Competiton Winners!!!!

Happy Tuesday Everyone!!! I had an OK day considering I was at work. I did manage to get a really cute little cashmere/merino mix cardigan and hat finished and it is so soft- watch out for it coming soon. I also have been getting updates from my crocheting mother, who now has work crochet and home crochet- which is just the best concept!!!! She is predominately a knitter so crochet is a bit of a turn for her, but trust me it is beautiful. I am hoping to get her to lend me her FOs to do YOTD on, she always uses beautiful yarns.

I know, I know, you are all so excited to hear if you won- I can hear you telling me to hurry up!!! Well the Blattman picked 2 names out of the hat and here are the winners!!

Sara Pearson @ladysarabella- you have won the book!!! Congratulations!!! Email coming over soon!!

Kim @maplewoolfarm_ you have won the yarn!!! Congratulations!! Watch for the email!!

Thankyou all for entering and thankyou all for following the blog, and I hope you choose to stay around. Lots more planned in the future so I hope you will all be winners one day

Have a lovely rest of the day all!!

POTD: Newborn Hospital Hat

Well, Happy Bank Holiday Monday Everyone!!! Hope you are all well. I am prepping for the drawing of the competition tomorrow- remember it finishes at midnight tonight and I'll be publishing the names tomorrow in my blog post from work, so get excited!! Of course, I have had to organise some sort of hat to draw the names from, and if it wasn't knitted then that would just be silly!! That has inspired today's POTD. Now these little baby hats aren't quite big enough to pick the names out, but they are still so blooming cute, and perfect for little ones, and for gifts.

The Hospital Hat pattern uses up all those leftovers from the balls you have used to knit the cardigans. You can knit a matching set for a gift and with minimal effort and yarn. This hat is also so so quick, so emergency knits for mums-to-be are no longer a problem. These also knit up with any DK which can be shown in my picture below!! I've knit them to match most of the little cardigans that I have knit.

As you can see I've made them above in Wendy Bambino, Sirdar Snuggly and in Sublime Baby Silk and Bamboo. They are all roughly the same size on 4mm needles. The silk one is the smallest but it is still about newborn size, and feels like a dream!!

With the Baby Silk and Bamboo and Snuggly I also added the pattern rows from the cardigan I knit so that they would match. It was a perfect fit too for the pattern and I'm really pleased with the end result. I also know that this pattern is a great basic one and therefore you can add whatever pattern you need. I also like this because instead of rib they have a garter stitch band, and this then also matches all the other garter stitch parts of my cardigan.

This hat was knit on 4.5mm needles instead using Wendy Bamboo and this has really made a great hat and slightly bigger than the newborn size, but I've heard that babies do have a habit of growing so that is probably a useful thing!!!

Have a great rest of the bank holiday, and enjoy yourselves all. I'm knitting another little cardigan in a lovely soft cashmere blend- its lovely- so that's what the rest of my day is shaping up like. My mum seems to have decided crochet is the new black so that's what she is up to- makes me want to pick up my hook again and make another blanket- but we will see. The lure of the needles is certainly strong!!

May Day Competition

Happy Tuesday everyone, and Happy May!!!! Today I am beginning a competition so you all have the chance to win one of two prizes and I am pretty excited about it. I hope you are.as excited as I am . So what are the prizes I hear you cry?

The first prize is two skeins of pure silk in bright fuchsia pink. This is so very soft and beautiful, and worth about £16! So a pretty good prize I think. This prize is available worldwide, so doesn't matter where you live, you can win this.

The second prize is a copy of the now discontinued Knitted Toys by Jean Greenhowe. I have searched for this book forever and I have been so lucky to find 2 in charity shops. Now I don't need 2 so I would love for someone else to have the opportunity to own this and knit from it. It has some fantastic patterns in it, such as the penguins I've knitted and the witty knits which are really cute little patterns. This book is in pretty good condition too. This one I am so sorry but is only available for UK winners simply because it is pretty heavy and the postage abroad would be remarkably expensive. But still, Worldwide entrants can win that yummy silk!!

So what have you got to do? Well firstly you need to follow the blog. You can do that on blogger here, on Facebook or on Twitter. Then post a comment below with your name and email address, what country you live in and how you follow the blog. Its that easy. Then I will pick two names after the closing date, show on the blog and then email you for your address.And then you will get a fab package from me with your prize!!

The competition closes at 11:59pm on the Monday 7th May. Winners will have a week to get back to me with an address, if not I will pick another winner. The competition is open to everyone over 18 anywhere in the world. The names will be picked by random, using a hat and the Blattman.

Good Luck Everyone!!!

YOTD: Sublime Baby Silk and Bamboo DK

Happy Wednesday everyone!! Hope you are all doing good today, my post is a bit late because I had to go food shopping and to B&Q (Other DIY stores are available). We needed a new doorbell. By the way, the worst thing in the world might actually be testing out the door bell ringers in the shop. Lets be honest, you want a doorbell that isn't going to cost the earth (some in there were over £100- for a door bell???) and hasn't got a ringer that lasts for a week at about a million decibels. And as much as I did like the idea of being able to upload an MP3 to my doorbell (oh the options) I figured a simple doorbell would suffice. In the shop, you press the little buttons to hear the sounds and everyone looks at you like you might be one of life's special people. I'm over my doorbell fiasco now and back to knitting! Hooray!!

Back to knitting with a very special yarn. Normally quite an expensive yarn and one that I would normally shy away from, but, there I was, stalking the odd ball bin in John Lewis, and there were three balls of Sublime in there. DK? Check. Soft? Oh my yes! Over half price? Well then you are most definitely coming home with me.  OK so what is so special about this yarn. Well it is very soft, and made from 20% Silk and 80% bamboo sourced viscose. (nope, I don't know what that means either, but its soft so its a winner!!). Normally it retails for about £5 a ball, for 95 metres, or 104 yards which is about 50g. Here is a link to MCA Direct where they stock Sublime BSB (no not BackStreet Boys- oh that takes me back!!) and they have free delivery when you spend £10 or more-yay!! Tension here over 10cm is 22 sts over 28 rows on 4mm needles.

This is a lovely soft yarn because of the beautiful fibres, and it makes a lovely fabric. It is heavy, but I think that is something that comes with cottons and bamboos and silks, and also this little cardigan ate up the yarn as I was knitting. I have knit this in around 200m of acrylic but it needed all my 3 balls of Sublime to make this. Still, at £15, this is a lovely little cardigan for special occasions and is machine washable-hooray!! I only paid £2.15 a ball so it was a good price and a lovely finish. It will split if you aren't careful, these types of yarn tend to have a penchant for splitting as you knit, but on my wooden circs, that was reduced a lot.

Would I buy it again? At £5 a ball, probably not, I would need a lot to create a little cardigan and I am not sure it is worth it. If I saw it again in an odd ball bin, I would probably buy it, but there isn't really enough to make much with one ball, maybe a few cute little hats or mitts. I like the yarn, it is beautiful and soft and comes in some beautiful pastel shades that are not too common, and not too babyish.

The colour I've got above is a subtle lime green and called Juicy (273). The yarn also comes in Pillow (267) an off white, Milk Pudding (268) which is almost magnolia cream, Bib (269) a sort of denim baby blue, Ballet Slippers (270) which is a deep baby pink, Goosie (271) a subtle yellow, Tutu (272) a soft baby pink and Dumpling (274) which is not the nicest name but probably nicer than saying Brown, which is what it is.

Sublime also are very good at creating patterns to go with their yarns, and there are 2 pattern books so far to go with these, available at MCA Direct as above or through most stockists. As I am completely addicted to Ravelry, I tend to use the patterns on there, and pick exactly what I'm looking for.

Have a lovely day everyone, and back tomorrow with the pattern for this cardigan, one I have really enjoyed knitting!