No excuses, I’ve been right here, but life got very busy there for a while – real life, not hobby-life, so sewing has taken a bit of a back seat lately. On the up side we have a new arrival in our family, another great-grandson happily healthy and beautiful, which makes up for the grunge we have had lately. In fact, since my last post the only things I have sewn are a toddler’s dress and a skirt which is still waiting for the hem and waistband to be finished.

Circumstances have, however, allowed me to knit a bit; new-baby coat, an Aran jacket for a three year old, a domino-knit blanket and a swatch for my next project. I have been taking photos on my ‘phone. It’s a new ‘phone so I don’t know whether there will be any improvement in quality. I didn’t get any pictures of the baby coat[s][x3], I was too anxious to get them to their destination, and I can’t find the photo I have of my great grandson wearing his Aran jacket, but only some of them prior to posting. Anyhoo, for what their worth – a medley.

How gorgeous is this? Not the dress of course!

     Aran tweed with tan fleck, and vintage leather ‘football’ buttons [sourced from e-bay].

Not a lot to say about this, knitted in grey aran weight wool in domino squares. I usually knit a chevron pattern when doing this particular pattern, but thought this way round would make a nice change.

This is a swatch that I knitted for a jumper project I have in mind. I dyed the wool the colours I wanted and chose the patterns from Alice Starmore’s lovely book on Fairisle, which I have had for yonks. The green wool is hand spun too, but the other wools are commercially spun undyed yarns [I got mine from Wooltops.co.uk] . I actually dyed these rust and orange colours from egg dye from the U.S., but I am waiting for  some Eurolana dyes to replicate them for the actual garment.

 Here are the range of colours I got from one dye bath, initially ‘brick’ with a little orange. Successive dye lots got softer and more peachy. The ball on the bottom right, the darkest, is actually some hand spun sports weight wool that I had just plied and wanted to see how it took the colour, but I have some ‘fairisle’ weight in the same colour that I used in my swatch.

I hope to get back to my sewing soon. Trouble is, sewing is a somewhat solitary occupation not really practical at the moment whereas knitting can be done anywhere. Hope to be back soon.