rounding up a busy week

I can’t believe it’s been a whole week since either of us posted! The relative silence has been for good reason, though!

Last Thursday, Matthew and I, in a fit of redecorating frenzy, spent some of our honeymoon money on a spangly new lamp with a hand-woven lampshade, a green-like-the-sunlight-pouring-through-leaves-in-springtime carpet and some light gauzy curtains for our front room, as well as some fabric for cushions. Then we went crazy and eBayed ourselves a new couch — it’s MASSIVE!! I love it. I can lay the length of it without my head or feet touching either end! I’m going to have to do a whole separate post about this because it really does make me that happy!

My little sister was in London for the last couple of weeks, visiting family up and down the country. Luckily for me, we got to spend most of the weekend hanging out around central London and she came over for dinner Monday night for a delicious mushroom risotto, courtesy of Matthew’s culinary wizardry.

On Tuesday, I started freelancing in-house at my old publishers, Rubbish Books Publishing — as anyone who reads our Twitter feed will know, the prospect thrilled me. No really. Going back is about as much fun as ripping back and reknitting the same six rows of a new pattern repeatedly and finding each time that you’ve made almost the exact same mistake: torturous, arduous and stabby-making.

The only real benefit is the 60-minute roundtrip cycle I do each day from my house to Vauxhall Station. It apparently only takes 1 hour and 30 minutes to cycle to the office, and I am Very Tempted to try it. It would cut in on my daily knitting/reading time, but cycling is so freeing!

Wednesday morning, I was up and running by 6 a.m., whipping up a fresh loaf of bread, some Banana Cranberry scones and Banana Raisin and Walnut muffins, and Banana Rabanada batter (a veganised Brazilian twist to French toast) from Vegan Brunch* ready for the family to swing round for brunch on their way to drop my little sister off at Gatwick. was a FEAST! Matthew made his signature mushrooms on toast, too — so good! I was sad to see my little sister go, but it was nice to be able to send her off properly!

* Er, we had a lot of old bananas lying around. I’ll try to get these recipes posted as they are my FAVES!

Thursday, while I was slogging through manuscripts at RBP, Louisa stitched up a couple of custom orders in some of our new fabrics: a Stash Perfect bag in Grocery List

and an XL Sweater Perfect bag in Argyle Rabbit:

I love how they turned out! I’m rather jealous of her, I haven’t been able to sew for what feels like ages. We have one more custom order to get through and I’m going to get it done this evening. (Some people go out for a nice meal or down to the pub to celebrate the end of a long week. I, on the other hand, apparently get my kicks sewing!)

While I haven’t been sewing, I have been knitting. A LOT. The half-hour train journey I need to take to get to work and back has given me plenty of time to work on my new pattern, in Sweet Clement‘s sweet, sweet yarn. I cannot say enough about this yarn! I love it. It’s super soft and it wears REALLY well. (That repeatedly ripping back of the same six rows I mentioned above? I make it over 8 hours total of repeated ripping back because I foolishly haven’t printed off the written-up pattern and keep trying to do it from memory. This yarn was put through the wringer and it’s still looking fresh as an unwound skein. LOVE!)

Lou’s been knitting furiously, too. I have reports of two new patterns flying off her needles and I haven’t even seen them yet!! (The worst downside to being so busy is definitely never seeing your best friend!)

This morning I discovered we haven’t been the only ones busy, busy. Our Spicy Winter Squash GYOS kit was featured in two Etsy Treasuries!! First, Autumn Yum Yum which was put together by Sofralma, and then in Fall Time Means Acorn Squash curated by Jessentials. Both Treasuries are fantastic! I really need to work out how to create a Treasury myself. I love it when one of our items is picked. It’s especially exciting to see who we get paired with!

in the works

I think I mentioned recently that I’ve been overcome with knitterly inspiration and it apparently just won’t stop!! I’ve got three new patterns being test knit at the moment, and my test-knitters are AWESOME! They’ve been so supportive and very kind whenever they come across something that needs correcting. I can’t wait to see how their socks turn out!

Two of these patterns are sort of companion pieces: the woman’s and man’s versions of a pattern I designed long ago for my dearheart. The man’s pattern is called Sloe Gin (pictures to come!) and the woman’s is Pink Gin:

I’ve been using Fleece Artist’s Somoko for the Gins, which is a merino/kid mohair/silk blend that is very slightly unevenly spun. Can I say how much I love this yarn? Sweet crikey, it’s unbelievable. It’s so soft and so smooth and it has this halo that makes you want to bury yourself in it. It’s also very faintly sheepy, which is delightful.

The third pattern is called Amphitrite’s Columns. It’s another design that I’ve had tucked away for a while. It’s far more complex than the Gins, practically bursting with cables and tricky techniques and experimental heels (or one experimental heel, in any case!).

I’ve been a bit nervous about unleashing Amphitrite. The cables are brought together from five sets of charts; the heel fits me perfectly, but who knows if I have weird heels; and the toe-up cast-on requires a certain amount of patience and dexterity. Fortunately, thus far my test-knitters have risen expertly to the challenge.

However, these aren’t the only ones!! Lou and I have a shed-load of co-designed projects up our sleevesies, Lou has about four new sock patterns that I can think of off the top of my head and I’ve got another three in various stages of completion, with more on the way. We’ve been pretty silent on the pattern front since the Year of Socks ended, but I have a sneaking suspicion next year will be packed. PACKED, I tell you!