Tester Call

Hello!👋

Hope you have been keeping well!

What a week in the snow it has been!

We got a sledge since they closed the school on Thursday and it has been non stop since then.

I have a few more bruises on me because I think I am still 20 years old. 😂

From going to parks and sliding down hills to dropping and picking up the kids at school (Friday) which includes me pulling both my girls on for a 2 mile round trip.

It has been a workout week! 💪

We need to take it all in before the snow melts away since we don’t know how much longer it will stay or when we will get more like this next.

Because of this, I didn’t get much sewing done.

I worked on creating a new sample for the Roma Necessaire in some navy fabric that I had lying around from previous projects.

Not sure I am completely happy with having chosen all navy fabrics. The squares sort of blend in and I feel I can’t see them clearly.

I do love the contrast handles though! 😍

I think they match really well with the hints of pink and red on the navy fabric and make them stand out a little more.

If you are interested in helping me test this pattern, please fill out the tester call application via the link below:

https://forms.gle/6e5VX4ft5jkfk7m98

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I got an exciting delivery this week, and I got a little more excited than I think I should have for this. 😂

I got some square rulers and a seam roller to aid my quilting journey!

I wanted the square rulers to make squaring up quilt blocks easier than just using a straight ruler and the seam roller to avoid getting up so many times to press seams open with an iron.

I am also excited that I got given a large haul from a newsletter subscriber!🥳

One of my newsletter subscribers emailed me a few days ago saying she had lots of scraps to give away if I wanted them. She said they would be ideal for quilting and bag making and since that is my jam lately, I thought I could put them to good use, so I went to pick them up!

When I arrived, not only were there 4 bin bags of fabric ready for me to take, there was 1.2kg of Hobbii yarn and a Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0 that she was giving away! 😱

This is such a fantastic haul and this will definitely keep me busy for a long while! 😀

For the fabric scraps, the plan is to organise them by colour, feel inspired by what I see and create something from there!

I have rummaged in the bags a bit already and there are lots of exciting colours and some very good lengths of fabric too. 😀

I will probably even take a few bits to add to the swap table on my Sew & Bond sewing socials!

Thank you so much Lynn for thinking of me and sharing all this with me! ♥️

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I finally finished my silver beaded sweater! 🎉

I am happy it is done (apart from weaving in a few ends)! It took me exactly 6 weeks to complete, but it feels like it took a lot longer. 

As you may know already because I mentioned it in a previous newsletter, I went rogue on the sleeves and neckline since I found the instructions of the pattern I was following a little hard.

I have knit quite a few sweaters now and felt comfortable to just give it go. I think it has turned out quite good!

I finished all the ribbing with a tubular bind off because I felt like a normal cast off wouldn’t give me the stretch I needed with the amount of stitches I had on the needles.

It does take a little longer to do, but it has the perfect amount of stretch. All that is left to do is block it which I hope to get to next week.

I haven’t satisfied myself though with this beaded sweater and I plan to make another sometime this year. I want to get my hands on some large rainbow beads and I have a vision of knitting them with a cream or off white yarn. 😍

I decided not to add any more beads on the ribbing of my blue sweater at the neck and sleeve cuffs because I have a test knit I need to complete, another sweater, and the due date is the 24th of January! So in 12 days time! 😱

I must add, this is not the owner of the pattern who has put this time pressure, only me.

This pattern test started weeks ago, but only last week I saw she was missing a few testers in a size I could make for myself, so thought I would help out.

So to try and keep up with the test and testers, I have just under 2 weeks to knit this whole sweater. 😵

I raided my stash and pulled out nearly half of it because I wanted to make each square in a different colour.

The problem is that this was taking me too long to decide on colour placement, so I packed them all away again and went with my original plan. I can do more colourwork next time.

I chose a black and a rainbow coloured yarn, mostly because they are the only ones with which I could meet gauge and have enough of.

I managed to cast on for this Ellie Sweater over the weekend and got some done, but I hope the next time I write to you, I have at least the whole bodice finished. 😂

Thank you so much to Wool Warehouse for sending me the Yarnsmiths Merino Dk Superwash yarn to complete my beaded sweater! ♥️