japan love

If you were wondering, we raised over £400 at Purl City on Wednesday for the British Red Cross Japanese tsunami appeal!

And a jolly fine time was had by all. I did lots of knitting, chatting to friends, won some ace prezzies and had wasabi peas and sake for my tea. What more can one possibly want from an evening?

There was a raffle in which I won this ball of Noro Kureyon sock, in nice restful natural shades of green. And a book of amigurumi robots! How good is that? Such as this handsome devil. I'm going to be all over this just as soon as I've reminded myself how crochet patterns work.


There was also a closed bid auction, in which I managed to get my hands on this very lovely Noro hat knitted by Vikki. Beautiful sunsetty colours - rubbishknitterjunior is very taken with it.


Thanks to the organisers for the yarny treats and a fun night out!

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tsunami relief

Just a quick one to mention to any Manchester based people that tomorrow night at Purl City Yarns is Japanese Tsunami Fundraiser night.
Sounds like it will be fun, with lots of auctions and raffles for all kinds of goodies.

There will be exclusive hand dyed yarn from Wild Fire Fibres, and 50p from the sale of each ball of Noro goes to the Red Cross. That's right, you can actually really help people by buying yarn. This is all kinds of win in my book <enable, enable> :)

I've also donated this pattern for baby socks which you can buy for £1.50 on the night. If you're not in Manchester, you can buy it on Ravelry too and all the proceeds will go to the Red Cross. I wrote it ages ago but it has taken me rather a long time to get my act together and publish it. The cute baby foot in the above picture now belongs to a clodhopping two year old. I'll maybe get round to publishing the pattern for the jumper he was wearing today by the time he goes to university.

seeya there knitterfriends!

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buttons and blocking

Guess what I have just been pinning out?!

I'm very excited... the cardigan's all finiiiiiiiiished! Last night was spent weaving in ends and sewing on buttons. I've gone for these vintage buttons that I picked up from some random haberdashery stall at a local craft fair a while ago. I really love this kind of dead simple, super shiny, boiled sweet type buttons.



Even the retro button packaging I find really pleasing. I'm really glad I'm not expected to remove them all before washing. Can you imagine?! People must have had considerably more patience in the olden days.



Better photos will follow when it's dry. Can't wait!! If anyone needs me, I'll be impatiently wandering around the spare bed with a hairdryer... What? don't look at me like that, it's forecast to freeze tonight, tomorrow morning I want to be clad in snuggly alpacay goodness!

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wild fire fibres trunk show

There will follow a small and probably quite welcome interlude in The Saga of the Cardigan to show you some pretty pictures of the Wild Fire Fibres trunk show at Purl City Yarns!

Wild Fire Fibres is the yarny adventures of Salford's finest handspinner, indie dyer, designer, mindbogglingly intricate lacy shawl knitter, pompom lover and all round thoroughly bloody lovely lady Vikki. She's been rather busy of late preparing a selection of very beautiful handcrafted woolly treats for all our recreational delight. I wandered down to the welcoming glow of Purl City after work on Wednesday to squish them on your behalf.

There was a dizzying selection of colours, fibres and weights. Difficult to know where to begin really.

This picture shows the handspun at the front. Some breathtakingly gorgeous skeins, all so different in character. Some shiny, some sparkly, some fluffy, some glittery, prethreaded with beads. There is handdyed sock weight in the middle, and at the back, shawl lovers were in paradise with all the luxurious lacey goodness. I particularly love the Pegasus alpaca/silk blend, with its metallic shininess. And the Angora laceweight, which is spun tightly enough to minimise shedding whilst still obviously being as soft as the sneeze of a baby unicorn falling into thistledown.

Some colours were mouthwateringly sweet-shop bright, some were natural world inspired neutral shades. All were eminently squishable.



Some (mostly the pink ones) were snaffled by IDreamOfCrafts before anyone else turned up.



Being a bit of a Shetland fetishist (Shetishist?!) I knew immediately which of the handspun I was going to have trouble leaving without. Then there was also free wine, a very interesting talk from Vikki about her work, and a couple of hours of knitting and enjoyable banter with friends. I overrelaxed, and became powerless to resist. This is the sight greeting mr rubbishknitter as he caught me on the cctv trying to smuggle yarnz into the house. (joke (c) audreym, twitter, 2011 )

(there is a bonus terrible handknitted pegbag in the background of this photo from my very early days of knitting, definitely pre-ravelry, possibly even predating this blog!)

So in summary, both Vikki and her yarns are lovely and you should definitely buy them, either from her website or you can catch up with her at Wonderwool Wales this year.

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