I don’t often write about desperately personal stuff on here as I like having a jaunty blog full of yarn and squishyness and cake. But today was a milestone for me so I need to share it and reserve the right to brag on my blog as I pay for the hosting.

I have been on a weight-loss campaign since May. This is nothing new, because I am permanently on a diet of some sort, but I decided to have a fresh start, with an entirely different eating plan (and I have tried pretty much everything over the past 10 years…) and I think I have finally found the perfect eating plan. The proof of which was this morning when I stepped on the scales for my weekly weigh-in and I have lost *precisely* 2 stone (28 pounds).

There is still a long way to go. I won’t say how far because it scares me, and might just send me to the corner shop for a bar of Dairy Milk. But I finally feel as if I could actually do it, and when I do, there are a million sweaters I want to knit.

I can’t believe I just wrote that title. I’ve clearly missed my vocation, which is writing headlines for tabloid newspapers.

Seeing as summer has clearly given up trying and the default weather setting is currently “cold and wet”, it doesn’t feel so bad starting to knit winter warmers. And Diane’s newest pattern was clearly designed with me in mind so it would be madness if I didn’t cast on straight away. After all, lace + cables + beret = happy bunny.

This was a project that literally flew off my needles. I bought the yarn on Saturday, cast on Saturday afternoon and it was blocking on Sunday evening. I think it possibly took longer to get dry than it did to knit…

The yarn was wonderful to knit with. Sproingy, soft and the most fabulous shade of purple. The yarn is water wheel spun at Coldharbour Mill, and if I can persuade Mr B to take a short break to Devon, I *have* to see this! The pattern called for a worsted-weight handspun, and my yarn is a commercially spun aran, but the extra thickness gave me a bigger hat, which is a good thing as I have A Very Big Head.

As for the pattern? Perfect. It was an interesting knit but not scary in the least, thanks to the clear directions. I have a lovely hat all ready for winter and it will go very nicely with a couple of mitten patterns I have in mind…

Today is the first day back at school for the small people. It’s very quiet. Yesterday passed in a flurry of sewing in nametapes and finding PE bags and now it’s all done and I’m sitting here with a cup of tea, twiddling my thumbs.

It was an eventful day for smallest person as he’s now in year 3, which means he’s in the Juniors with his big brother and now wants to walk with him to school, rather than be seen with me. Next year, the eldest will be going to BIG school. I don’t know where the years have gone.

So apart from drinking tea, today is being spent having a huge clean of the house after it’s been wrecked over the holidays. And then some knitting will be done.

I’ve found that as I’ve become more and more obsessed with knitting, I have a real aversion to buying knitwear. I see sweaters in shops and dismiss them. Either because of fibre snobbery or because I don’t like the colour and in the end, “I could knit that myself” is always at the front of my mind. Despite the fact that I never actually do…

I was sorely tempted the other day, though, when I went to Dorothy Perkins on a hunt for a blouse and found this cardigan:

It’s a cute shape, and in a not-too-awful cotton acrylic blend, but it was the stitch pattern that made me draw breath. It’s only my very favourite lace leaf pattern!

In the end I didn’t buy one because the shop only had two colours in stock. The green was too bright for me, and the black didn’t come in my size. But I’ll remember it, and maybe one day I’ll use the pattern for a cardigan of my own design.

I think yesterday was probably the best day of the summer, and most likely the only day of sunshine for the rest of the year, judging by the rain and thunder outside as I write this post. It’s been a rotten summer holiday for the small people and they’re back at school on Thursday, so it’s pretty much over as well. So we sat outside and had a barbecue and I drank wine and got squiffy on half a glass because I hardly drink any more and am officially a lightweight.

Time seems to pass so quickly these days. I don’t remember exactly when, but I think when I was in my early teens I noticed that the years were starting to go quicker and now it’s just ridiculous. I’m wondering if this feeling of time passing faster is encouraged but certain retailers, though. I mean, the joke about it being December because Woolworth’s have Easter eggs isn’t really a joke now, for one. But I went to buy a birthday card on Thursday and two whole walls of the card shop were taken up with Christmas cards. I may have *talked* about starting my festive knitting, but I’ve not made them, bought the giftwrap and stuck them under the tree! And does anyone really want to have the entire festive season organised before October, anyway?

It’s horrible, and I’m not going to give in to the pressure. I declare that this blog will not even mention that event on 25th December until after Guy Fawkes Night (5th November). So there! *puts foot down*

So, despite saying that I couldn’t finish the Having Hope socks before our anniversary, I decided to try anyway. I was with Mr B a lot over the weekend, though as he doesn’t notice what I’m knitting unless I wave it under his nose, I knew I could work on the sock pretty safely in his presence. I knitted a few rounds waiting for a train on Saturday morning, and had a cute conversation with a small girl who was interested in my “sewing”. I explained that it was knitting and was a sock, which she said was very big. I pointed out that it was for a very big foot.

I spent the next three days knitting, and was on course for them to be handed over on Tuesday evening. But in the end, I was undone by my compulsion to block every present. The second sock was off the needles at around 2.30pm on Tuesday and I still had them drying on their blockers with the fan going full blast at 7pm. When I realised that having socks on the bedroom floor is a bit of a giveaway for a surprise present, I gave up. Mr B was briefly handed a pair of damp socks to admire and then they were left to dry overnight to be worn the next day.

Pattern: Having Hope by Diane Mulholland
Yarn: 1 x 110g Middlearthknitter Yarns Sock Yarn (80% bluefaced leicester, 20% nylon), custom colourway
Needles: Knit Picks 2.5mm 80cm long circulars

I used almost every scrap of the yarn to knit these. I didn’t realise just how much I had used for the first sock until I was knitting past the heel on the second and noticed that the remaining yarn didn’t seem to be as much as I thought it should be… I weighed the first sock and it was over 50g. This was obviously not good, as I was working on the basis that I had a 100g skein of yarn (and learnt an important lesson in that I should weigh yarn BEFORE I start knitting…). Probably a little too late, I weighed the remainder of the yarn, knit a pattern repeat and weighed it again, which reassured me that it would be a close thing, but I should have enough yarn to knit the second sock to the same size as the first one and wouldn’t have to frog part of the first sock to make a matching pair. And I did, with about 2g of yarn left!

The yarn is a delicious BFL and nylon blend which is softer than “regular” sock yarn and blooms A LOT after washing. I need to use a yarn with nylon in it else the socks don’t last five minutes (you really don’t want to see the state of Mr B’s Jules socks..!) so it’s nice to have a yarn that doesn’t feel like it’s made of barbed wire.

The pattern was a delight to knit and beautifully written. I would never have knitted such an intricate design for men’s socks before, because of the amount of work involved. But the end result looks splendid and Mr B loves them, which makes it totally worthwhile and now I want to knit some more fancy manly socks.

Plus I’ve learnt Magic Loop which was almost as much of an epiphany as learning to knit socks in the first place. I love this method! Going back to dpns seems very strange now. I suspect I’ll be Looping many more pairs from now on.

Lucy has nominated me for an award!

I confess I’m really rubbish at giving shortlists of people whose blogs I love. So instead, I’ll cheat and just nominate all the blogs in my sidebar because I read them all.

I was going to write a jaunty little post about yarn and beads today, but I’ve just read on Cairi’s blog that John is currently in hospital after having chest pains. So I’m sending lots of love to my lovely wizardy friend instead.

I’ve been baking again. This time it’s because the smallest of the small people did not approve of chocolate and cherry cupcakes.

These are basic sponge buns with chocolate drops in, which *do* meet with approval. It’s a recipe given to me by my grandma, and it’s my fallback recipe whenever I need to whip up cakes without having to buy fancy ingredients. You can use the same recipe baked in two sandwich tins to make a Victoria sponge (preferably filled with whipped cream and fresh strawberries) but buns are best for small people. The recipe’s main advantage is that as long as you remember the ingredients and method, you never need to remember quantities.

So, because chocolate and cake are proven to help when puzzling over a complicated stitch pattern, I present the recipe in all its glory.

Ingredients:
2 large or 3 medium free-range happy eggs
Self-raising flour
Unsalted butter
Sugar
Vanilla extract (optional)
Chocolate chips
12-cup bun tin lined with paper cases

Method:
Weigh the eggs. Weigh out the same weight in the flour, butter and sugar. Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and soft and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs one at a time with a little of the flour. Add a teaspoonful, or as much as you want, of the vanilla extract, if using. I didn’t, because I couldn’t find it in the cupboard and I might not actually have any… Fold in the rest of the flour with a metal spoon.

Mix in as many chocolate chips as you want (just one packet is considered a bit miserly in this house) and spoon the mixture into the cases, remembering to scrape out all the excess with a spatula so there’s no reason for any arguments about who gets to lick the bowl.

I prefer the contrast of plain chocolate with the sponge, but my corner shop only has milk chocolate drops, so that’s what I’ve used.

Note: I use larger than average cake cases because they come decorated with dinosaurs and footballs and other things. If you’re using the regular white Supercook bun cases from the supermarket, you’ll probably be able to make around 18 buns. The mixture will be fairly thick, so just dollop it into the cases; it spreads out when it’s in the oven.

Bake at 190ºc/gas mark 5 for 15 to 20 minutes, turning tin around halfway through this time if you have a crappy oven like mine. Turn cakes out of tin and leave to cool on a wire rack for as long as possible. Add icing and sprinkles and other doodads if you can be bothered, but they’re quite interesting just as they are.

More birthday knitting revelations (and a happy birthday to Cairi for yesterday)!

Pattern: Peacock Feathers Shawl by Dorothy Siemens for Fiddlesticks Knitting
Yarn: Colourmart Cashmere/Silk 3/45NM Laceweight, about 80g in “Kingfisher”
Needles: 3mm Addi lace - whizzy!

I think I mentioned before that Mr B gave me this and another Fiddlestick pattern for Christmas a couple of years ago. As with a lot of people, I regularly see a pattern and think “Must. Have. Now.” so I’ve amassed far more patterns than I can ever reasonably knit - I probably have the pattern version of SABLE - but at least I know I have them safely tucked away, just in case…

When the yarn arrived from Colourmart, I knew that I had to use it for this pattern. And that I had to give it to a person who is more obsessed with teal than you’d think was humanly possible.

It was a very enjoyable knit. The entire pattern is charted with no written directions other than the pattern notes, so probably not for you if charts make you cower. Plus you have to mentally reverse the chart for the second half of the shawl as they’re mirror images, rather than symmetrical. However, as every row is different, the amount of paper needed to type out all 200+ rows in full would possibly mean the loss of several forests. Not to mention the scope for errors. And there wasn’t a single one!

I also learnt another new skill with this pattern - the crochet cast off loopy edging thingumy. It took a LONG time to do, because it was a new skill, after all, and I was using a 3mm crochet hook which seemed tiny. I like the way it looks now, but it was a real pain to block!

The yarn was divine to knit with. I was alternating between this and the Mystery Shawl which is knitted in Baruffa Cashwool and honestly, the Cashwool actually felt rough in comparison. That’s how soft this yarn is. Plus it just goes on forever, so I reckon I have enough left for another shawl in the same size.

Maybe it *was* the thought that I only had a few rows left to do on my first Having Hope sock that made me wake up at 4am the other morning. Mr B regularly gets up a stupid o’clock to go travelling all over the country to avoid me for work, but normally I never even stir when the alarm goes off. But for some reason I was awake and chirpy and after deciding that no, I wasn’t going to be able to nod off again, I switched on the radio and picked up my knitting. By 6.30 the sock was finished.

With not a peep from the small people, I decided to cast on for #2 in the vain hope that I can avoid Second Sock Syndrome. I didn’t think I’d actually be *able* to cast on because I had only done a Turkish cast on once before (for the first sock) and figured I’d have to get up and come down to the pc to look up the directions once again. But somehow, with the needles and yarn in my hands, it all came together. My dodgy brain, which can’t even furnish me with the correct names for my children at times (fortunately “darling” is multi-purpose!) had somehow stored the cast on somewhere in a spare brain cell and I managed to knit the entire toe before I was disturbed with demands requests for breakfast.

This is the most intricate sock I’ve knitted for Mr B and seeing as how he has size 11 feet (that’s a US shoe size 11½), it was both intricate *and* time consuming. I should say, it’s a gorgeous pattern. I would have bought it if it was crap, of course, because it’s for a good cause, but being Diane’s design, it’s most definitely not crap at all and is rather beautiful and lovely. I love the cables (and learning to cable without a cable needle definitely helps!), the nifty little braid below the ribbing, and the heel flap which doesn’t require picking up stitches.

I also really enjoyed using Magic Loop. I didn’t see the appeal at all before I tried it, but having to only fiddle around changing needles once per round compared to two or three times when using dpns is a good thing. Also, I have never accidentally slid the needle out of the stitches..!

As I mentioned earlier, my only worry is SSS because the cuff was a bugger to knit. Not complicated, but knitting a sock from the top down means that once you’re past the heel, there’s only patterning on half of the foot. Going toe up means the “light relief” comes first. It was definitely a labour of love not to stop knitting sooner and make them girly ankle socks, though knowing that Mr B probably wouldn’t wear them if they were spurred me on!

I was vaguely hoping that I’d get the pair done for our wedding anniversary, but it’s only five days away now. Plain socks are doable. Intricate cabled socks, not so much.

Click here!

Please do post on the Inside Loop blog with your thoughts on this issue as well. All feedback is appreciated.

Firstly, happy birthday to Diane! And seeing as it’s her birthday, I can finally reveal some secret knitting!

Pattern: Large Rectangle in Leaf and Trellis Pattern from Victorian Lace Today
Yarn: Garnstudio Alpaca, 6 and a tiny bit of a 7th x 50g balls, colour #6347
Needles: 4mm Inox circs for the slipperyness

Making this present has taught me that no matter how much I organise my knitting, giving myself months and months for a project to be done, it doesn’t change the fact that I am the most fickle person on the planet and the longer I leave a project, the less urge I have to pick it up again and finish it.

But I am very pleased with the final pattern I chose. The finished shawl is HUGE. It’s as tall as me and probably as wide. I knew Diane would like the yarn as she picked it herself from my stash, and there’s a similar pattern in her Ravelry queue, but even so, it’s still nerve-wracking giving a present to another knitter.

This is the first pattern I’ve completed from Victorian Lace Today and I suppose as it’s My Year Of Lace that if I didn’t knit a pattern from the book *this* year that I never would! The pattern was error-free, although the cast on directions were vague. It required a provisional cast on, but that really wasn’t obvious and it wasn’t til I was knitting the border that I realised it would be quite useful..! I picked up the stitches from the cast on edge instead which a bit trcky and something which I would have liked to avoid, but not too traumatic.

I also didn’t enjoy knitting the double and triple joins for the corners. To me, they looked messy and bulky; using a fingering weight yarn probably didn’t help with this. And sure enough, once the shawl was blocked, they flattened out nicely. And it’s another technique I’ve learnt, which is always a good thing.

As I blogged previously, I had the horrible experience of running out of yarn within a centimetre of finishing the shawl. I had reduced the number of repeats for the centre section in the first place because I didn’t want to run out of yarn and also because the shawl was pretty much big enough. In fact, it took almost as much yarn to knit the border as it did to knit the main section - roughly 2½ balls. Fortunately, the spare ball arrived really quickly from Scandinavian Knitting Design and though I didn’t expect it, it was even the same dyelot.

So why is this post titled “The Perfect Summer Shawl”? Well, yesterday was wet, cold and miserable and the shawl came in very useful indeed.

Chocolate cherry cupcakes from How to be a Domestic Goddess, including one special one for someone’s birthday tomorrow…

I’ve been eager to get my fluffy little paws on the Fall issue of Vogue Knitting for some time. There are so many lovely patterns in this issue that caught my eye in the preview:

And even if it’s a year or two until I get around to knitting them, I wanted the patterns! But I had problems getting this issue. My usual online sources didn’t have it, and I was wary of paying huge amounts of postage to get it sent from the US. Then I picked up a copy of the new Verena magazine in WHSmith. I should write a review of that, really as it has some nice stuff in it. Though I find it ironic that it’s a European magazine but we Brits have to wait til it’s published in the US before we get hold of it..!

Anyway, there was a price sticker on the front of Verena, with a website address for Magazine Café. And they have Vogue! I ordered the magazine on Tuesday, and it arrived this morning - free postage, as well. Eagerly I opened the wrapper and then had an “oh crap!” moment, because I thought they had sent the wrong issue:

But this is actually the Fall 2008 issue of Vogue Knitting. Just for some bizarre reason, it has an entirely different cover. The inside even refers to the green mitten cover photo. Maybe this is a rare and collectible magazine that I should wrap in plastic in case it increases in value. But more likely that someone just cocked up somewhere along the line.

So I’m off for a cuppa, a read of the magazine and to plan my knitting for next two years!

Other than the magical blocking, yesterday we popped along to WHSmith to buy Captain Underpants and Astrosaurs books and the fixings for a brilliant (but unoriginal) idea I had.

Although I have a set of Denise interchangeable circulars, they only start at 3.75mm. I knit a lot of projects with needles smaller than that, e.g. shawls, so I have a fair collection of circulars in different lengths. Until now I’ve always kept them in their packets in a shoe box (men’s shoes come in the best size shoe boxes, so I always steal Mr B’s!), along with all my dpns (except for the sock-size ones, which have pride of place in the Piddleloop dpn holder that Cairi gave me for Christmas last year).

This was fine as I knew where they were, but I’m slack and untidy and would just shove the circs back in the shoebox when I was done with them, without finding the packet for them. Occasionally I’d have a tidying session, but mainly I didn’t, meaning I was getting an unruly tangle of cords and having to fish around for a needle gauge each time I wanted to find a needle.

So I’d been looking around for some other way of storing them that didn’t cost a fortune (I’ve been using a shoebox for storage, after all!) but did the job. Plus it had to accommodate a lot of needles. All the pretty fabric needle holders I’ve seen on Etsy hold maybe 10 circs at the most. And there’s no way of labelling the sizes.

Anyway, I’d read about people using cd binders (the ones with the little plastic pockets) but they always seemed a bit small and I wanted something slightly bigger so that the needle cords didn’t get too curly. Then I found A5 size plastic pockets. And an A5 binder. Add some stickers, and the job’s done!

It’s not perfect. I’d like to find a bigger binder, like a lever-arch, because this one is already full and there’s every chance that I’ll buy more needles… And it still relies on me tidying them up properly, though I only have to find the pocket I need, rather than rifling through the shoebox. And I’ve yet to find needles that tidy themselves away after use. But each size and length is in a different pocket, labelled with the sizing, so all I have to do is flip through until I get to the right one A lot quicker than rifling through a shoe box to find the packet I need. And then find that the packet is empty…

My dpns are still in a shoe box, but as they’re all sizes I don’t need very often (i.e. larger than sock size) it’ll do until I can think up an equally Blue Peter-esque solution.

If you decide to block a large shawl in your bedroom in order to avoid it being trodden on by two small people, make sure that you leave yourself enough space to actually get out of the room without performing a strange, tippy-toe dance around the edges of the carpet to dodge all the pins.

Secret knitting #2 is done! I’ll finally have some finished projects to share. I’m planning a to finish off a couple of pairs of socks now, as well as planning a new project which has to take priority over Christmas knitting. A certain wizard is getting married and I am knitting a shawl to go with The Dress (which I’ve been given a sneaky peak of, and it is gorgeous; makes me want to get married all over again!).

This is the first time I’ve designed something for a particular person. I mean, I’ve knitted gifts, but this is designing from scratch. So that means my bedtime reading pile currently looks like this:

I already have a fair idea of what I want to do. The only request is that it is rectangular, and with the yarn on its way, I can start swatching very soon!

The spare ball of yarn, my squishy and soft alpaca saviour, has arrived.

And two small people are currently not arguing but playing their new PS2 game. Things don’t get much better than this.

I’m spending today editing the patterns for the next issue of The Inside Loop, which is online in less than a week. I’m very excited about this issue and I can’t wait til everyone gets to see it. I could show you all the patterns now, but that would ruin the surprise. And Diane would kill me and I quite like breathing.

Trouble is, it’s the school holidays, so it’s not so much of a fun day for the small people. But they’ve been bribed with a trip to buy a new PlayStation game tomorrow if they don’t drive me too mad today. Half-arsed parenting, I has it.

So currently I’m on my second tea break of the day. Tea breaks take ages when there are three people and two of them are under 11. I can’t just go and make a cuppa for me without making hot chocolate for them as well. Except that one small person doesn’t like the instant stuff, so that means one instant chocolate and one cocoa, which means mixing cocoa powder with milk and then heating up some milk and making sure it doesn’t boil over while I mix the instant stuff with boiling water. So a tea break which is supposed to be my relaxing break from going cross-eyed looking at numbers ends up being a military operation.

And now I’ve spent ten minutes writing this post, so it’s back to checking numbers and making things pretty for the website.

ETA: I’ve ordered more yarn. As long as it arrives by Saturday, I’ll be okay (just!).

Eight rows left to knit. Yarn all gone. I knew I shouldn’t have whacked that spider.

This is a secret post, so no peeking Diane!

Has she gone?

Are you sure?

Then I’ll begin!

(more…)

I never intended to learn to spin. It’s always been a craft that I’ve admired, but with so many projects I want to knit, I didn’t think that I needed another reason to keep me away from my needles. But over the past year, Diane and then Kai have first suggested, then poked, cajoled and finally demanded that I give it a go. I’ve been subjected to email after email with links to pretty fibre, been given gifts of handspun yarn and then fibre - PURPLE fibre - to show what I was missing and eventually something had to give. And it was either learn to spin or move house.

So when Sam had a spindle, fibre and a copy of Spin to Knit up for swaps, I decided I had nothing to lose. I went to Diane’s today for Inside Loop related stuff and she got me started on my first baby spinning steps.

It’s horrible being a beginner. I hate feeling like a complete ignoramus and producing lumpy, unattractive yarn. My arms ache, and I’m still picking bits of purple fluff from my clothes. But I shall persevere and soon have a tiny skein of my first ever handmade yarn.

Much as it pains me to write this, I am starting to think about Christmas knitting.

Every year I end up knitting gifts even though I swear that I won’t do it, and this year is no different. Either I’m too “nice”, or just a glutton for punishment. From a practical point of view, it saves money. I have so much gorgeous yarn in my stash (and my entire stash is on Ravelry now, if anyone wants to see the extent of my collection!) that I won’t need to buy any to make the presents. It’s always a matter of debate whether it’s better to give someone the thing they want (no surprise because they know what they’re getting, but at least you know they want it) or just ignoring the list of pre-approved gifts and giving something personal and handcrafted, and risking the looks of bemusement and the gift being shoved in a drawer and never seeing the light of day.

For now I’m going with the belief that these gifts are personal and handmade and therefore better than a £2 bottle of bubble bath. So the first couple of patterns I have chosen for presents are Golden Bracelets from Knitting New Mittens and Gloves and Forbes Forest from Scarf Style. The glove book was my birthday present from Cairi, and I’ve been looking forward to knitting something from it. I’ve never knitted gloves before as the fingers have put me off, but am determined to give them a go and stop being a wimp.

I’ve not decided on a colourway for the gloves yet. I have a selection of Rowan 4ply Botany in my stash which I’m going to use instead of the recommended Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift. It’s far softer and while I think *I’d* be happy with more rustic mittens, I want these to be so soft that they’re never taken off. But first I need to swatch colour combinations to see which go together the best. Colour theory is something I have real problems with, so seeing how different shades go together will be a good exercise for me to do. Especially if I ever want to knit Autumn Rose in a purple colourway. *laughs hysterically*

Forbes Forest is far easier. I have 300g of Stylecraft Pure Wool DK in Thyme which is machine washable (just in case!) and a very similar colour to the scarf in the book. I’m interested to see how this yarn knits up and blocks, because it was actually very reasonably priced for pure wool yarn, so would make for bargainous sweater knitting. The other colours aren’t that inspiring (i.e. there’s no dark purple) but it would be great for small people’s clothes.

It stands to reason that I pick the wettest day of the month so far to plan a day out and a picnic. But it’s August, after all. It couldn’t possibly be cold, wet and miserable, could it?

Anyway, despite the really rubbish weather, we ventured out to Ashdown Forest Llama Park to see the llamas, but mainly to see the ALPACAS. And not only alpacas, but BABY ALPACAS AND LLAMAS, all tiny and nubbly and pocket-sized-for-smuggling-home-in-a-backpack (I wish!).

Sadly, they send all their alpaca fibre to be spun in Wales, so there was no yarn or fibre to be had. Plenty of ready-made alpaca knitwear in the giftshop, but where’s the fun in that?!

Diane’s right, of course. There’s been far too much secret knitting going on here of late. And as it’s not just an odd pair of socks, it takes longer to complete, or even longer if I have a bloggable project on the go at the same time.

But I have done other things other than sit with my secret projects and ignoring my blog. A while ago now, Diane posted details of her oven dyeing technique and as it seemed fairly idiot proof, I had a go.

Not having proper dyes available to me, I used Sugarflair food colouring pastes, of which I have plenty. Mainly in garish colours, mind, but I selected Dark Brown and Ice Blue for a relatively harmless and, hopefully, manly combination.

I’m actually very happy with how it turned out. The proof will be in the knitting of course, but it was fun to do and I’m tempted to try with some “proper” dyes next time!