Peerie Flooers, A Fair Isle Finish

I have completed my first ever Fair Isle knitted item and am so pleased with it!

I had no idea the crown would look so lovely once finished

I learnt how to do Fair Isle two-handed stranded knitting at an evening workshop with Deborah Gray, which I have posted about here.  Now a couple of photos of the hat inside-out to show the stranding.

  

Deborah has made up these kits that include an original Kate Davies pattern as well as the exact measurements of wool required to complete the hat.  Such a good idea to buy it as a kit, as I have already started looking into creating another Fair Isle hat but having to purchase entire balls of wool just for a few rows of colour really makes the total cost add up!

The pattern is called Peerie Flooers, meaning small flowers and is by Kate Davies, a stunning blog if you enjoy knitting design and Scottish landscapes.

I knitted the medium sized hat which is slightly slouchier than the one Kate wears in the photos on her blog.

I loved knitting in the round and using the 'magic loop' idea.  Stranding the wool in two hands was easy and I didn't have any tangling problems at all!   Thanks so much to Kate for such a pretty pattern.  I am hoping to start the Scatness tam next!  And Thanks to Deborah for teaching these techniques to me.  She even talked me through the pattern over the phone when I needed help starting on the crown!  

Too much Reading and Not Enough Finishing

I am currently mulling over a toile that I want to get right and am working on three patchwork items - some english paper pieced hexagons, a jelly-roll strip quilt, and a needle-turn wall hanging, but none of them are finished yet.  I still have my crochet flowers to work on too but I'll wait for the weather to truly turn to Autumn before I take these up again.

Three of my current WIP

Instead of actually completing any of my own projects I seem to be spending a lot of time reading about other people's completed works.  This is getting to be a bad habit for me - I read blog posts in the morning before work and then again in the evening when I get home.  The time I use to spend doing or making has now turned into just reading about other people's doing and making. This is not good really and I shall try to limit this - any good ideas you could share about managing your blog reading time?

And yet doing all this reading has led to two very good things recently.

I was reading Jeri's blog post at My Modern Vintage about being stuck in a sewing rut and not having the motivation to get on and do the alterations that she needed to do.  She asked for some advice and she liked my comment so much that she offered to send me the pattern of my choice from her stash!  How lovely was that?  Then not only did she send me the one I chose (pattern on the right) but when I opened the envelope there were my second and third choices!

Thank you very much Jeri! x

The other nice thing that has happened because of too much blog reading is that I was able to offer two stars and a wish (teacher lingo for constructive comments) to Alison who blogs at Another Little Crafty Creation . Alison put all the commenter's names into a hat darth vader mask and drew out my name to receive a lovely package of sewing goodies to celebrate her achievement of 100+ blog readers.  Thank you so much Alison. x

What a pretty bundle: sewing themed sticky notes, two ribbons, chocolate,
1 metre of liberty lawn, dressmakers notebook and hand stitcher's wax,
which I have long wanted to try!

If I can, I am going to try to use the very pretty fabric from Alison to create the pattern that I received from Jeri.

So really, perhaps the time I take to read and comment on blogs isn't wasted time at all.