Nicolette's Notebook

Spinning Yarns – A Festival of Colour, Creativity & Craft

7 September 2021 By Nicolette 4 Comments

After reading about Spinning Yarns – A Festival of Colour, Creativity & Craft being held in early September, I decided to buy tickets for Neil, Tara and myself. On Sunday, 5th September, we attended our first yarn festival since the lockdowns began. It was exciting and slightly scary all at the same time. We haven’t been to social gatherings in a very long time.

The Spinning Yarns Festival was held at the Theatre at the Mill and the Mossley Mill Complex in Newtownabbey. It was the first time this yarn festival had been held since 2018, and we enjoyed ourselves.[Read More]

Seaham, Durham

19 August 2021 By Nicolette 2 Comments

This is the fourth of the “Travels Down Memory Lane Series”. Over the last couple of years, there hasn’t been an opportunity for holidays away. So I decided to look at some of the posts I’d planned to write, and for various reasons, I hadn’t. Nothing is as much fun as walking down memory lane and revisiting and sharing the photographs and journals from our travels.

I had high hopes for our visit to Seaham in Co Durham. I know that Seaham is one of the foremost seaglass beaches in northern England, and I looked forward to our visit there.[Read More]

Puffins, Farne Islands

12 August 2021 By Nicolette 2 Comments

This is the third of the “Travels Down Memory Lane Series”. Over the last couple of years, there hasn’t been an opportunity for holidays away. So I decided to look at some of the posts I’d planned to write, and for various reasons, I hadn’t. Nothing is as much fun as walking down memory lane and revisiting and sharing the photographs and journals from our travels.

I will introduce this post as most of it is written by Neil. While I relaxed on a rocky beach at Seahouses, knitting my sock project, Neil travelled to Staples Island in the Farne Islands to search for nesting puffins. He returned with the most amazing photographs I have to share.[Read More]

Barter Books, Alnwick

15 July 2021 By Nicolette 10 Comments

This is the second of the “Travels Down Memory Lane Series”. Over the last couple of years, there hasn’t been an opportunity for holidays away. So I decided to look at some of the posts I’d planned to write, and for various reasons, I hadn’t. Nothing is as much fun as walking down memory lane and revisiting and sharing the photographs and journals from our travels.

In 2019, we went to Northumberland for a week before travelling to Lancashire for a family wedding. Northumberland was extraordinary. I’d read about Barter Books in a magazine months before and wanted to visit. On our first day, we visited Alnwick and parked. The first thing we did was visit the wool shop, and I spent a little while browsing the shelves before choosing a few balls of sock yarn. [Read More]

Carnoet Yarn Bombing

1 July 2021 By Nicolette Leave a Comment

This is the first of the “Travels Down Memory Lane Series”. Over the last couple of years, there hasn’t been an opportunity for holidays away. So I decided to look at some of the posts I’d planned to write, and for various reasons, I hadn’t. There is nothing as much fun as taking a walk down memory lane and revisiting and sharing the photographs and journals from our travels.

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A Small World

24 May 2021 By Nicolette 12 Comments

2021 did not start in the way that I had planned.

“To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promis’d joy!”

I’ve recently put new yarns and beautiful Emma Ball project bags into the Knitting Squirrel Shop. I love these bags, they are colourful and fun as well as being the perfect size for a project. I used my Woolly Puffins Drawstring Project Bag when I was knitting the “Boxy” sweater designed by Joji Locatelli.

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Handmade Journals

20 November 2020 By Nicolette 10 Comments

What do you do when you decide in mid-October that you will knit some of the Christmas gifts for your nearest and dearest?

Do you decide on a hat, fingerless mitts or a cowl? I assume you have the good sense not to embark on knitting lap blankets…

But knitting blankets involves a lot of time sitting. I could have watched TV, Netflix, or my usual favourite knitting podcasts. But I came across Pam at The Paper Outpost vlog on YouTube. I was inspired. Oh yes, I fell down another crafting rabbit hole… hook, line and sinker…[Read More]

Bullet Journalling

28 August 2020 By Nicolette Leave a Comment

I’ve been journalling for a long, long time.

I’ve kept planners, diaries, journals, art journals and sketchpads. I came to journalling from an artistic background, so my first choice was working on sketchpads and then combining the artistic form with my journal. My use of journalling, therefore, has to also take into consideration my creativity and inspiration.

This has always meant that I need to have more than one journal going at any one time.[Read More]

Knitting Plans for 2020

16 January 2020 By Nicolette 4 Comments

A New Year and a New Decade… Wishing you an amazing knitting filled 2020!

Goodness but time seems to have flown by. It is hard to believe that it is mid-January already!

What are your knitting plans for 2020? I wonder if you have been casting on any new projects for the start of 2020? Or, have you set yourself a challenge to cast off some older WIP’s that have been hanging around for a couple of years? Perhaps, like me, you are continuing with your projects in hand rather than starting something new.

No matter what you’ve decided to do, there is nothing quite as soothing to the spirit as relaxing with your knitting in hand. It doesn’t really matter where you are, just the mindful repetition of knitting each individual stitch is a form of meditation.

Of course, some projects are more suitable for working on while chatting in a cafe with friends, while others are better kept for knitting at home in front of the fire while watching an episode of Vera on TV (the new season has started and Brenda Blethyn is as perfect as ever in the role). For some projects, I need a small table to hold the knitting pattern and my tracker notes so I know where I am in the pattern.

These aren’t the only WIP’s but they’re the ones that I’m most actively pursuing and really enjoying knitting at the moment.

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