Wordless Wednesday 22nd May 2013

Crochet Jacket Extraordinaire!

Hello friends!
Well, here it is! Remember when I posted a few little pics of some mysterious crochet recently? A little while ago a lovely friend of mine sent me an email with a photograph a crochet jacket that she'd stumbled upon on the internet. She really wanted it... so I obliged...and made this! There was no pattern for the jacket available, so I improvised the design, construction and a pattern of sorts from the photograph my friend had sent me.
I had a lot of fun working with my friend choosing the colours :-)
Some of the yarn is 100% pure wool yarn and 100% Alpaca yarn from the Bendigo Woollen Mills, some is 100% wool that I hand dyed, some is a random alpaca that had been languishing in my yarn stash for a little while and some is a Cleckheaton 100% wool :-) I think the colours look pretty amazing together :-)
Just in case you are curious the yarns are as follows:
-Dark green is Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury 8ply/DK in Pine colour way.
-Bright green is Bendigo Classic 8ply/DK which was originally in Magnolia colour way that I dyed a neon/Granny Smith Apple colour using a Wiltons food dye in Kelly Green (using vinegar and heat to set the colour)
-Coral is a Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 8ply/DK that was originally Magnolia colour way that I dyed Coral using a Landscape Dye in Coral colour way (these dyes are available from KraftKolour)
-Deep Red is Bendigo Woollen Mills Classic 8ply/DK in Cranberry colour way.
-Deep Purple is Bendigo Woollen Mills Persian 8ply/DK in Eggplant colour way.
-Rust wool is Cleckheaton Country Colours Naturals in #1832 colour way.
-Bright Blue is The Rare Yarns Company Rare Essentials alpaca/merino in Lapis colour way.

I worked on it for 4 days, crocheting, measuring, stitching and weaving in ALL THOSE YARN ENDS!! Oh, then yarns ends! In the end the jacket weighed just over 1 kilogram!
As I said, I didn't have a pattern to work from, so a lot of "designing" and planning was involved, but it worked very well :-)
After making this one, I'm pretty tempted to make myself one as well :-)

If you already follow me on Facebook at Shara Lambeth Designs or on Instagram at shara_made 
 you may have already seen some little sneak peeks of this jacket. If you would like to see more images of the things I make, or what I get up to on my travels, you can follow me on Facebook and Instagram too :-)
P.S. It was a little tricky to find the origins of the original images of the jacket that my friend emailed me that inspired this jacket, however after a bit of searching we discovered that it was from a blog post that now no longer exists, which is a shame as the jacket in that blog post, that was such an inspiration, is quite spectacular and I would have loved to have included a link here :-)

Hmmm, what could it be?

Hello friends!

I hope you've all been well and happy and productive with your creative pursuits :-)

I have been very busy!

I went on a mini holiday (I'll show you some pictures soon!), I have been cooking up a storm and I have begun working on a big commission piece for someone :-)

 I'm going to keep a little quiet about the commission piece until it's completely finished... but these photographs are little pieces of it. I'm really loving the ways it's all coming together. It's not something I have made before, and it's using all my powers of mathematics, but I'm loving every minute of it.... Well, actually that's not entirely true, you should see all the little yarn ends I have to weave in!!!! Insanity, LOL!

 I'm looking forward to showing you more pictures soon!
xo Shara

Wordless Wednesday 24th April 2013

Wordless Wednesday 17th April 2013

Wordless Wednesday - 10th of April 2013

Autumn...At last!

Hello friends!

Finally... after a very long wait, Autumn has finally arrived! Summer seemed to have missed the memo that it was over at the end of February in my part of the world :-)

The weather has finally started to cool down. The mornings are crisp, the days have been really beautiful and the nights are chilly... just the way I like it!

because the weather has been so unseasonably warm here none of the trees had started to change colour when normally at this time of year the leaves have turned and have almost all fallen to the ground... but in the last couple of days I have noticed the trees have caught up and the leaves are slowly changing colour and a few have fallen... 

march is normally when i would be finding all sorts of marvellous fungi when I'm out walking... but I only JUST saw my first one today! I wonder if this might mean the mushroom season will last a little longer than usual?

We even got some rain yesterday!! I was excited enough to take a picture out the window of my bus :-)
This kind of gloomy weather is even more beautiful when you know you're on your way home and there will be someone lovely waiting there for you with a hot cup of tea :-)
But, alas, I can't get too used to this cooler weather because the forecast is for some more unseasonably hot weather over the weekend... Come on weather, make up your mind :-)
xo Shara