Ocean scarf for *ME*!

I've had a ball of this yarn in my stash for a while, it's from the Sirdar Crofter DK collection and is a "magic" yarn that creates a fairisle effect all by itself. I've even knitted it up twice before but hadn't found a way to show off the beautiful ocean shades and the clever self-pattern effect.

Finally I discovered a pattern that would do it justice! It's by Leslie Lewis, on Ravelry, and is called the Ocean Waves Scarf. I used 45 stitches and basically knitted in pattern until I ran out of yarn. I knew it wouldn't be enough for a normal scarf, so I've added some buttons from my stash and made it into a neckwarmer, joining each end to the opposite edge which means it comes together in a point at the front, just where you need the warmth in a shirt neckline. I love the stripes of sea colours. 

My teddy is a better model than I am!

Spread the Warmth, AgeUK's winter campaign and knitting challenge

AgeUK contacted me a few days ago to ask if I'd join in their Spread the Warmth campaign. Now it's my turn to pass the challenge on - will you join in?

This winter, 24,000 older people could die because of the cold. Many of these deaths could be prevented if everyone lived in a warm home.

We need to get the message across to every MP – including yours. So AgeUK are asking people to knit a message to send to their MP. If you're not sure who your MP is, you can find out by entering your postcode into www.parliament.uk.

You can download the knitting pattern from AgeUK, it took me very little time and a very small amount of yarn - but if you are not a knitter, you can still add your voice to the campaign here. You can also download the leaflet which includes the note to send with your knitted message:

AgeUK also has advice  to help people keep themselves warm during the coming winter months - let's all spread the warmth!

Please share the link to AgeUK's campaign around your social media and reblog if you can. Thank you.

A Christmas treat!

Me-time at Christmas!

This year I decided to give myself a gift - a stress-free Christmas. I closed my shops early enough so that there was no danger of last minute buyers being worried about their parcels being delivered, and so that I could spend some time not-knitting!

My christmas cake this year has a string of baubles over some (bought in) robins sitting on chocolate logs, and the robin theme continues with my very first attempt at felting, a big robin sitting on a big chocolate yule log.

The mince pies are now sitting in the freezer, ready to go straight in the oven to warm up again.

This also serves the purpose of preventing MrNifty eating them too early ;-)

I've even made myself some Christmassy shooting star earrings (that's not my ear though!)

Have a wonderful Christmas break - and I'll see you all after the holidays. In case you have an urge to spend those holiday gift vouchers at Niftyknits, my shops are all open again :-)

Zibbet, Etsy, Folksy.

My spammers are really stepping up ;-)

I love my real-life readers and their comments are much appreciated. Even with the captcha (which I hate) a few spammers manage to make their way through to moderation though...

Here's one of today's offerings (link removed of course!)

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I can only agree...

My first attempt at needle felting!

I've been trying to find time (and the requisite nerve!) for ages... and today is the day!

Can you tell what it is going to be? I'm not saying yet, because then if it's a disaster I can change my mind!

Enough for one day, I need a sherry. Needle felting, if you didn't know, is HURTY! I have stabbed my fingers and thumbs several times and think I should buy some special suit-of-armour type gloves.

It's fun to try something new though!

Sharks' teeth by the hundreds

Since we moved to this stretch of coast in March we've been scavenging for fossils every week, every day sometimes! Today we decided to sort through our finds and count them. The one above is a good example, it has both of what we call the wings and hooky bits (yep, very professional terms!) but many of our finds are damaged partials. They still count though! There are 443 partial teeth in the next pic - crazy number!

We separated out 62 of the best teeth, they come in all shapes and sizes. 443 +62=505!!  I don't know how we found some of the tiniest, we just seem to get in the zone some days! You can have a virtual hunt here

Here's my favourite again:

I really need to find a way to display them. I might fix some in a box frame, but what I'd really like to do is make a coffee table with a glass top and a partitioned area beneath, maybe using printer's trays. Hmmm, one day....!