The Wanderer Returns!

Hi!  Sorry I've been MIA for a couple of weeks - I've been a little busy!  Since my last post I've climbed the 3rd highest mountain in the UK - Mount Snowdon. I've been wanting to do it since I moved to Wales seven years ago and now I've finally done it.  

Snowdon is in the centre - I know the others look taller, but they are closer!

A large group of us went - friends & family. We rented the most beautiful holiday cottage "Capel Fachwen", just across Lake Padarn from Llanberis.  I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone planning a trip out that way - stunning property, perfect location, beautiful views & everything you could possibly want or need was provided.

Kitchen/Dining area in Capel Fachwen

Sunset/Moonrise over Lake Padarn, Snowdon in the distance, as seen from balcony of Capel Fachwen

Dawn over Lake Padarn & Snowdon on the morning we climbed Snowdon. 

 On the Sunday we climbed Snowdon, we set off at 6.30am to avoid the heat - Wales actually saw temperatures of 32 degrees C!  That doesn't happen very often! The walk started in the little town of Llanberis that you can see on the other side of Lake Padarn in the above photo. We took the 'Llanberis Path' route, which climbs up behind the 2 hills you can see in the foreground, then up & over the highest hill that you can see to the Summit of Snowdon, which in this photo is hidden by cloud, but you can see it in the sunset photo. 

It's a 9 mile walk - 4.5 miles up & 4.5 miles back & an ascent of 3,560 feet/1,085 metres - it was a long day! The quickest member of our group made the Summit in 1 hour 45 mins, but she is a personal trainer/fitness instructor!  I was the slowest at 4 hours 15 mins! The first 3 or 4 miles were a lovely gradient to walk, but climb up the last peak was very steep & pretty tough going! 

That way!

Onwards & upwards...there goes my lovely husband :o)

That's where it got steep - where we crossed under the railway track!

Made it!  Snowdon Summit Marker

The view from the top looking out towards the sea through a gap in the clouds

After all that walking on the Sunday, Monday was a lazy day!  My mother-in-law, my husbands cousin Alison & I had decided we would yarn-bomb Llanberis while we were there, and Alison & I hadn't finished making our flowers so we sat recovering & crocheting in the morning!  

I had my foxglove, but I hadn't finished my clematis flowers.  The montbretia I was making didn't work out so I abandoned that - I need to re-think the making up & share the pattern at a later date.  The clematis turned out really well though - I was really pleased with it :o)  I didn't get great photo's though & as I was in a rush to get it done, I didn't take tutorial pics.  I will make another one this week & share the pattern next weekend. 

Alison made some beautiful pot plants - pansies & primroses - complete with crocheted pots & my mother in law knitted some amazing lavender & roses from the book 100 flowers to knit & crochet.

Clematis pattern to be shared next weekend!

Clematis flowers joined together - bunting style

Combined yarnbombing contributions of me, Alison (Little Saint Knit) and my mother-in-law

Clematis in situ on railings outside Llanberis Mountain Railway Cafe

Mother-in-laws lovely lavender

Alison's Primroses

My foxglove

My mother-in-laws roses

Alison's pansies

My mother-in-laws roses

The full bed (spot the knitted & crocheted ones amongst the real ones!)

The Llanberis Mountain Railway Cafe - yarnbombed flower bed to the right

The rest of the week was spent making lovely day trips out & spending time with the family - a fabulous week!

Now we're home & unpacked & rested & back at work :o(  We're in the process of selling our house so we're busy, busy, busy at the moment, so if I don't manage to blog once a week please forgive me!  We've got a few weekends of DIY to get the house looking its best for its photo shoot with the estate agent at the end of the month! 

I will share the clematis pattern next weekend though - promise!

Love & hugs

Claire-Clutterbug xx

Apologies

Hello lovely fellow knitters & crocheters!  I just wanted to apologise that I haven't managed to share my 2 further flower designs I promised you. They are still coming - they've just been delayed by a few weeks due to a few technical hitches.

I have designed a Monbretia Lucifer pot plant, however I need to rethink the making up - it didn't quite work out as planned. 

I have also designed a clematis, which will be a bunting style design (well they are climbing plants!) as I thought I could wind that up a lamp post for yarnbombing purposes!

With the planned Ascent of Snowdon being this Sunday, I'm sorry to say I have run out of blogging time, so I will have to wait a couple of weeks before I have time to write up and share the patterns & tutorials.  

I hope you're not too disappointed and I promise they will be on here in August. 

Love & hugs

Claire Clutterbug xx

A weekend away from yarn...:o(

 Well that was a wonderful weekend!  We're planning a family ascent of Snowdon (A mountain in Wales) in 3 weeks time, so the in-laws came over for the weekend to get a couple of practice walks in - as we live near the Brecon Beacons and the Black Mountains there's plenty of practice hikes near us! No weekend is ever completely knitting/crochet free in Claire Clutterbug land though, so I spent the 5 hours hiking up The Skirrid Mountain in Abergavenny thinking about yarn bombing!

My husbands cousin is a fellow knitter & crocheter, but she's much younger & cooler than me & is into yarn bombing.  As she'll be coming on the Snowdon trip, we have decided to do a joint venture - we're going to decorate Llanberis with knitted & crocheted pot plants! So en-route I took a few inspiration photo's & I plan to design pot plants based on these flowers I saw along the walk from Abergavenny to the foot of the Skirrid:

Dog Rose

Wild Geranium

Blue Geranium

I had lots of thoughts on how I could make the stems & leaves & stamens...amazing what your brain comes up with when you're refusing to let it think about how much your thighs hurt!  The Skirrid isn't that high - 1,129 ft from the foot of the mountain, but it's very steep - about as steep as you can get without needing climbing gear!

 But the views from the top were worth it!

Abergavenny is to the far left, Sugarloaf Mountain is in the centre

 And we couldn't have picked a better day - it was sunny but not too hot with some amazing cloud formations, breezy but not too windy & perfectly clear - we could see for miles & miles!

Sugarloaf mountain to the far left & the Brecon Beacons

 Isn't South Wales just beautiful?  I'm so lucky to live here!

Herefordshire - England looks so flat compared with South Wales!

 Once we'd made the steep climb, there was a long gentle climb along the ridge to the highest point - to the left was Wales, the Black Mountains & the Brecon Beacons, and to the right was the flat fields of Herefordshire & England - the difference just looking to your left, then to your right was amazing!

I love clouds - I find them fascinating!

 I could have sat up there looking at the views & the clouds all day long...

An arty black & white photo of Sugarloaf from Skirrid

 But we didn't have any food & were running out of bottles of water!

The top - finally!

 But we finally made it to the very top :o) All I was fit for when we got back home was eating my dinner, snuggling on the sofa with my husband & sleeping!  So I didn't get to write down any of my design idea's...so I'm very glad I took the photo's - can't wait to get started on them tomorrow!  I only have 3 weeks to make them, so I'm hoping to be able to add a new pot-plant pattern each week for the next 3 weeks - hope you like them!

Well, we've been for another 6 mile walk around Penarth Marina, the Barrage and Cardiff Bay today & my legs are starting to feel rather achey, so I think it's time for a long soak in a hot bath.  And I think I deserve a treat so I may take a glass of Baileys & ice with me!  Oh I hope I'm not in too much pain tomorrow...

Love & hugs

Claire Clutterbug xx

Paint the whole world with a Rainbow

Up above the streets & houses, rainbow climbing high, everyone can see it smiling over the sky...

(Sorry to anyone who wasn't a child in the UK in the early '80's! Rainbow was a childrens TV program!)

Rainbows seem to be filling my week.  We had a beautiful one arching over the South Wales valley in which I live on Monday.

Then I bought this beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeautiful hand dyed yarn in my local yarn shop.  Isn't is just hypnotically gorgeous?  I have no idea what to make with it - it will no doubt be something for my niece, but I just couldn't resist it! It's hand dyed here in the South Wales Valleys by 'Wooly Wumpkins'.  She has created a range of variegated and solid shades especially for my local yarn shop - Hurleys Haberdashery in Pontypridd.

I do have a soft spot for brightly coloured variegated yarns - I just can't resist them.  I order quite a lot from Bohemia Fibers in the US too - she makes some beautiful coloured yarns. But I do struggle to find things to make with them. Intricate lace & cable patterns get lost in the colour changes & I'm not keen on the pooling effect you get over large areas.  Crocheting with variegated yarns can be very effective with long colour changes, but if the length of yarn covered by each colour is quite short, then you can end up with only a stitch or 2 before the colour changes which can look odd!

I tend to use variegated yarns as accents - I love to pick one colour from the yarn & use that as the main colour of a garment with a few stripes of the variegated, or use to to edge something, or my new favourite thing in the world - "fake isle"!!! (fair isle effect but using one solid colour & one variegated).  I'm still quite new to this knitting with 2 hands though so my tension isn't great - don't expect me to be showing off too many fake or fair isle patterns on here for a little while yet...

Talking of sharing patterns, I have another one I'll be sharing on Thursday (I would have waited until Saturday but the in-laws are coming to stay for the weekend - it would be a bit rude of me to sit here typing while they visit!)

It is my husbands cousins birthday on Thursday - she's a fellow knitter, crocheter & generally lovely human being!  She's far younger & cooler than me & is into yarn-bombing...we may be doing a joint yarn-bomb collaboration in July when we are having a family holiday in Snowdonia...but that's a tale for another post!  

On Sunday evening inspiration struck me & I designed & made her the most beautiful gift.  I'm so proud of it - I can't wait to show you!  But I will have to wait as she won't receive it until Thursday - we don't want her seeing it on here first do we?! 

Well...my husband brought home some salted caramel & belgian chocolate ice cream & it's calling me - can you hear it?  I'd best go release it from the freezer....hehehe :o)  Hope you'll come back & visit on Thursday when I share my latest pattern!

Love & hugs

Claire Clutterbug xx

Coral Reef

This blogging malarkey is a bit addictive isn't it?  I tried really hard to contain myself & wait until Saturday for my next post (when I'll be posting the re-worked neckwarmer pattern), but I just had to share my beautiful Coral Reef Shawl with you! (click here for the Swallowtail Shawl pattern by Evelyn A Clark)

I started it last October - I was making both of my aunts a shawl each for Christmas. Not for wrapping around their shoulders - they're both quite nifty dressers, so I thought they might like them to wear as neckerchief type scarves. I love them as I tend to wear v-neck tops - they cover my chest & don't leave weird drafty bits!!!

 Well, I made a Haruni shawl by Emily Ross (click here to see) for my Aunt in Canada - it only took me a couple of weeks - I made it in Rowan Siena 4 ply cotton & it was just a dream to knit. I can't recommend this pattern highly enough!  With the Swallowtail here though, I chose to knit this in laceweight silk. Now the yarn is gorgeous, and the pattern is beautifully written & simple to follow, but those bobbles or 'nupps' you see in the 'lily of the valley' section were an absolute nightmare in the completely un-giving silk. You knit, wrap, knit, wrap, knit in the same stitch, then on the purl row you purl all 5 of those stitches back together.  If you do them too tightly there is no way you can get your needle through 5 stitches to purl them back together again!  You have been warned!  So I put it back in my knitting basket & forgot about it for 6 months.  When I tried again, leaving the wraps much looser, it was a piece of cake :o) Mmmmm cake....

 As un-giving as the silk is (I mean there is no stretch in it), it was the perfect choice for this shawl - it has a beautiful sheen & once blocked it holds it's shape beautifully - no spring-back! I got it from a lovely little shop in Hay-on-Wye called Wool & Willow.  They don't sell branded yarns - only independently dyed yarns.  This silk laceweight was very reasonably priced, and I'm pretty sure I have enough left over to make another one!  I LOVE that shop!  Actually I love Hay on Wye - wool shops, book shops, antique shops & a tea room called The Old Stables that sells toasted teacakes that are bigger than your head & require 6 butter patts - heaven!!! Their apple & rhubarb cake is also to die for...

Anyhoo, I've been knitting this in my lunchbreaks at work for the last few weeks - I could just about fit in 2 rows per lunchbreak after eating a sandwich!  Those 2 rows a day soon added up and it's finally complete!

 

Ok - I've already blown my resolution not to blog until Saturday, so can I share a secret with you?  Do you want a sneak preview of my latest design?  It's nowhere near ready - I've not even done a test knit myself yet - it's only on paper...and then only a first draft!  Inspiration struck last night, and I was up until 3am doing the maths & drafting my idea's on graph paper. Wanna see?

 All that work, and such a late night...then I put it in my bag to take to work with me so I could work on it in my lunch break, dashed out of the house (late as usual!) in the pouring rain, but didn't think to cover it:

Lesson learned - graph paper ink bleeds when wet!!!  Oh well - I needed to make a few changes anyway! Right - I'm feeling all inspired again now so I'm going to get back to it.  Hope you all have a lovely evening & I'll chat again on Saturday & share the neckwarmer pattern :o)

Love & hugs

Claire Clutterbug xx

Confessions of a Yarnaholic...

Psssssssst, want to see my stash?!

Isn't it beautiful? I could waste a day just sitting & gazing at each hank, skein, ball & cake looking at the colour, the sheen, feeling the texture & imagining what will be created with it.

I confess - I am a yarnaholic!  You may be able to see that there is no acrylic in my beautiful collection, but please don't think I'm a yarn snob.  I just hate acrylic. No matter what I do with it, how neatly I try to work, how closely I watch my tension, how carefully I wash & block it, whatever I make with acrylic yarn always disappoints me. I wish I could knit or crochet with it - it's so much cheaper & most brands have a huge array of colours in the same yarn - but I just don't know how to deal with it.  So I don't!  

Believe it or not, I have plans for almost every inch of the yarn here - there are very few impulse buys.  & there's nothing worse than feeling the urge to start making something on a Monday & having to wait until Saturday because you don't have the right yarn!

Ok - enough gazing lovingly at it - time to get back to knitting with it!  I'm hoping to have my re-worked neckwarmer pattern on here by Saturday. I know it's weird posting a neckwarmer pattern in June, but a couple of people have contacted me on Ravelry lately to say they've not been able to open the old version, and it's been bloomin' freezing here in the Valleys of South Wales for the last few days - this morning I was wishing I'd finished my new version so I could wear it in the office!!!

Greetings :o)

Hi,

Let's keep this first post short shall we - you'll get to know me in time!  All you really need to know for now is my name is Claire, I love knitting, tea, crochet, doodling, designing, walking, food & photography. As you can see from the blog title & background, I intend to mainly blog about knitting, crochet & all things yarn related, but my other interests will no doubt creep in at times.

I'm new to blogging & I'm not too sure what I'm doing as I don't follow many blogs - I have only discovered the blogging world by following links to free knitting & crochet patterns & tutorials from Ravelry, and intend to give a little back by sharing lots of my own patterns & designs.  So if I break any blogging etiquette or go off-topic I do apologise!

I think that'll do for my first post - let's get down to what we're really here for - sharing my passion for all things yarnie!  Eeeeeeeeeeep!