My Latest Work in Progress

More wool! I was asked by a friend during the summer if I'd be able to make a comforter/small blanket for her nine year old daughter -- she'd had a blankie since she was a baby but it had unraveled away and it was time for a new one.

She said that her favourite colours were purples and pinks so I chose colours in that range and have finally started on it this week.

The two balls of 'Riot dk' on the left hand side of the photo are for wrist warmers for my best customer online - she wanted three pairs all made in the same shade, but I ran out of the wool so had to buy some more.

I'd chosen eight colours, including the hot pink, at the top right of the photo - but having received my order, I decided that that one wasn't a good 'fit' with the other colours so I'll have to try and find something else to do with it.

These are the shades (and the order) that I'm using.

AND..I am writing stuff down! I am the worst person for thinking ''Oh I'll remember how I did that..'' and then of course looking back, I can't figure it out at all.

Each colour is over two rows, except for the 'emperor' purple in the changeover from purples to pinks - I'm just using one row there to break it up.

 It started off quite slowly...

...check out my lovely new dress in the background (from Gudrun Sjodén) - a treat to myself which I purchased from the money I get in tips in my day job :)

 

It is really coming along now - this is only my third day working on it (in between working on the ferry still) - I'm not sure how long I'll make it but it's nowhere near finished just yet.

It'll be interesting to see just how much yarn it uses up, I must remember to make a note of that in my book!

Trying to Get Back on Track

Through the summer I've really taken my eye off my Etsy shop and it's been pretty quiet - my own fault really for not keeping up to date with changes in the website and for not keeping listing new items. I've been lucky that I've sold more locally and off-Etsy (through facebook e.g.) so it hasn't been TOO grim a situation.

However, now that things are getting more quiet at work I'm able to turn my focus back on Selkie Crochet again.

One of the recent changes to Etsy is that you are now allowed to post up to ten photos in each listing (it had previously been four - or five?) - so I thought I'd try and take some more diverse photos of my wrist warmers...

 I don't know if people will really bother clicking through all ten photos in a listing but it is giving me a better chance to show the detail and colours in my work.

I really want to go through the rest of my listings and take new/extra photos of them also but I started with the wrist warmer section.

Out and About in Boats - part three

At the start of the month I was lucky enough to go out in a small fishing boat - one of my skippers on the ferry is a lobsterman and owns 'The Albatross' (the blue boat in the photos)

I should say from the start: I'm a vegetarian and so, obviously, don't eat fish but I find the variety of sea life that comes up in the pots utterly fascinating...I've always been an amateur naturalist and living right on the sea I guess it's inevitable that my focus has been in that direction.

 It was a relatively calm day and probably the last chance that I'd get to go out in JP's boat before the end of the season.

The rock formations around Valentia Island are just breath-taking -- photos don't really do them justice...

 A small selection of the sea-life that comes up in and on the pots when they are hauled out of the sea and onto the boat. While John Patrick is dealing with taking the lobsters and crabs out of the pots and putting fresh bait in them again, I am busy with my camera and looking out for tiny creatures that have dropped on to the deck!

Of course they all returned safe and sound to the sea. :)

Out and About in Boats - part two

 I've been working on the Valentia car ferry since 2006 (I'm sure I've mentioned my 'day job' on here before now). It's a pretty unique job and suits me as I am outdoors and can watch the wildlife in the quiet times. I try to bring my camera with me on good days ... the bad weather days are best forgotten about!

The pictures really speak for themselves...

This Summer/Autumn the harbour has had several swarms of these jellyfish - mauve stingers - but just lately we saw the worst one yet...it's hard to capture the scale of it in photographs.

One day last week my skipper, JP, was going to get some shrimp to sell to a friend of his so I went along for the ride -- we went out in his brother's little boat and he hauled a few of the shrimp pots. 

It was my first time seeing the ferry from this angle! 

 This is what we had gone out for...shrimp! (this one went back into the water)

Hauling shrimp pots

The local gulls were on the look out for anything they could eat.

Out and About in Boats..part one.

 For part of the summer there have been daily boat trips to Beginish Island - an uninhabited island next to Valentia. I had only been there once before, going beachcombing with JP from the ferry in a small punt, but this was an easy and comfortable way to get to the island so I twisted Peter's arm and we went over one afternoon in August.

 Look at how clean the beaches are! There was some rubbish washed up but not much, and the majority of it had been piled up in a corner of the beach, out of reach of the tide - I'm guessing it will be taken away so that it won't pose a threat to the sheep that live on the island.

I wish we had had time to climb up to the old look-out tower but we only had about an hour and a half on the island.

I could have happily spent a whole day exploring the island...

We walked through bracken and brambles to get back to the boat - it would have been easier to have gone back the way we'd came but I thought this would be an 'adventure'...it was a bit rough going but you live and learn!