Thank you to all my lovely Festiwool customers ...

It was a truly splendid little fair with lots of lovely, friendly people - both buying and selling. I'm always impressed by how nice yarn-lovers are. I know it sounds schmaltzy and trite, and that there are always exceptions to every rule, but in my experience - gleaned from days on my feet talking to the passing public at yarn fairs, and weeks of my life given over to knitting retreats - I've come to the firm view that a love of all things woolly is, of itself, a pretty good character reference.

Festiwool 2016 ...

I’m really looking forward to Festiwool this Saturday. If you’re in the Hitchin area please drop by and say Hello! I’ll be on the Costa Brava Knitting stand all day.

It’s a lovely, friendly fair with some fabulous exhibitors – just the thing for stocking up on all your woolly essentials for the cold weeks of November and December … brr … isn’t it cold these days?

Happy Friday, peeps!

We've been battling to make teddy bears - and not teddy mice. It's been a challenge, but we're getting there.

This was the outlook across the dining room table yesterday afternoon as the sunlight filtered in through the half-open shutters.  Emi was writing an essay about three birds in a nest, and battling to get the punctuation right, whilst I persevered with my teddies, battling to get the eyes sufficiently far apart. A nice bottle of red beckoned with the necessary promise to get me through until dinner.

Teddy Mouse ...

We've been practising for the 11+ exams over here at Talk-a-Lot Towers, and I can't exactly say that it's been a bag of laughs ... . 

To keep hold of my sanity I've been playing around with some of my Merino double knitting, trying to make a good-luck mascot for the big day. The idea was to create a teddy bear in this lovely tweedy wool, but do you know what happens when you make your teddy's eyes too close together ... he morphs into a Teddy Mouse!

Anyway the pattern's a work in progress, and were he given a voice to reply he'd probably quote Marilyn Monroe and tell us: Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's always better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

And his name is ... Dave. Not sure why, but it's definitely Dave. 

All the best for now, and happy All Saints' Day!

Bonny x 

Costa Brava Rag Dolls

Here's what we got up to last week in sunny Sant Feliu:

For our October Knitting retreat we made these sweet rag dolls. They're knit in the round, starting with the legs, which are joined with a knitted gusset to create the basis for a body, which is then knit up to the head. They're a great way to use up scraps of 4 ply wool left over from other projects. We used our own-label, Costa Brava Knitting 100% organic cotton yarn. You'll need one 50 g ball of the skin-coloured yarn to knit the body of the doll and scraps for her shoes, dress and hair.

Just read on for the pattern: