Tuesday 24 February 2015

Back to Reality!

We have been home from India for a week now and it already feels like a distant memory - it is amazing how quickly life returns to normal and routines and habits kick in isn't it! I think Im driving everyone mad with the number of times I start a sentence with the words 'When I was in India….', but I have so many amazing memories and things I want to tell people about and I really don't want to loose the excitement I felt on the trip so can't help but say it over and over...

I was back at my desk for four days last week to try and get on top of my correspondence and commitments, but by Sunday I was really pining for an Indian 'fix' so Andy and I drove out to the Shaminarayan Temple in Neasden and had a really lovely couple of hours looking at this amazing building inside and out! It's an incredible place and very much worth a visit if you get a chance - I'm already trying to work out when I can get there again!



I have so many India inspired ideas for projects I want to work on and have already started collecting yarns together for things I have in mind, but my priority at the moment is putting the finishing touches to the CAL project I have designed in partnership with Stylecraft yarns.


The CAL will launch when the first free pattern will be available to download from the Stylecraft web site on the 7th April. I am really excited about this project and can't wait to tell you more about it over the next few weeks and show you the design. We will be selling yarn kits for the project via our new web site and should have these ready to pre order some time next week. As soon as we have everything in place I will post the information here and on Facebook.

Working with Stylecraft has been really great and they have been incredibly supportive of me and taken over many of the aspects that I dislike about my crochet design, such as pattern checking. They have given me free reign to design exactly as I please and the result is a blanket called 'Pond Lily' which uses 11 shades of Life DK and features 8 new block designs, each one designed from scratch so you won't find them anywhere else!

Stylecraft are really at the forefront of great crochet design and their yarn palettes lend themselves fantastically to the craft. If you haven't done so already, then you should be following them on Facebook as they are always updating their page with great little offers, info and prizes. The UK based yarn company are currently running a great competition where you can get to choose some yarn shades to be added to their Special DK range - you can find more info about this on the Attic 24 blog and if you haven't visited Lucy's blog before then where on earth have you been?





One of the things I really love about the Stylecraft yarn range is the choice of bright shades and the fact that the yarns are so affordable and hard wearing makes them perfect for homeware designs such as cushions and blankets. Sue Pinner designs a lot of the crochet projects for Stylecraft - you can find her blog here and some of her current designs within the Stylecraft range are shown below:




I have a busy week ahead of me, with a weekend workshop at Missenden Abbey on the horizon - its a knitting weekend so I need to brush up a bit on my skills - last time I picked up knitting needles I had a moment of panic wondering what on earth to do with them!