Knit, Stitch, Repeat!

At the beginning of July I was very fortunate to attend an embroidery workshop by Megan Ivy Griffiths.

At the workshop, Megan explained the embroidery stitches she used to create her stitched people and animals and we worked on a Sleepy Lion Sampler.

These are the stitches we will use to make our own Sleepy Lion toy.

Here are some examples of Megan's beautifully neat work.

 Whilst gardening I decided to experiment with some prunings from my Rosa Glauca.

The dye bath was a lovely golden colour.

I had previously mordanted some cotton and wool in soya milk.

The result is a pale, golden tan on the cotton

and the yarn is quite golden.

I have continued cross stitching a monthly design by The Snowflower Diaries.  I finished the June pattern

and have almost completed July.

At the moment I have three knitting projects on the go.  I haven't worked much on my Northeasterly Blanket, but have made some progress on both of the garments I am making.  The first is the Summer Fairy by Hand Knit Life/Ririko and I have joined the front and back together.

The second garment is my Marettimo by Catlin Humter.

I am knitting this as part of my lovely friend Nicola's #boylandalong that she is running on her podcast *bumble stitches.  Both of these are knit using Skein Queen yarn.  The Summer Fairy is a lace weight yarn, Delectable, in the colourway Flamingo Fandango.  Love that name! :) The Marettimo is knit in Crush in the colours Dreamcloud for the main part and Buckleberry for the lace sections.

As part of Nicola's knit-a-long I have sewn a project bag as a prize and added some bee stitch markers.  I have also sewn a second bag which I will be putting in my Etsy shop, Eva Faith, towards the end of August, along with some other items.

Also I have made a large project bag for myself.  I just need to add some decoration to it.

Towards the end of July I attended Fibre East in Bedfordshire.  I had arranged to meet with some friends and we had a lovely day squishing yarn.

Of course there were a few stash acquisitions!  I am mostly knitting from stash, so my haul is modest ... this time! :)

I bought a Turkish spindle from IST Crafts.  It is beautifully made from East Anglian Bog Oak which is more than 5000 years old!

I find spinning so addictive! I could sit and spin all day and achieve nothing else!

It has been awhile since I have spun, so my yarn is a little thick and thin, but I'm slowly improving.

If you are interested in seeing more of these projects and what else I have been up to, I am recording a monthly vlog and my July vlog can be found on YouTube.  If you enjoy watching, please like and subscribe to my channel as once I have 100 followers I can have a named URL, which will make my channel easier to find in future.