25 March 2017

Dreaming of the beach

Nokomis Beach Bag by Anna Ravenscroft, Anna Alway Designs
Every year at about this time, our beaches in Florida fill up with excited college students on Spring Break, all keen to soak up the sunshine before restarting their studies. And it’s a timely reminder that warmer days are on their way!

So here’s a beach bag ready for the summer ahead. This is Anna’s Nokomis Beach Bag, named for one of our favourite local beaches. Nokomis Beach is usually wonderfully quiet, and you can just sit and watch the sunset while children swim in the ocean or hunt for shark’s teeth along the shoreline.

Anna has perfectly captured the essence of the beach in this striped bag, with colours inspired by the sandy coast, turquoise sea and clear blue sky.
Reversible Knitting Stitches by Moira Ravenscroft & Anna Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
The pattern features a wonderfully graphic stitch pattern from our Reversible Knitting Stitches book. This is Single-Banded Rib, which not only looks good but is also quite strong, so is perfect for a bag such as this.

Anna has also added long canvas straps and a fold-under base to give a firm construction – well able to carry all the essentials for a day at the beach.
Nokomis Beach Bag by Anna Ravenscroft, Anna Alway Designs
In addition, the pattern includes a small bag which you can attach to the inside to carry your keys, glasses or other items. Those smaller bits and pieces always get lost at the bottom of a larger bag, don’t they, so it’s great to have a dedicated pocket to store them safely.

I am totally in love with this bag and wanted to squeeze it into our Reversible Knitting Stitches E-book. We had a few other new project ideas we wanted to add in as well, so I have just uploaded a new version of the E-book onto my website today! We hope you enjoy seeing all these new ideas for projects you can make with reversible stitches. 
Reversible Knitting Stitches by Moira Ravenscroft & Anna Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
We also had a few extra samples which we wanted to squeeze in, including the one in the photo above. This is Textured Knot Stitch and you will now be able to find this in Chapter 1. This is one of my new favourite stitches and we just had to include it in the book.

​Oh and we’re always on the look-out for new stitches, so if you see we’ve missed a favourite stitch of ours from the book, do please let us know so we can include it in a future update!

For details of Anna’s Nokomis Beach Bag, please click here to see the pattern on her Ravelry store. For information about our Reversible Knitting Stitches book, please click here. The book is available for immediate download from the site.

Until next time - Happy Beach Knitting!

Moira
Keywords: Patterns/Bags, Book/Reversible Knitting Stitches,
bag, bags, reversible stitch, Textured Knot Stitch,

21 March 2017

First Day of Spring!

Daffodils & Spring flowers, photo by Tim Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
I remember laughing as a child listening to the UK comedian Spike Milligan reciting a short poem about Spring:
Spring has sprung
The grass has ris
I wonder where the birdies is?

They say the bird is on the wing But that's absurd ‐
The wing is on the bird!
I'm sure he didn't write it, but I was thinking about that the other day when an absolute flock of American Robins came into our back garden and filled the trees with song. They flew industriously backwards and forwards to three large palm trees that were laden with ripe palm nuts. Two were in our neighbour's garden and one high up in the woodlands behind us.

They would fly rapidly towards the low flower heads dripping with their tasty morsels, then grab a palm nut and zoom back to the original perch, singing at the tops of their voices all the time. How they did that with their beaks full of palm nuts beats me!

This continued for about an hour until a hawk appeared nearby and they all left in one dense cloud, with just one or two gentle peep‐peep sounds as they continued on their migration north.
Azaleas, photo by Tim Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
And that's about as close as we get to seeing Spring here in Florida. I'm afraid it's not the right climate for daffodils, and even cherry trees have a hard time here. However, we did manage to see some beautiful azaleas at Bok Gardens near Orlando the other day.

I hope you are lucky enough to have daffodils in your back garden today to welcome the First day of Spring. If you haven't, then here's a couple of photos to bring a touch of Spring to you!

Happy Spring knitting!

Moira
Reversible Knitting Stitches by Moira Ravenscroft & Anna Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
Last blogpost: Is it a bird or is it a plane?
Next Up: Dreaming of the beach

​​Our book: Reversible Knitting Stitches
My Website: www.wyndlestrawdesigns.com

Many thanks again to DH Tim for his great photos. If you'd like to see more of his work, then please visit his Flick page.
Keywords: Travel Notes,
Spring, flowers, daffodils, bluebells, rhododendrons, azaleas,

20 March 2017

Is it a bird or a plane?

Hamilton Table Runner Scarf by Moira Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
I'm back! Sorry that I have been away from my blog for so long. I needed a small operation which kept me away from my computer for a while and completely zapped me of energy. However it all went very well, I am very pleased to report.

Fortunately, it didn't stop me knitting for long and I have been having fun finishing up some projects that just needed a bit more love and attention. The first of these was a scarf made from the Hamilton Table Runner pattern.
Hamilton Table Runner by Moira Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
Yes, I hear you – a pattern for a table runner? But when you think about it, there's not much difference between them, is there... They are both long rectangular objects and the size might only need a little bit of adjusting to get it to work well for a scarf instead.

The real difference comes from the yarn being used. For a table runner you want the yarn to be fairly firm and crisp to hold its shape well and provide some insulation to the table. A matte finish is also preferable so the runner is quietly present without dominating the look of the room.

So the ideal yarn would probably be a cotton or a cotton/linen mix such as the KnitPicks CotLin yarn I used for the original pattern.
Cotlin & Galileo, for blogpost by Moira Ravenscroft, Wyndlestraw Designs
Knit Picks yarns. Left: Cotlin in Pomegranate, Right: Galileo in Quartz.
But a scarf? Well almost the opposite! This needs to be soft and flowing so it can drape easily around your neck without chafing. I had a peruse of the KnitPicks site and saw another lovely yarn which I thought would work well.

This is Galileo, which is a beautifully soft yarn with a lovely combination of merino wool and bamboo. The bamboo brings in a wonderful sheen and drape, while the merino gives just the right degree of warmth for a scarf. (And no, I don't get any commission from KnitPicks – I just like their yarn!)
Elongated Diamond Pattern from Reversible Knitting Stitches, Wyndlestraw Designs
I loved reworking the Hamilton table Runner pattern in the Galileo. In fact, I was actually enjoying the pattern so much that I only stopped when I ran out of yarn. Fortunately the finished scarf is not too long! Thank heavens I didn't buy extra yarn or I might have regretted it.

Have you ever done that? Been so enjoying knitting a pattern that you continued on too long? I found I wanted to "just knit one more diamond shape" and was quite disappointed when the yarn supply failed on me. This is the Elongated Diamond Pattern from our new E‐Book, Reversible Knitting Stitches, and is a lovely double‐sided stitch.

If you'd like to see more details about the Hamilton Table Runner pattern, then please click here, and for more details about our Reversible Knitting Stitches book, please click here.

Happy Knitting!

Moira
Keywords: Patterns/Placemats & Table Settings,
table runner, table setting, scarf, scarves, reversible stitch, reversible knitting, reversible table runner, reversible pattern, reversible scarf, yarn, merino wool, bamboo,

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