home, I couldn't wait to cast on my souvenir yarn.  This colour work hat pattern proved the perfect project for my ruby red Piopardo yarn and I found the cream contrast wool in my stash.  It's Baa Ram Ewe Titus in the colour White Rose, now sadly discontinued.

Hellekindset Hat by Lanja Khon-Engheim

A week after landing back in the UK, all hats were complete.  They're both going to be gifts.  

You won't be surprised to hear I've cast on something new.  

However, after finishing five hats in a month, I'm not inclined to knit any head wear for a while!

Foot note : While in Porto, a good friend's daughter had a baby boy so the first hat I mentioned in this post will be going to baby Jake.

Woolly Christmas Trees

The Meldrum Church Christmas Tree Project runs throughout December and is now in its fourth year.  Our village church is decorated with trees contributed by local community groups, raising awareness, appealing for volunteers or just showing we exist! 

The first year my local knitting group, The Naughty Knitters, contributed a tree was 2022 - and it was made entirely from pompoms!  

My lovely late father-in-law made this tree, with its broom handle trunk and dowling branches, ages ago for me when I used to help out at Sunday School. 

 

After liberating it from the attic, and covering it in gold tinsel, I hung every pompom the knit group had made on it and added some fairy lights.  Voila - our very simple, but effective, first tree!

We'd more time to prepare for Christmas 2023 and the knit group started knitting these mini Santa hats well ahead of time.  They're designed to fit over a Fererro Rocher chocolate making cute, edible Christmas ornaments.  Small amounts of leftover wool in red, green and white were knitted up.  By the end of November we had collectively knitted over 100!  Some required a little finessing so I attached hanging loops, sewed on jingly bells and glued on tiny pompoms as required. 

Over the years I'd accumulated a lot of metal knitting needles, mostly unwanted craft supplies folks thought I could use or some, just one half of a pair.  The talented supportive spouse of one of our members (a retired engineer) fashioned them into a Christmas tree for our display.  Hanging up all our tiny knitted hats was very satisfying.

Ethmay helping to hang the hats!

We'd always intended to give the hats to Susan, our knit group member who fundraises tirelessly for the cancer unit at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.  

With Fererro Rocher generously donated by Oldmeldrum COOP, Susan was able to fill the hats and sell them at Meldrum Primary's Christmas Fair.  So far she's raised £67!

How to top that?  Well, during the latter half of 2024, the knit group decided to knit hats using any shade of green wool to decorate this year's tree.  Here's my contribution - three adult hats and two for kids.

As a group, we managed to use up a lot of  leftover green wool and knit a total of  64 hats and nine pairs of mittens.  We are not primarily charity knitters and fit this knitting in between our other personal knitting projects.  There's no obligation to take part - but everyone does!

This time the hats were attached to a traditional tree using clothes pegs I'd sprayed with silver paint.  Adding white lights enhanced the tree without detracting from the hats.  

It's our intention, after Christmas, to donate the adult hats to a charity for the homeless and the kid's hats and mittens to a local group which supports families in need.

Such is the enthusiasm of The Naughty Knitters, I've already received suggestions for next year's tree!

The 12 strong Oldmeldrum Naughty Knitters meet every Wednesday morning at Lochter.

 

All's Wool That Ends Well

There's a danger when you share what you make on the World Wide Web that all appears well all of the time.  Whether it's a blog like this or a vlog, or a post or a reel, the fact is that not every craft endeavour goes to plan.  Two recent hand knit sweaters of mine stalled along the way and nearly ended badly.

They started, though, with some very happy purchasing.  I met Marguerite of Westfield Croft at my local monthly makers market and snagged a ball of the scrumptiously soft wool she'd sourced from a local rare breed flock.  So gorgeous that I photographed it immediately in my car!

When we met again at the Wool at Portsoy event some months later, she told me she had only two balls of that same yarn left - and there would be no more.  The fleeces of shearling (first clip) pedigree Blue Faced Leicester sheep were collected from the Hardhaugh Blues flock, near Dufftown, then hand spun to create gorgeous yarn for hand knitting.  In its undyed state it's creamy and extremely soft and bouncy.

I immediately snapped up these precious bundles so I had enough wool to knit a garment.

 

My Wool at Portsoy haul included my purchase from Marguerite as well as four skeins from Julie at Black Isle Yarns.  Julie very kindly gifted me a voucher after I crocheted this jumper for her as a stall sample and I chose to exchange my voucher for her naturally dyed Shetland heavy 4 ply in delicate pink tones.  Julie also sources fleece from flocks local to her.  More on that beautiful wool later.

I searched for a pattern that would use the three precious balls of BFL from Westfield Croft.  With limited yardage I opted for short sleeves. 

The Rainbow Candy Summer Top by Silvia Heidinger fitted the bill.  It's pictured above peeking out from behind my circular yoke.  Knitted up, the undyed Westfield Croft wool has a slight halo adding to its buttery softness.  I tried several striping options but thought the primary colours might make make me look like a toddler!  I didn't like the gauge of the textured version and settled instead for pastel stripes of mohair silk from my stash held together with a strand of natural alpaca.

But I could not get the yoke stitch count to work.  The pattern doesn't give a lot of guidance as you go along so my first version had the correct final circumference with the wrong proportions for the sleeves, back and front.  I ripped it all out.  A second attempt (after I made myself a row count check list) was better, but not perfect.  Feeling a bit exasperated with myself, it was time to put this project aside.

And immediately cast on something else!  

I knew I wanted a pattern without too much stitch detail to show off my Black Isle Yarn.  Julie only uses natural dyes such as the lac and hibiscus used in the Culloden colourway I'd chosen.  It's quite delicate and I didn't want the beauty of her colours to be lost in a busy stitch pattern.  I remembered seeing a sample sweater at my local yarn store, Baa! in Stonehaven, with a pretty yoke and elegant stocking stitch body, sleeves and garter stitch trim.  The knitting pattern is called Heron Island by Beatrice Perron Dahlen and it seemed the right choice for such special wool.

I enjoyed knitting the patterned yoke and got to the straightforward body section before my summer holidays so I could knit away without having to keep referring to the pattern.  

Here I am knitting on the Arran ferry.

Only once I was home did I see the variation in shades between the yoke and body.  Hand dyed yarn produces varied results and no two skeins are the same.  This is one of the joys of working with wool coloured by yarn artists like Julie and the way to mitigate noticeable variations is to alternate skeins.  For non knitters this means knitting with two balls at once, one row from one ball and the following row with the other, meaning any colour difference is less marked.  I know this.  Did I do this?  No, I did not.  Well, not for the first skein anyway.

I must stress at this point that this is not a fault in the yarn or the fault of the yarn dyer.  In fact it's not a fault at all.  Each hand dyed skein of yarn will vary even when dyed in the same batch.  As I've said, this is one of the pleasures of working with a unique product.

For my sweater, though, I would need to rip it all back to the beginning and alternate skeins from the get go.  I needed to think about this so I put my Heron Island sweater to one side feeling slightly annoyed with myself again.

And immediately cast on something else.   

Variegated merino from Ripples Crafts teamed with teal mohair silk from Cookston Crafts

With two sweaters hibernating, I was in need of a quick win so I cast on a shawl I've knitted many times before, knowing I'd be guaranteed a successful outcome.  This is the Winter Wander Shawl by Helen Stewart which features rhythmic garter stitch, a lacy section of mohair silk and a pretty picot cast off.  I like to wear it bandana style.

Do you see the beady eye overseeing my knitting in the picture on the left?  That's the Emotional Support Chicken made for me by my lovely friend, Alison, from her very own hand-spun yarn.  I'd shared my knitting woes during our weekly Knit Night sessions and Alison thought this might help!

I'm not sure if Spangle the kitten is an emotional support but he often lounges on my lap in the evening whilst I'm knitting and (mostly) leaves it alone!

So you can see,  I picked up the short sleeved top once more.  Concentrated more.  Loved the wool even more and finally made it to the end of the yoke with the correct number of stitches.  Hooray!

The rest of the knitting was plain sailing.

And my pastel version of the Rainbow Candy Summer Top was finished.  The Westfield Croft wool is soft and light and ever so cosy!  The variable climate I live in means this will be worn year round and not just in summer.

Time away from a project gives clarity and realisation.  

I realised that the effect I'd inadvertently created in my Heron Island sweater was like a deliberate fade.  By knitting the yoke with the lightest skein then alternating two slightly darker ones I'd achieved a fade effect.  This is something knitters strive for when they create a garment from multiple skeins ranging from light to dark.  All I had to do to continue the effect in my sweater was to knit the lower body with the darker ball of wool until I reached the hem and complete the fade.  So that's what I did.

But actually when I'm wearing my jumper, I'm much less aware of the differences in the shades and I think it looks perfect.  I am SO glad I didn't rip it all out!  

It showcases my Black Isle Yarn so well.



So all's well that ends well (or wool) in my knitting world.

And, of course, I immediately cast on something else!

Find out more about these ladies who care deeply about Scottish wool and its provenance:

Westfield Croft -  shop

Black Isle Yarns - shop

A Blush of Robins

 There's several collective nouns for a group of the nation's favourite red breasted bird but a 'blush' of robins is definitely my favourite.

This particular blush was created last weekend at a needle felting class I taught to ladies of Aberdeenshire Federation of the SWI (Scottish Women's Institute) as part of their Autumn Academy craft programme.  I always love that everyone starts out with the same materials and receives the same tuition yet each lady has created a robin individual to her.

Prior to teaching, I always like to remind myself what I'm doing which has resulted in me having a blush of my own!

Seeing the birdies grouped together made me think back to last summer when I created another blush of robins, but this time in mosaic.

A while back, my Mum's beloved glass ornament broke.  

It got inadvertently swiped off the window ledge whilst the curtains were being opened.  There was no way of successfully fixing it so the following Christmas I bought Mum a Royal Crown Derby replacement robin.  However, I kept the broken bird as I'd always liked the simple fused glass shapes and had often contemplated translating them into mosaic.

After making a rough sketch (so rough it's on a shopping list!) I transferred the image onto tracing paper.  This let me draw the shapes I required onto glass which I cut with hand tools then smoothed with the grinder.

The transparent pieces needed to be backed with foil before being stuck onto the slate substrate.  This served two purposes - the cement didn't show through and the glass colours became more intense.

Once the cement was fully dried, the messy process of grouting could begin.  I keep special gloves for just that purpose!  Both the cement and the grout used mean this can go outside.

Once the robin was polished up I opted to glue on his millefiori bead eye and really bring him to life.  I gave this robin to my sister-in-law, Carol, as a gift last Christmas.

Then I made another which I gave to my friend, Susan, to raffle as a fundraiser for the good causes she supports.

And I made another, also gifted, which hangs in my friend Brenda's garden.  

I must've been in a hurry as I only have a picture of this one prior to grouting.

It appears I'm not done yet, as this work in progress shows.  Maybe I'll manage to make one for my own garden before too long.

 It's lovely to know that my blush of mosaic robins has flown far and wide - but this one is coming home to roost!

A Creative Craft Swap

Lesley and I have been friends for a long time.

She's featured on my blog before, talented artist that she is, when we visited her Peebles studio and when we made felt together at my house.  

We love Lesley's art and own several of her paintings.

When we gave our lounge a refresh recently, there was space in the alcove for some new art - and we knew exactly who to contact.  It was Lesley who suggested a craft swap - she'd paint me a picture and I'd knit her a jumper.  Deal!

Lesley took her inspiration from our 2021 holiday to Davaar Island on the Mull of Kintyre peninsula.

Not long after our decision to craft swap, Lesley presented us with this beautiful painting of the lighthouse on Davaar.

Here it is in situ in our newly painted lounge.  I love how she's picked out our zingy yellow.

Now it was time to keep my side of the bargain.

Lesley chose this lovely pattern for an Icelandic style sweater with a colour work yoke.  It's the Fern and Feather Sweater by Jennifer Steingass.

We looked through my yarn stash and Lesley chose some colours but they just didn't really work well together as you can see in my test swatch.

So I had a look at Ravelry, the comprehensive online resource available to knitters and crocheters where I could see how others had knitted their beautiful colour work sweaters.  

I was very smitten with these greeny-blue yokes.

Lesley loved these colours as much as I do so I bought a ball of this gorgeous Schoppel Gradient yarn which makes the colour changes for you.  There's a tongue-in-cheek warning on the label that knitting can be addictive.  I already know this!

Knitting the yoke was really fun, especially watching the colours change.

The body and sleeves, made in 100% wool Drops Alaska, flew off my needles in just a few weeks as the gently repetitive stocking stitch made great TV knitting.

The jumper was finished in time for Lesley's next visit to the North East and taking careful measurements prior to knitting ensured a good fit.

Cheers to the craft swap!

You can find more of Lesley's lovely art here : www.lesleyjohnsonart.com