Briswool :: A Knitted City

I’m a country lass at heart but I was still super excited to visit the Briswool exhibition at Paper Village, a wonderful arts and crafty shop in South Bristol, and be inspired by all of the knitted buildings and landmarks that are close to my heart, having both lived and worked in the city at various times in the past.  Briswool as you can see is an attempt to represent Bristol in wool.  Its a community knitting project led by Vicky Harrison from Paper Village that so far has involved at least 92 people and has taken between around 4000 hours of time and its still growing….!!

Briswool will next be exhibited in early October at the M Shed.  There will be two free workshops called “how to craft a city” to show people how to design and make a building and a chance for people who can’t knit, needle felt or crochet to come along and learn new skills, and make something new to incorporate into the model.  Briswool the movie will be filmed over the summer, intended to be part documentary, part journey through the landscape of Briswool, and will launched later in the year too.

After enjoying the delights of Briswool, we popped across the road to the local green park and enjoyed a sandwich from the fabulous Southville Deli and the girls had an icecream from the wonderfully retro Lucilles.  My kind of day out 🙂

Join the Paper Village Facebook page www.facebook.com/Papervillagearts to get regular updates and find out about other Paper Village Projects including ‘Dresses for Girls’ where you can get involved in making dresses for girls living in poverty in other parts of the world.  Sounds like a great project to me 🙂

Happy Knitting/Crocheting and Crafting this Bank Holiday Weekend!

Bye for now! xx

Rowan KAL : week 3 : Heirloom Lace

This week I decided to try out my Candy and Pretty Pink Pure Wool Worsted. I was really pleased with the results. Loved the candy! The colours reminded me of strawberry icecream and rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb fresh from the garden…

The peonies also started blooming in the garden to fit in with this weeks pink theme!

This week we also visited the gardens at Ston Easton Park Hotel which were open for charity as part of the National Garden Scheme. The sun shone and the gardens and house were really beautiful…

This week we’ve also been busy with Year 6 tests (SATS) and a piano exam so life has been busy and I still need to finish knitting the squares for week 4. How are you getting on? Are you managing to keep up? Luckily there is an extra month at the end of the KAL clues for everyone to catch up…
Here’s the week 4 square, incase you haven’t seen it yet : Lace Kisses. You can download it for free from the Rowan website.

Have a great week & don’t forget to look out for Clue 5 on Monday…. I better get knitting! 😉

Bluebell Woods

First came the primroses, the violets and the wood anemones, then the buttercups and cuckoo flowers…

The woods became full of beautiful shades of green again after the dull shades of winter….

… And slowly but surely the bluebells arrived…

We visited them on rainy and muddy days…

And visited them on sunny days…

And now they really are in full bloom, filling the woods with their amazing scent in mists of blue…

My knitting even came with me once… had to finish those Rowan KAL
squares!

The cow parsley looks so pretty too…

This weekend I’m moving on from blue and green to candy pink and from Nordic Squares to Heirloom Lace….

But we’ll still be making the most of the Bluebell Woods whilst we can.

Have a great weekend x

Rowan KAL : week 2: Nordic Square

If you’ve been taking part in Rowan’s Pure Wool Worsted Knit-A-Long how have you been getting on? I’ve loved hearing about your colour choices and progress over on Facebook and every time I pop over to the KAL thread on Ravelry it’s so busy with everyone chatting away, sharing tips and ideas.
Here are some snaps of my progress with week 2, the Nordic Square pattern. I chose the oxygen shade for my first set of three, then couldn’t decide which shade to knit with next….

After deliberating over whether to go for Mallard (carrying on with the blue- green theme) or granite or moonstone, I ended up choosing the moonstone, which interestingly seems to have a hint of green in with the grey. What do you think? I hope the colours will all go together!  And I really must do some blocking and not leave it all to the end of the KAL!  I also fear I maybe becoming addicted to taking photos of Pure Wool Worsted!
So, I’m off to knit the Heirloom Lace pattern now available for week 3. I’m thinking of candy…

Here’s the link for the free download for Week 3: Heirloom Lace, a simple lace and garter stich pattern.  Don’t forget to check out the Martin Storey You Tube Video for week 3 and for beginner knitters there are lots of helpful video tutorials listed alongside each square for all of the various techniques involved.  This weeks pattern is a written pattern, but if you prefer knitting from charts, check out the Nottingham Knitter’s blog and Knitting Konrad’s blog – both have created their own charts that you can download if you would find it helpful.

Thanks for joining me and happy knitting!