Sophisticated Baby

The Sophisticated Baby Jacket Pattern is now available! It's just £4 to buy and comes written for Aran or DK yarn, sizes 0-24 months

Just one image

Of my lovely first ever carded batt (and the fibre I blended it from)

green + yellow = greenish yellow

More to come in the following days/weeks/months, I promise

Change is on the Carder...

(sorry about the poor pun in the title)

Work is still hard. There’s a lot of change which is difficult for everyone involved. Because hubby and I both work for the same company it feels that much worse, because we’re both subject to these changes.


I’m finding it okay, though there’s a lot of new stuff for me to do. I like things to be interesting and I like to be busy, so I’m enjoying that aspect of things. But it’s unstable at the moment, we don’t know whether the projects I’m working on will continue, and though the decision on that is due soon, it’s not soon enough for my preference.

However, I have just purchased a new toy: a drum carder. I’ve never used one before, but hopefully it’s not too hard. I have quite a lot of reasonably short-staple fleece that needs preparing, and I am not a fan of hand carders. Like with my spinning wheel, I’ve got a good deal by buying second hand. I’m itching to play with it! of course, I still haven’t sorted out my craft room (a task which is required more frequently than I would like) so I’m probably going to have to be a bit creative with where I play with it to begin with. It should motivate me to sort out the craft room at the weekend though.

I’m quite excited about the prospect of carding the fleece I have, but also about the prospect of blending some of my fibres. I have a lot of alpaca, lots of fleece types, I have some Masham X which might benefit from being carded (or not, it’s a longish staple so it might be better combed…)

The proofs of the photos from hubby’s family photo session came through yesterday, and they’re pretty good. As with all these things I’m sure we all like different photos. (Which reminds me, I have to seek some advice about our wedding album) maybe I’ll share some of them later.

There’s really nothing much going on right now though, I haven’t even finished any knitting or crochet since I last posted. I’ll share some of the carding once I have some.

Oh, I’m looking forward to tonight’s episode of “The Great British Sewing Bee”. It was interesting last week, and I felt a little bit inspired. In fact, I have been inspired to make costumes for an up-coming party hubs and I are going to. Hubby was going to be wearing a costume we already owned, but sadly we seem to have thrown it out in the last move, so I’m going to have a go a re-making it! All I need is the fabric, a tidy craft room (there’s incentive 2) and a little bit of time! The party is in just under a month, and we’re away for our anniversary the week before the party, so it’ll need to be finished before the 27th when my sister is visiting. So that gives me two weekends, I think, to get it done! Eep! Still, I know what I need, I know approximately the plan of attack (as I’ve made it before) and I have new skills that I did not have previously. I also plan to make my costume, but other than the skirt part, I think I’ll have to buy rather than make (tights for example!) I’m not going to share my plan just yet; you’ll have to wait for the party photos!