Show and Tell

  

We had a very energising day with the flower felting workshop run by Jan E. She made us all look good and others stepped in with their tips and tricks to ensure everyone making a flower achieved something impressive. It was a day of ideas and activity. 

Show and Tell

Alexis was wearing one of her knitted, beautiful vests from Kaffe Fassett pattern book.
Also a large skein of plied wool in multi colours.

Cathy: a felted bag a product from last weeks workshop, finished and ready to use plus 4 balls of
spun wool in various colours.

Hilary: a shawlette knitted from one of Brenda’s red plaits.

Marina: an inkle loom woven long strap in blue/grey.

Our guest produced a flower from today’s felting workshop.

Blog stats

Our blog started towards the end of 2017. We had 406 visitors by the end of the year.  In 2018 we had 2569 visitors . Last year we did even better with 3884 visitors. That is really nice to know. Most of our visitors come from Australia but we continue to be popular with people in other countries . We have only posted a picture of the top countries. It is a good mix.

We have 252 followers now and have had 15,602 hits. That’s a good achievement and a nice way to start the new year.

 

 

We now get thousands of hits from search engines and that was always the aim. people are now landing on our blog from the things they search. The WordPress reader continnues to bring us plenty of visitors and then things like Fcebook and Instagram…even dear Twitter which is not very good on textile arts and crafts.

 

 

 

 

Christine’s Celtic knot scarf was the top post of the year. Congratulations!! Her rust colloured crescent shawl was the second most popular post for the year 🙂 Talented lady.

Maria’s crochet Alpine stitich was very popular as was Alexis’ idea for poppies for Remembrance Day in 2018.

Glad to see theat the post we put up about knitting not just being a hobby went so well. it is NOT busy work!

Then there was Marina’s idea for the fidget muffs.

So it was mainly knitting and a bit of crochet which won the day for us last year but we would not get he numers or commitment from visitors without all the other things we do.

 

Crescent scarf

Sonya is knitting a lovely crescent scarf which has nice spring colours. It won’t  particulalry be for the really cold winter days but it will be a nice it to wear to keep warm on those early spring days where the weather can be a bit brisk. Crescent scarves can be made to any size and become shawls if you want them to be that big. It is worth mastering the technique if you want something where you can vary your project according to your needs.

There are two nice crescent patterns on Ravelry worth having a look at :

The Easy Garter Stitch Crescent Shawl  by Shirle Bedient and Terribly Simple versatile crescent shawl/scarf by Caitlin ffrench

 

Crescent shawl

Isn’t Karin’s shawl so lovely? Don’t you like those confetti colours? Karin always dyes interesting skeins of wool which look so attractive as she knits the balls of wool. This is  hand spun alpaca, actually. It’s interesting how we often call any yarn in a ball “wool”. Karin likes to spin and dye alpaca because it is so soft to wear. Her crescent shawl is looking good. The garter stitch provides warmth and the edge pattern provides some visual interest and style. There is a nice free pattern for a garter stitch lace shawl by by Shirle Bedient on Ravelry.