Side Project Hat

My wool was delivered this morning. I was worried because there was no conformation email but I found it this morning in my spam box. Typical. Anyway this is a quick side project for my Dad's birthday. The wool is Blue Faced Leicester Aran. I feel quite proud to be helping British Breeds of sheep, even though I bought it on the basis of it being discontinued and therefore cheaper, the right thickness for my only circular needles and not being too fussy on colour and style. A good buy all round.

Getting Personal

I've been toying with the notion of how much information about myself to share on my blog and decided that less was more. I've recently changed my mind on this so this post is going to be about myself as an introduction.

My name is Rose and I'm an Illustration student at Lincoln University (UK). I'm 20 and have just finished my second year of the course. My work, I would like to think, is based upon the principal of happiness. This may sound stupid but I've seen some many people's work that is based around negative themes that it makes pleasant emotive work seem uncommon.

Oh and a side note, the links to the Cloudy Sky Studios shops need explaining. The spreadshirt shop is for tshirts and other items using my own designs and printing techniques the I can't replicate at home. Plus it provides a little income for me, being a student with no employment it helps.
On the other hand my etsy shop is not up and running yet (hence the link not working fully) it will be up and running in about 2 months. It would be open now execpt I don't have a credit card and need to as my bank for one (I've been avoiding it). Plus I have to make the items which I want to sell. The items I will mainly stock are scarves, hats, bags and maybe some of my art. Etchings probably and other prints.

I hope that introduction was helpful. If there are any questions please don't hesitate to ask.

Subdued Socks

As promised the socks have been photoed. They didn't need the vet in the end, they just got stuck to some velcro and in the end went to sleep. Pesky things. I guess they feel unloved as wool socks in summer generally do feel.
Hmm all my text was underlined for a while there, after some fiddleing with the html code I got it sorted. For a moment I almost felt "tech-savy" which was nice.

And now news of my felting:


My little swatch had felted up lovely. I'm really quit pleased. I've started to make a bag from the mesurements of my swatch and have told myself I must do at least 5 rows a day (that way I might be done for christmas sometime).

Along side this project I have decided to knit a new wooly hat for my Dad's birthday (1st July). Silly knitting a nice warm hat for a summer birthday but the one he has now really needs replaceing.

Seeing the Forest Amongst the Trees

In a moment of inspiration a few days ago I designed a bag. YAY! Now the more taxing issues of working out the fine details are running around my head. I had intended it to be a felted bag but it seemed too complicated as I've never done it before and don't have the resources. However while browsing an online wool (I'm British - all "yarn" it "wool" to me) shop I kept scanning over the whole felting idea in my head and tried to find out what wool would be good for this project.
Amazingly I found that the wool that I would probably have found the most useful (and economical) was the cone of wool that was sitting in my knitting box waiting for me to think of something to do with it! I had bought it from the same website intending to make a jumper but I found it too coarse and irritable to knit with so I gave up.


Now my unloved cone of wool sees new life and inspiration. I knitted a test square and hopefully we shall see how it felts by Monday.
NB my knitted socks seem to want to blur on every occasion of photography so I shall post photos once a vet has been found to subdue them.

Bottle-necks

I've been lazy of late. Although I've knitted most (up to the toes) of my first ever sock, and got half way through Jane Eyre also for the first time. I would have pictures of my lovely sock but my camera is out of use at the moment (I cant find my battery charger).

I'm still having problems with what I expect from myself and what I actually achieve. I'm sure its a growing dissatisfaction thats been growing in magnitude for the last 5 years.

I shall endeavor to break it!

Oh on a infinitely lighter note I took the leap of buying my three favorite Studio Ghibli Films: Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away. It was annoying me that I loved them so much and couldn't bring myself to buy them. Now I have them and they are every bit as superb as when I first watched the films.