All the Fun of the Feis

A feis (pronounced fesh) is a traditional Irish music festival. Last weekend one of the lovely Irish knitters WrapNTurn (Twitter link) hosted the first FibreFeis in her fabulous home in County Cork. It was a huge hit, with knitters, spinners and crocheters coming from all over Ireland to join the fun.

Camping facilities were available in the grounds of Sue's home:

 

I, however chose to stay in a hotel in Cork city, about an hours drive away. In my defence, hubby and Alice came down too and we made a long weekend holiday type thing out of it. The sun Gods shone on us and we had a really lovely afternoon sitting on the deck, chatting (drinking wine), swapping tips and ogling each others yarns & projects.

 

Our very own talented designer, Carol Feller came along and brought two trunks full of her designs, including those in her new book, Contemporary Irish Knits (Amazon Link). There was much ooh-ing and aah-ing and squeezing and trying on of the garments. Great fun!

 

It wasn't long before we had the first FO of the feis, a lovely headband.

 

Then the big guns came out and people set up their wheels and started spinning on their spindles. I could watch this all day. It's truly fascinating to me. I'm afraid to try it though, what if I really liked it and then had to go and buy roving, wheels etc to do it? Oh no. I just can't afford to fall for another craft.

 

Everyone got involved in the craftiness. Even my hubby tried spinning! I was in total shock. I cut his face out of the photo as he'd go bananas if I published him on the internet, so be content with a hand and trust me when I say it belongs to him!

 

Once the sun went down, a pit was dug and a fire was lit.  Everyone settled round the fire in their snuggly clothes to have a chat and make smores. OMG! Smores! They were ridiculously good. I'd never had a "proper" one before. I'll definitely be having a proper one again! Mmm.

Fibre Feis was a huge success. Thanks so much Sue for opening your beautiful home to us all and being such a terrific hostess! Roll on next year.

Another Yarn Store Outing

Yesterday, The Dublin Knit Collective and I ventured out to meet Doogarry in The Yarn Room. I loved this store the last time I visited and I had heard that they'd moved to new larger premises recently, so naturally I jumped at the chance to go. It's about an hours drive from my house, so not too far.

What a pretty shopfront! The sun came out to greet us as we arrived.

Aren't the crocheted window flowers fab?

Inside the store there's a lovely comfy area to sit, knit and soak in all the yarn fumes.

There are literally TONS of goodies in this shop. Here's just a sample of what was on display:

Everywhere I looked I kept finding more yummy yarn, notions and unusual things like this:

Wrapping paper, made from recycled sheep poo! I just had to buy some. They also do greeting cards from the same source:

I also bought some more stash. I know, I know, I need to seek some help for my addiction, but this stuff was so cheap I just couldn't leave it there.

Austermann Merino Lace. In black. I must be off my trolley. BUT, it's so soft and so reasonable! These two skeins contain 764 yards for less than €10. Sorry about the superfluous tea towel in the background, there. Blame my lack of photo proofing.

I also bought this:

Yum Icelandic laceweight in a gorgeous shade of gold/mustard. 546 yards of scrum for something like €7.95. Just fab.

Now to find something to make with it all!

I must say this is a really great store, packed to the rafters with great fibres for knitting, crochet, spinning & weaving. A birdie told me they will shortly be stocking fabric too. Classes are available in all of the above crafts too and they have a great knit night every Thursday evening.

I definitely won't be leaving it so long again until I go.

My knitty travels continue. Tomorrow hubby, Alice & I are heading down to Cork for a few days break. On Saturday, a lovely knitter, WrapNTurn (Twitter Link) is graciously hosting a FibreFeis™ for all manner of crafty people to come along and camp on her land if we want, and a BBQ on Saturday night. There'll be spinning, knitting, crochet, etc etc. Can't wait! Although I won't be camping, I will be there on Saturday morning with bells on. It's going to be GREAT!

HandmAid Craft Day

Some lovely Dublin knitters have decided to host a craft day in aid of famine relief in the Horn of Africa. They've put tons of work into it so far. Check our their website here. The craft day will be on Saturday September 3rd, in the Damer Hall on St. Stephens Green, Dublin.

And... I'll be teaching a class! I still can't quite believe it to be honest. They asked, and I couldn't refuse for such a good cause.

I'll be teaching a class in the afternoon on card making. More specifically, how to make this card:






This is called a step card, and it's really easy to do, but looks very effective. I hope to make up a few more samples to give you an idea of how versatile it is.

So, please go and sign up for one of the classes. They're only €10 (which is nothing) and all funds are going to an extremely good cause.

Yarn Store Outing

A knitty friend of mine, BionicLaura works in a yarn store on the other side of Dublin, Winnie's Craft Café. To my shame, I hadn't yet made the trip to visit her or scope out the shop.
Well, I fixed that last Friday. I bundled Alice in the car and off I went.

I must say that it's a lovely shop. I was greeted with a really gorgeous window display of a knitted teddy bears picnic. So cute. I've no pictures, sadly, I was a bit remiss there.

Inside, the store has a great selection of yarns not available elsewhere along with the usual staples. There is also a huge selection of beads & jewellery making accessories. Needless to say the magpie in me made me buy some beads:


Miyuki Japanese Seed Beads 6/0 Round in Turquoise. Yum. I've no idea how many are in the tube, but I'm sure I'll find a use for them soon.

They also have lots of knitting notions, including these lovely stitch markers hand made by a woman in Uganda. I just had to get some:



I spied this lonely skein of laceweight in a basket on a table and snapped it up:



It's Garnstudio Drops Alpaca Lace. 70% Baby Alpaca, 30% Mulberry Silk. You can see the price, great value for 870 yards of laceweight. I think I might try to dye it.

You may remember I visited Cushendale Woollen Mills in Kilkenny last year, and absolutely loved the mills and their yarns. When I saw these skeins of DK I had to get them. I love the shade of charcoal:



There's also a really scrummy café in the back of the shop. While I was there two other lovely Dublin Knitters, (both Helens) arrived and we decided to have lunch together. I had the most delicious rocky road I've had in a long time. Alice also seemed to enjoy the millionaires shortbread!

Overall I must say it's a really lovely store with a great selection of yarns reasonably priced and the added bonus of the café in the back makes it a must visit. It's a shame it's a bit difficult to get to for me, but I'll definitely go back!

In knitting progress news, I've finished the yucca chart repeats on my Aeolian Shawl:



This took longer than I thought. The pattern states to repeat the yucca chart 12 times and you'll have 293 stitches. Not so. I think I ended up doing 15 or 16 repeats of the chart to get that stitch count. Still, I'm there now and ready to move on to the transition chart. This portion of the shawl used 22g of yarn, so I have 77g left. Hopefully it will be enough!

Good knitting!

Baby Crazy

As I'm sure you are all aware, it seems like everyone I know is pregnant at the moment. One little boy was born on August 2, and another baby is arriving any day now.

For the impending arrival, I knit up a few small items for a gift parcel and posted it off today. I wrapped it up in cute paper with baby feet on it, and some ribbon with teddies & hearts on it. Aww.



A breakdown of the contents:



You've seen the Star Booties and the Whooo Loves Ya Baby bib already, but here are the others.



First up is a bonnet that I've made before.
Pattern: Drops Bonnet in Alpaca in wavy pattern (Garnstudio come up with some doozies for their pattern names)
Yarn: Garnstudio Drops Alpaca, 1 skein in cream
Needles: 3mm

A lovely old fashioned baby bonnet that I think is super cute.

Next we have another pattern from Knit One Knit All:



Pattern: Surplice Baby Jacket (Ravlink) From Knit One Knit All by Elizabeth Zimmermann
Yarn: King Cole Bamboo Cotton
Needles: 4mm

I loved making this! Although I did make a huge boo-boo that required ripping back over half of the garment. That's what I get for not reading the whole pattern through before I start. (I know). Doesn't it look great? Adorable.

I hope the new Mammy likes them!

I've also been knitting up a storm on my Ethereal Top. I took it out of the bold corner and got back to it. I've finished the body, knit the square neck (which contains some really cool garter stitch mitred corners) and am on the first sleeve. I really hope to get it finished soon.

I also cast on for a new project. I was 13 years married last month, and apparently that anniversary is lace & lingerie. I do have the book Knitting Lingerie Style (Ravlink) but I figure it would be kinder to humanity if I knit some lace instead. :)
I was chatting on twitter about it, and myself and another Twitter Knitter have decided to do a KAL of sorts and make an Aeolian shawl. I'm using some really scrummy Hedgehog Fibres Silk Lace in the shade Magic Mushroom. Hope it doesn't make me go loopy!

Progress so far:



I'm about 2/3 of the way through the first set of charts, the Yucca chart. I'm making the largest size as I have 1000yds of this yarn. I discovered that the designer subsequently released an alternative edging for the shawl for cases where you might be running out of yarn, so I might end up using that one. We'll see how it goes.

Alice & I have been busy bunnies too. There has been lots of cardmaking going on! Here's a slideshow of them all so far. I hope it works.




Good knitting!

My New Kitchen

I promised you pictures of my new kitchen, so here you go!

The quality of the pictures isn't great, apologies for that. It's a dull grey day today so they're a bit dark. Here's what the kitchen looked like before:



A tired old kitchen.



Here's during, when I was losing it at having my fridge in my living room for over a week:





And here's after. Not fully cleaned, but you get the idea.
I love the shelves we got here to hold our chilli & pepper plants. The tea-making stuff isn't going to stay there! All the appliances are now integrated too, which I think looks much neater.



This is a cool little extra we thought of. Using waste space to put up a metal sheet so we can stick all our holiday magnets up!



I love my granite worktop from Italy and the under counter lighting. I think the Kitchen Aid looks great in that corner:



Another Italian element, the cooker hood. I think it's cool:



This gadget is amazeballs. It's a Quooker tap that provides constant boiling water. No more kettle!



This is the main kitchen tap. It swivels. I love it, I think it's like something from a sci-fi movie.



This is a brand new element. The kitchen table & chairs used to be here. We have our new enormous fridge (LOVE IT) and either side we have pull out pantries. Loads of storage for the dry groceries. There's also a bookshelf at the end for all the cookery books.



This is hubbys favourite bit. He designed the curve in the counter front that has curved drawers & granite, with a matching curve in the top presses over the cooker hood. The induction hob is pretty impressive too, it's brill! Only problem is none of our old pots will work on it, so we have to go searching for a new set. The magnetic knife racks on the wall are really handy too.



You can just make out the ovens at the right of the photo.

This picture is very dark, sorry. This is the ovens and the full length presses. One for the ironing board, etc, and the other one is shelved for bits & bobs including Alice's card making stuff.



So, whatcha think? I *adore* it. Worth the hassle I think, and once it's finally deep cleaned it'll be perfect. We've been cooking up a storm in it so far, pumpkin pie, homemade rocky road ice cream, southern fried chicken etc etc etc. Yum!

Lots of knitting to show next post, so until then Good Knitting!

M.I.A.

Where has the time gone? I've been so up to my eyes over the last 3 weeks, I haven't had a chance to post at all.
I apologise in advance to those people whose blogs I usually comment on, I feel bad for ignoring you all!
It's been a real roller coaster ride. We got a complete new kitchen installed, and it's been a nightmare. The mess! The noise! The lack of a kitchen to cook in! At one stage I had the fridge in the living room. Which was good for speedy access to ice-cream, but that novelty wore off quickly. The kitchen is almost finished, tomorrow it BETTER be. It's just a last couple of niggling things. Pics next post, it's AMAZING.

I have been knitting though, I got loads done. I couldn't block any of it coz the house was so filthy with dust, so it all queued up and I did a huge block last night. Loads of FOs!

A fellow Dublin knitter lost her husband tragically young to Leukaemia last week and the funeral was last Saturday. It was the first humanist ceremony I'd been to, and while it was desperatley sad, it was also a beautiful send off for a lovely man. It was so personal.

In memory of her husband, a few of us have decided to knit some items for the hospital nurses and the Irish Cancer Society. Brendan bravely blogged his way through his illness here: http://www.zen.org. While he was in hospital, he took up knitting and was attempting his first lace project, the Party Lace Scarf. In honour of this, we all agreed to make one ourselves. Here's mine:


Pattern: Party Lace Scarf by Lisa Sisk, co-owner of This Is Knit
Yarn: Feza Kid Mohair, 1 skein
Needles: 4.5mm

It was quite emotional knitting this. I put lots of prayer & good wishes into it. I decided to make something else as well, every little helps, right?


Pattern: Multnomah by Kate Elsa
Yarn: Zettl Treviso Sock Yarn
Needles: 3.25mm

This was a lovely shawl to knit, nice & easy pattern to memorize.

I also finished my Kip Wip socks.

Basic 64 stitch socks with my usual slip stitch heel. Meh. I don't really like them. Should I donate these too? I haven't worn them.

I also whipped up this adorable baby bib:

Pattern: Whooo Loves Ya Baby by Elaine Fitzpatrick
Yarn: Granstudio Bomull Lin, 1 skein
Needles: 4mm

I loved making this bib. Can you see the Owl pattern? The designer has loads of cool bibs for free on her site, Down Cloverlaine. My owl obsession continues.

I've been off work for a week already, so 5 more to go! I plan on getting out & about a fair bit. I had to sit in every day last week waiting for workmen for the kitchen. Drove me nuts. I enrolled Alice in a week long summer camp at the local Aquatic Centre which started today so I have from 10 - 4 every day to myself! Squee! I started by going shopping this morning.
With the help of loads of lovely Twitter-ers I bought a dress! OMG! I never wear dresses, but I would like to feel a bit more feminine.
I settled on this one.



Sorry about the crappy picture, it was taken on my phone in the changing room so I could tweet for help! I don't like the cardi, I didn't buy it. I bought this yarn instead to make something:



It goes well, don't you think? It's DK weight cotton. Now I need to pick a pattern! Any suggestions?

I've loads more news, but this post would go on forever if I let it. I'll be back soon (promise) with kitchen pr0n. I heart my new kitchen!

Good knitting!