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Frogging Frees the Mind

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I love to have several projects in progress at the same time. At the moment, I have 9 WIPs that I am working on, most need to be finished for Christmas. But there are also the projects that are on the Back Burner and they seemed to be growing in numbers and preying on my mind.

The Back Burner projects seem to have been growing over the last couple of years. So a while ago I lifted out all of my back burner projects and looked at them lying on the table.

  • Alpaca bunny
  • Snowflake Fingerless Gloves
  • Fingerless Texels
  • Lattice Scarf
  • Rilievi Scarf
  • Hub of Fashion Socks
  • I Love Gansey Socks
  • Reina Socks
  • Sunshine Socks
  • Vorticity Socks

I decided to divide the projects into 3 groups: Love This; Hate This; Keep as Sample;

Alpaca Bunny

Alpaca Bunny

This will be the Bunny Girl in a Dotty Dress designed by Julie Williams of Little Cotton Rabbits. I’m using Artesano Alpaca for the bunny. Love the slightly fuzzy texture. Okay, I haven’t touched this project in a while but I still want to finish this gorgeous bunny! Definite “Love This” work in progress.[Read More]

Art of Swatching – Winter Warmth

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Art of Swatching – Winter Warmth was inspired by the cold weather outside, venturing out for walks wrapped up in scarves, mittens and cosy coats. Snug indoors in woolly sweaters, sipping hot chocolate and sitting by cosy open fires toasting our toes…

The central colour theme for Winter Warmth was the image of witch hazel in its full autumn glory. This was inspirational because there was such an amazing range of colours from reds, plum, greens, golds, russet and brown. I loved swatching with these colours in my ideas book and ended up with 4 pages of swatches and ideas for the Winter Warmth collection. The Evergreen Collection also evolved from this set of ideas pages. These colours are a pleasure to work with.

Winter Warmth Sasha Collection

One of the pleasures of creating Winter Warmth was collecting the beautiful selection of wool, silk, tweed and bamboo yarns and the gorgeous cotton fabrics and corduroys.[Read More]

Red Fair Isle Fingerless Mitts

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I love knitting fair isle. I also love fingerless mitts. So the Red Fair Isle Mitts are just the perfect combination. Fingerless Mitts are just so useful when walking the dog and throwing his sticks. J&S Shetland Heritage is 100% real shetland wool and is a wonderful fibre to knit with. The finished mitts are incredibly light weight yet so very warm and cosy.

The Red Fair Isle Fingerless Mitts are based on the Cunningsburgh Gloves pattern in the Art of Fair Isle Knitting by Ann Feitelson.

Red Fair Isle Fingerless Mitts Collage

I used 4 colours of Jamieson and Smith Shetland Heritage wool.[Read More]

Daydream of A Castle in the Air

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The Knitting Squirrel recently stocked the wonderful new range of Opal Daydream, a cosy 6ply sock yarn that knits as a DK weight yarn. The ball is 420 metres long and 150 grams. I loved the gorgeous colours in the Daydream range but decided to use Daydream of A Castle in the Air for this pair of socks as I really loved this colour combination.

Dream of a Castle in the Air

There aren’t very many patterns around for the 6ply sock yarns. The 6ply range is a bit more expensive but the finished socks are very warm and cosy. In fact, I am wearing this pair of socks while I write this. [Read More]

Acht Fair Isle Hat

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I really enjoyed knitting the beautiful Acht Fair Isle Hat designed by Hazel Tindall.

“Acht is the Shetland dialect word for a valuable possession – hopefully you will find that is a good description of your finished hat. The sides are quite long – in Shetland’s windy climate it’s good to be sure your hat won’t blow off.” Hazel Tindall

Having the sides quite long is also a benefit for our cold wet Northern Irish climate too. It is nice to have warm ears!

Acht Fair Isle Hat

The Acht Hat uses 2 dark and 2 light colours of Shetland wool.[Read More]

WYS Wood Pigeon Socks

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Some yarn combinations are just too tantalising to put off knitting for long. I fell in love with these two yarns and couldn’t wait for them to arrive in the post. I love the beautiful colour combinations in the WYS Signature 4ply Sock Yarn Country Birds. The Wood Pigeon sock yarn is soooo perfect. The delicate colours match the colours from the Wood Pigeon’s breast, head and wing wonderfully well. Who wouldn’t want to wear these gorgeous WYS Wood Pigeon Socks?

WYS Wood Pigeon Socks Wood Pigeon photo by Stefan Berndtsson via Flickr

I used WYS Signature 4 ply Sock Yarn in Wood Pigeon from the glorious Country Birds range and its beautiful partner Pennyroyal from the Spice Rack collection.[Read More]

Art of Swatching – Autumn Landscape

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In the Art of Swatching I thought it would be great to share some of the knitting that I used to do for Sasha dolls on Sasha Doll Style. I am starting with the Autumn Landscape Collection that was completed a few years ago.

The colours of Autumn were the inspiration for the Autumn Landscape Collection that I designed for Sasha some years ago. I love to walk on the Cavehill in the early morning with the shadowy shapes of the trees still shrouded in mist.

The autumnal colours , deep russets, taupe, shades of green and brown, natural and sparkling frost glow against the blues and stormy greys of the Autumn sky.

“Autumn time, thy scenes and shades, Are pleasing to the tasteful eye.” Autumn by John Clare

Sasha Autumn Landscape Collection

I had great pleasure gathering the materials and wools for the Autumn Landscape Collection. The colours were a joy to work with. [Read More]

Fingerless Mittens

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There is nothing as lovely as Winter Pansies. So pretty and now planted in our window boxes so we can enjoy their cheerful faces  over the next few months.

Fingerless Mittens

These fingerless mittens were knit using my basic fingerless mitts pattern with a few tweaks. I wanted the mitts to be a bit longer at my wrist and slightly shorter on the hand section. I also narrowed the hand section slightly before knitting the cuff at the fingers.[Read More]

Bubbles Scarf

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It is so much fun learning a new knitting technique and a scarf is the perfect project to practice on.

Now and again as I browse through the patterns on Ravelry a new one jumps out at me – screaming – knit me, knit me! The Bubbles Scarf designed by Lucy Neatby is one of these beauties. I couldn’t resist buying the pattern.

Bubbles Scarf Neutral Collage

Having read through the pattern I was so smitten by Lucy Neatby’s original colour scheme that I ordered the Kauni Effekt wool in the same colours that she had used EQ and EN. I bought the yarn from SKD yarns in the UK. I bought more yarn than specified and was glad that I did as when I had finished knitting the pattern I knew that I wanted my scarf to be longer.[Read More]