Handmade Living & the Great Twitknit Scarf Swap

I'm very excited to see that there's a gorgeous feature on my blog and the inspiration behind my work in this month's Handmade Living Magazine (p98). This is such a lovely publication and this is the Christmas edition (!), with truly gorgeous seasonal projects and ideas. I'm especially taken with this handmade bauble tutorial using vintage books:

There are also features on gorgeous Jane at Teawagon Tales and on Debbie Bliss herself in this edition! Seriously good company.

Speaking of Debbie Bliss (woolly segue alert) I just stocked up on some beautiful blue shades of her softest cashmerino aran. This is seriously unusual for me. I've blogged before about my distinct lack of knitting expertise. I'm hoping to remedy this situation though as I signed up for The Great TwitKnit Christmas Scarf Swap. No less than SEVENTY Twitter knitters have signed up for this woolly endeavour and it has been organised by the seventeen-year-old Scarlett of Teenage Granny.

Within our teams we knit one scarf section for each of our fellow team members. Then we send them off, sew up our woolly rectangles and are seen on the catwalks sporting our stunning handmade scarves. It's like a scarf knitting bee, only online. It's truly ace. I'm THRILLED that Tracy from Dragonfly is on my team (team Father Christmas) and that Val of Dottycookie is on Team Snow. There may be some knitty huddles in the coming weeks (possibly with wine and definitely with cake)

So far I have knitted one section (stripes of garter and double moss stitch) and *GASP* I have managed to knit a little woolly leaf motif swatch as practice for another rectangle. This is a crafty miracle - I've wanted to be able to knit leaves for ever so long. I needed a lie down afterwards as I felt as though I'd tried to master quantum mechanics using a couple of wooden sticks and a bit of wool.

In other news I have one space left on my beginners' silver clay workshop on 8th December. Find out more here.