The Shawl Society

This post comes with the warning *SPOILER ALERT* as it features the first two designs in The Shawl Society Collection by Helen Stewart of Curious Handmade.

As you may have realised I can't resist a shawl design by Helen and as soon as she mentioned this collection of designs I was in!  The first pattern was released in June and it was called the Talisman Shawl as it features rows of star stitch.  I decided to use my skein of Phoenix 4ply, in the Watersmeet colourway, by Natural Dye Studio for this and I added beads between the stars and along the border.

I love the way the tails on crescent shawls curl!

The second design in the series is called the Amulet Shawl and this time I am knitting the large size.  I'm using stash yarn again, this time a beautiful gold Selkino by the Skein Queen.  The beads are brown with silver-lining.

I really enjoy using the nostepinne that my Dad made for me.  It makes beautifully wound, centre-pull balls and although the process is slower than using a yarn-winder, I feel that it enables me to get to know the yarn and allows me time to fully appreciate the colours.

I had recently purchased these two snail beads and quickly turned them into progress keepers for this project and made a few stitch markers to match.  It is helpful to place a progress keeper on this shawl to highlight the right side as both sides are quite similar to start with.

I haven't wanted to work on any other projects since casting on this shawl and as I have had a fair amount of knitting time this past week, due to a nasty chesty cough, I have managed to complete 60% quite quickly. 

As always, yarn from the Skein Queen is a delight to work with and I'm looking forward to wearing this shawl.

It looks like the snail has his eye on that flower! :)

21st Birthday Adventure

June is the month when three of us have our birthdays and this year J was 21.  For his birthday he wanted to climb Snowdon, so three of us headed to Wales for a week in a cottage.

Throughout the week we went on lots of walks around the Betws-y-Coed area and found plenty of gushing waterfalls, pretty wooded glens, hedgerows full of wildflowers and fields of sheep.  We even found a neolithic burial chamber, some jellyfish and a colony of bats swooping over a waterfall to catch insects.  Of course there was also the odd castle or two and we visited a woollen mill.

The highlights of the holiday were:- 

1:: Climbing Snowdon for J's 21st birthday.   A rather wet start, but the clouds cleared just as we reached the summit at 1085m for breath-taking views of North Wales.

2 :: Swinging through the trees! ;)

3 :: Zip World Caverns, where we went along via ferratas, rope bridges and zip wires in 100' high slate caverns.

4 :: Climbing Cadair Idris - A steep climb to 900m, where once again we were lucky to get great views from the summit as the clouds cleared.

We had lots of fun and adventure on this holiday, but the best part of it all was spending time together in such a glorious place.