Thanks for stopping by and I hope you're doing OK. I'm pleased to share my latest crochet pattern with you, which has been waiting in the wings for quite a few years!  It's my 'Daily Cleansing Pads' crochet pattern for a circular wash pad. I use my own cleansing pads daily without fail and I can't remember the last time I bought throw-away cotton pads or balls, which is great. To use these pads, you simply wet them with water and rub onto a bar of soap or add a few drops of your liquid body wash or face cleanser, then gently wipe and rinse.  They will last indefinitely as they're m ..read more

Sometimes it's really hard to judge how your yarn will look when it's knitted up into a small circumference like a sock or a mitten. When yarn is sold in a 100g skein or ball, the way the yarn is wound can make it look very different to how it will look when knitted up and it's hard to see whether it will be deep stripes, narrow stripes, speckle or highly variegated with lots of different areas of colour that are more likely to create puddles or pools of colour. You would never know that this gorgeous skein of multi-coloured yarn would knit up into these amazing stripes. Usually, if the ..read more

I've welcomed in the New Year by casting on a fabulous new sock. I waited patiently for the Winter Haven KAL (knit along) by Christine @winwickmum so that I could knit her striking new pattern. Doesn't it look amazing!!! Although, I must confess that there was quite a bit of dithering about my colours. My intention was to use Christine's Wild Flower colourway from her first collection with West Yorkshire Spinners, which is a combination of purple, pink, blue and green. I intended to pair it with a dark purple from Opal, which looks just stunning here on my shade card. But when I came to kn ..read more

Welcome to Day 18 of #blogtober2021. Yesterday I visited mum and dad and enjoyed  good catch up with mum as we finished off a pile of handmade pumpkins for my sister-in-law. She has a stall at a fayre very soon, so fingers crossed they will be popular. Whilst the pumpkins I made were neither handknitted nor crocheted, they were still made with yarn and were super quick to make too. But I haven't recorded a tutorial yet to show you my little secret, so instead I'm sharing my free knitted pumpkin pattern from last year which is just as nice. These pumpkins are so cute and slightly addicti ..read more

It's day 13 14 of blogtober and at lunchtime I caught up with the other blogtober bloggers (and friends) whose blogs I love to read: Christine over at www.winwickmum.co.uk and Lucy over at www.attic24.typepad.com. Workwise, I'm on catch up this week as well as trying to organise lots of birthday and anniversary family celebrations as we have a flurry of activity in October and November.  We missed mum's 80th last year due to COVID but this year it's mum and dad's 60th Wedding Anniversary which is fantastic and definitely cause for celebrations. The cake is ordered and a meal is book ..read more

Well I didn't think it would take me such a short time to fall off the daily blogging bandwagon, but there you have it!! Sometimes life (or work) throws a little curve-ball and all you can do is concentrate on the critical things and try to get back on track. So here we are with a new week and it's such a lovely day here in Congleton, and it's a smallish town situated in Cheshire. We've lived here for almost 20 years now and this year we had a true 'staycation'.  So instead of a holiday, we took time off work and visited our local surroundings, including a long walk around our town, whi ..read more

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash It's Monday and the start of a fresh new week, and my goal for this week is to make effort to catch up with work. I don't know about you, but sometimes things have a domino effect where you get behind with one thing and then suddenly everything is piling up and you don't know how it happened. Today I spent the morning recording an audio module for my membership group called Yarn Industry Insiders. I have created a subscription programme for aspiring designers and tech editors as I really want to share my experience and knowledge of the yarn industry and how i ..read more

Today I’m blogging about what I’m working on, and as most of the projects are top secret, I’ll show you a Work in Progress (WIP) instead. I have to confess I have a gazillion WIPs but this one was closest to hand and is almost finished so I’ll tell you all about it.  I was recently selected from a competition entry to win one of the 165 Scheepjes Lucky Yarn Boxes to celebrate their 165 years of being in business. Now I must confess that scheepjes are probably my favourite yarn company because I love all of their yarns and they also have great environmental credentials which is ..read more

Just lately, with working and decorating and general household daily jobs, I’ve struggled to find time to do a great deal, which is a bit rubbish really because one thing. I love to do is keep fit.  I think it’s because as a child I loved athletics and also went to dance classes. So I don’t do the fitness for weight loss purposes, I do it just because I really enjoy it and the feeling it brings when I’ve finished. But without the spare time and also with lockdown, I haven’t been going to the gym much at all, although instead I have managed to get out for a run. I have a couple of r ..read more

First of all, I haven't blogged in what seems like forever, and indeed, when I checked, it's almost a year which I can't quite believe. So I thought a good plan of action would be to join 'Blogtober' along with many other fellow bloggers all around the world. It may seem a crazy challenge when I have so much going on but I do like a challenge and every post doesn't have to be epic - I may just keep some of them short and sweet. They will all be yarn related in some way, and will include photos from my archive to save me some rather than taking lots of new photos (which is pretty time consumi ..read more