GROW YOUR BLOG!

Today marks the 'Grow Your Blog' party, organised by Vicki at  '2 Bags Full' so, as per her suggestion - 

'Welcome to my blog!'

 (and if any of you are new here then I hope you find plenty to interest or amuse you!)

Perhaps I'd better explain my blog's title (no, I do not go around stabbing people with my knitting needles or garrotting them with yarn!). One of my other blogs 'I Refuse To Go Quietly!' is where I tend to put my fiction works, amongst other items. The name 'The Knitting Assassin!' was bestowed upon me by a writing buddy there because I have, on occasion, written crime flash-fiction with knitting as part of the story. (try 'Stitch'n'bitch' for example)

Anyway, aside from writing I DO love to knit. (keeping my hands busy gives me time to mind-plot stories, too!) I've been knitting since I was a small child but in the last few years I've really been doing what I term 'chain-knitting' - constantly having projects on the go! Since I recently took early retirement from my job in the local town library, I now have more time to indulge my passions, both literary and yarnwise.

Sadly, although I live in a medium-sized town  in the heart of the UK, we have very few outlets for yarn! Most of it is very basic - to purchase more 'interesting' stuff requires a trip to village nearby (and even then there's only a limited range) so I usually trek over to the nearest city where I can at least have more choice!

We are also close to Toft Alpaca farm  - fun to drive along the country roads and spot the Alpacas grazing away, converting grass into woolly yarn!

I like to think I'm a fairly frugal knitter - I really can't afford expensive yarns, so I will usually substitute yarn if I can. Like for this 'Tilt' jacket:

The original pattern required Noro, but would have cost me about £120 to knit - so I substituted a similar but cheaper yarn and it came in at about £35! (and it's a really lovely soft and snuggly jacket!)

Over the years I've knitted all manner of things (including adapting a pattern for baby bootees to resemble a pair of 'baby' Doc Marten boots, for a 'goth' friend's new baby!) - if you trawl through my blog you'll find some of my later projects (and a few pictures, below).

I've recently started investigating how to design my own patterns and I'm always on the look-out for new ideas. I discovered it is possible to 'hybridise' quilting and knitting and found a blog/website with turtorials on how to achieve a knitted 'log cabin' quilt - so of course I had to have a go at that! (see the pink and green 'block' in the pictures below)

Continuing with 'hybridising', I would like to try achieving this lattice smocking:

 - but using yarn.......! I expect it's already been done (there is nothing new under the sun!) but I think it could make an interesting knitted fabric, all the same!

Of course, I also love spending time looking at what other knitters and 'yarn engineers' get up to and some of my favourites are on the blog-roll on the left of this page - try them out for size if you have time!

Meanwhile, thanks for stopping by - please leave a comment (and a link back to your blog!) so I can return the compliment. Remember - we're all in this together! ;-)

~~~oOo~~~

(pics from some of my previous projects.....details are scattered though my blog!)

                

                      (.....and when I'm not knitting....!)