Pebble Beach Relaunch......

Hello my friends, get me two posts in one week ;-) I'm back today to let you know the Pebble Beach Shawl has been relaunched and includes an extra two sizes. If you'd already purchased it, you will get an automatic update on Ravelry but if you haven't yet bought a copy, it's definitely worth buying with the three different sizes, it's such a great pattern. If you've never knit a lace shawl before this would be a good one to start with as it's a simple lace pattern.

I test knit the original pattern last year and fell in love with this beautiful lace shawl pattern with simple eyelet lace. Helen originally designed this pattern to enter into the Unwind Brighton 2014 design contest which won by miles even though there was some other great designs that entered and it's been very popular ever since.

Helen has relaunched the pattern in collaboration with The Uncommon Thread, an indie dyer based in Brighton, UK and has used some of their lace weight yarn but it will still work just as well with 4ply if you don't fancy working with lace weight.

I knew straight away which yarn I wanted to knit the latest one in, for my birthday, last year, my friend who is a non-knitter and wouldn't have a clue about buying yarn, went to a yarn shop whilst she was on holiday and picked out some yarn for me!!!!!

This was the yarn she bought me, it is Coastal Yarn Alpaca Lace and is from their own flock of Alpacas based in Cornwall which they have spun at a local mill into this stunning, natural undyed yarn which is so soft to the touch. Didn't my friend chose well for me?

This was the very first Pebble Beach that Helen asked me test knit, the yarn I used was a gradient from Eaden Yarns who is based in Brighton. Can you see that Brighton is the common thread running with through this awesome pattern? The Pebble Beach pattern holds such a lot of wonderful memories for me after spending a fabulous few days down in Brighton, attending my first yarn show, meeting some wonderful people and enjoying this lovely seaside town.

This is my second Pebble Beach Shawl which holds the most memories, I bought the yarn from Unwind Brighton. It was Five Moons Luna 4ply, gradient kit

I sat in the Brighton Pavillion Gardens and cast it on with some wonderful knitters including Helen, Zena, Pj and Jannika.

I sat on Brighton's pebble beach in the glorious sunshine and knit some more on it. I added beads to this version and also made it larger by adding a few extra pattern repeats which is why I was so happy to see that Helen has decided to add some more sizes to the pattern.

My yarn had 600m in the skein so I started knitting the medium size as the large requires 800m, the medium doesn't use all of the 600m so whilst I was knitting away, I thought that I really want to use as much of my beautiful yarn as possible.

I spoke to Helen and she suggested knitting the large size, weighing the yarn and knitting as far as I can, ending with a full pattern repeat, leaving enough yarn for the picot bind off. Helen makes this very easy for you as she uses percentages on how far you are in the pattern so all I had to do was keep weighing my yarn to check I was on track. I finished on row 152 which was the end of a pattern repeat and I used most of my yarn which I was really pleased with. I was two repeats short of the pattern but still ended up with a fairly large shawl, it really grew and bloomed once I'd soaked and blocked it.

Here are my three Pebble Beach shawls, not one of them are the same, I've added beads on one, knit all the sizes and used different yarn weights. This is why I love the pattern so much, it is very versatile and easily adaptable to what you want from a shawl.

Thank you for stopping by, I really appreciate it and thank you for all your kind comments that I've received recently, you are all so lovely.

Have a great weekend.

xxxxDebxxxx

 

Giant Granny Square Summer Blanket.....

Hello my friends, I'm so sorry it's been so long again but I think while I'm working so many hours, I'll have to pop in when I can.

I have a few projects to share with you including a new crochet project, I was tidying up my craft room and going through my yarn collection where I found lots of cotton in an array of colours.

I wanted it to become a crochet blanket and thought about doing lots of little square or hexagons then I decided to just to do a large granny square as I wanted it to be a quick project without all the seaming. This will become my summer blanket for Caiden when we go to the park or picnic, it won't hurt if it gets grubby or thrown about, I can just throw it in the washing machine.

My travel/inbetween knitting are the Socks on a Plane by Laura Linneman, these are going slowly as I'm only picking them up occasionally when I'm not knitting on my larger projects.

I picked up this sock yarn, Heart and Sole by Sirdar, from a little yarn shop near my daughter's house, an inexpensive sock yarn which I think will be a hardwearing yarn like Regia. I'm hoping to finish the socks on my needles so I can cast on a new pair using one of these yarns. I was looking for some patterns especially for self- striping yarn and found some great patterns which I'll go through on another post.

I've been furiously knitting on two test knits, the top one is the Pebble Beach by Helen Stewart, Helen is updating her very popular design to include an extra two sizes. Those who have already bought the pattern will get an automatic update in the next few days.

The other test knit I'm working on is a new shawl pattern by Melody Hoffman, another beautiful pattern which is been released very soon. Both are blocking as we speak so my next post I'll tell you more about them.

Spring has sprung, here in the UK and last Sunday we took Caiden for a little walk around Bantock Park, one of my favorite walks, locally. Here's some photos of our Sunday morning walk.

This little man is growing up so quickly........

Apart from working and knitting, I'm totally engrossed in a book called Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott, it's a real page turner. I had to set an alarm on my break so I wasn't late back!!!!!!!

I'm linking this post to Nicole's KCCO and Ginny's Yarn Along.

Thank you for stopping by and I'll try not to leave it as long next time :-)

xxxxDebxxxx