Cath Kidston Fabric

Hello readers, hope you are all doing well and having lots of sunshine where you are.  We've had sun and blustery winds today which is my favourite weather combination.  At the weekend my mum and I took a trip over to the Cath Kidston Factory Outlet in St Neots for a little retail therapy and boy was it busy.  I didn't realise that they had 25% off of their clothing and accessories, wowza.  We searched through the rails and found a couple of frocks to try on, one I really liked but it needed to be a size smaller.  After much deliberation and working out if I could alter it I was very good and placed it gently back on the rail with all the other frocks.  It wasn't to be this time around.

I then turned my attention to the back of the store as this is where they keep all their fabrics on rolls and from a distance I could see that there was a new kid on the block.  When I got up to it I knew straight away I would have to buy some, it was the most gorgeous colours and print.

I've no idea what the name of this print is but I am in lurrve!  It retails at £23 per metre and in the outlet it was £15 per metre and I purchased two.  Looking at it here in my home I am wishing I had more, hmmm shall I/shan't I go back?

Here it is in close up, although it is a vivid pattern it has an almost slightly faded old look to it if you know what I mean.  Am thinking top to go with cut off jeans, maybe a cushion cover or two.

Did you spot (excuse the pun!) the stone spot fabric peaking out in the first picture?  I hadn't this in there since they first opened, this is a very popular print.  Apparently they have one customer who collects all things stone spot and they call her whenever they get anything in the store.  Now that is customer service.  I purchased one metre at £12 and it is destined for my freecycled deck chair which currently is the most hideous yellow you have ever seen.  I kid you not, it is verging on flourescent!

Oh and this little beauty fell into my basket too, little cherry red dot oil cloth tape measure.  Now I won't mind pulling a tape measure out of my handbag in public.

Thank you for popping by and do love to read all of your comments. xx

Extreme Knitting - I'm hooked

Afternoon, another glorious sunny one here, great day to take some photos of my latest addiction, knitting.  Not the normal kind mind, I've being doing that for years.  That's not for me anymore now I do things by the extreme!  

I first stumbled across Rachel John a couple of years ago over on you tube with her video of her knitting with 1000 strands of wool challenge.  It is absolutely amazing, should go check it out.  Just sorting the wool was a mammoth task in itself.  Anyway the idea was always lurking in the back of my mind and then I saw that she had a show over on Create and Craft.  I watched it and it inspired me to have a go myself.

The beauty of this type of knitting is you can use up all of your wool stash, we all have it don't we girls.  I picked out some odd balls of wool that I thought my work together.  Using 13mm needles and 5 strands of wool I cast on 25 stitches and started knitting.  That instant I knew this was for me, boy does this grow fast.  3 hours later, yes I did say 3 hours, it was finished!  Knitting it in one piece I just sewed up 2 sides turned it inside out and put my cushion pad in and sewed up the remaining side.  I liked it but it wasn't extreme enough, I wanted to go bigger!

In my needle basket I had a pair of 20mm wooden needles that orignally purchased for display purposes, I just liked to look at them.  I dusted them down and using the same 5 strands of wool I cast on 17 stitches.  These were big needles but surprisingly easy to use.  This time I knitted in stocking stitch.

I have to say I much preferred this look and the needle size made the resulting fabric very soft and drapey.  Would be perfect for a throw.  I've taken some close ups of the stitches so you can get an idea what it looks like.

First one shows what I call the reverse side of the stocking stitch.  Even though this is meant to be the back am quite liking it.

This is what I call the right side of the fabric and is going to be the side that will show on my rectangle cushion pad.  Again I've knitted it all in once piece.

To give you an idea of size, using these 20mm needles and with 16 stitches cast on I ended up with the width of my knitting measuring approx 14 inches.  Basically each stitch knitted gives you a good 3/4" square of fabric.

 

On the left you can see the amount I knitted last night whilst watching TV for a couple of hours.

My needles are only 30cm long but on Rachel's website you can get ones that are 50cm long and would enable me to do a throw.  She also does super large cable needles, giant cable stitches, now that does appeal to me.

So what do you think, is it your style of knitting?  Have you heard of it before, have you knitted anything extreme.  Would love to hear your comments.

Thanks for popping by. xx

Bigz Flower Card

Bit dull and showery here today so taking the opportunity to catch up on line and share another card with you all.

The die I used for this is the Sizzix Bigz Clear Flower die.  These dies can cut upto 6 layers of fabric with ease.

Quite a simple card and so quick to do.  Next time I think I might try stitching the material to the cardstock.

Thanks for popping by. xx