Bits and Pieces

 I bought two packs of blank greetings cards when we were in New York - and also these cute stickers - I'm a sucker for pretty stationery. The shops we went to were amazing...so much choice...you could easily spend €€€€ in them...shortly I'll write up about my second wool-shopping experience but I wanted to post these photos first.

This is my order for Jaye, my lovely customer (& friend) in England - five matching hats (all made in Rowan's superfine merino dk) and then also two cotton shower mitts and a pair of crocodile stitch wrist warmers. :) 

I brought over some wool and my hooks to America but I didn't get much crochet done at all - just the flowers for Jaye's hat order and a tiny part of these wrist warmers (above) -- we were either on the go so much or else I was too tired to crochet! I had brought along my felt-tip pens and a colouring book that my sister had given me for Christmas, so that kept me occupied on the plane (when it wasn't bumpy!) and in the hotel in the evenings.

Right now I'm working my way through some of my more fine yarns - these two pairs are made in Schoppel's 'Zauberball 100' which is 100% merino wool and is a sock yarn.

I'm half way through a pair in shades of blues and purples too (sneak peek photo!)

 and then after that I've got a green yarn lined up, it's also Schoppel's 'Zauberball' but this one is 75% merino and 25% nylon.

 I quite often go through 'phases' of using similar yarns or making the same items over and over (e.g. how I was just making hats last month) - I think you get used to the feel of the same size hook -- it always kinds of disorientates me when I switch from using, say, a 3mm hook on a pair of wrist warmers, to then using a 6mm hook for a hat.

Barbara the artist has very kindly commissioned me to make the hats for her annual artists' retreat again - so I've ordered a great big 2kg of Studio Donegal's aran tweed wool from Springwools.

This is the colour she's selected for this year - it's rather unimaginatively called 'black/grey/beige' but it's gorgeous. I really love the depth of colour that they put in their aran wool through the little tweedy flecks.

The artists' retreat isn't til the middle of June so I have plenty of time yet - I've got to wind out the wool from the cone first. At the moment the order is for 7 hats for the male artists and 6 flower headbands for the female artists...I'm looking forward to doing the headbands, it'll be a nice change and I always like making crochet flowers :)