My Day at the Scottish Wool Producers Showcase

 

Scottish Wool Producers Showcase

Well, the event last Saturday in Perth was a blast! I enjoyed every minute, from wandering around squishing wool in the morning to chatting to crochet fans at my stall in the afternoon!

This was the second time that this showcase festival had been run by Eva Christie and the team behind the Scottish Yarn Festival, and it definitely deserves its sell-out success! The upstairs area of the Dewars Centre in Perth was a wool lover's dream!

I arrived in Perth by train and had about an hour to wonder about, look at the stalls and chat to the stall holders. It was so good to see and feel all the different Scottish wools available. 

At midday, myself and the other designers who had been invited had half an hour to set up our stalls to display our designs. I'd brought with me a few samples which used Scottish wool, including my Gorse Cowl and Saturday Beanie.

In the morning, I'd picked up 2 very different types of yarn and I displayed them with large sheets of paper, asking my fans what they thought I should use them for. 

I'd bought 4x 25g cakes of Balgownie Wool from Culross Yarn (above). It's 4ply, spun with wool from their own sheep and beautifully dyed up with the most dreamy plant based dyes! One of the most popular suggestions was wrist warmers/ fingerless mitts/ mittens - so I think I will go along with that. The quantity will be just right and I can work some pretty colour changes in.

My second acquisition was 8x 50g skeins of Ethie Yarn from Lunan Bay Farm (below). This yarn is 10% cashmere/ 40% Shetland/ 50% alpaca and it feels absolutely gorgeous! The most popular suggestion from my fans was to make a tank top/ sleevelss top which I feel would work very well in this drapy wool.  

I'd also brought along printed copies of my Perth Beanie crochet pattern to give away. It was an appropriate one to give away because the Clan DK wool needed for the pattern was available to buy from The Scottish Yarn Festival stall, just down the corridor! This design is free on my blog if you fancy the pattern for yourself, link below.

I made a short podcast episode all about my day which has now been uploaded to YouTube. Go take a look if you'd like to find out more and see extra photos and video footage.

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Until next time, happy crocheting,

Marta xx

New Pattern Published In The Journal Of Scottish Yarns!

Hello! I'm really pleased to be able to share one of the secret projects I was working on in June this year - I have a new pattern published in The Journal Of Scottish Yarns!

It's called the Sunset Song Top and it's a vest style sweater which can either be worn alone or used as a layering piece. I took my inspiration from the many beautiful sunsets I watch from my window as I crochet and from the novel Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

I'm especially happy with the styling on this one and the way the garment suits both men & women and both young & old; it's very adapdable depending on the look you're going for!

I chose a lightweight yarn from J. C. Rennie, their Supersoft 4ply which is 100% wool, in 3 colours to create the look. The garment is crocheted from the bottom up in 2 pieces which are worked flat and then seamed together using mattress stitch. Instructions have been carefully graded for 9 sizes - a big thank you to the tech editor Samira Hill for her help with this.

In the photo above you can see the beginnings of my design journey. When I started the ribbing worked out exactly as planned and then I swatched to see if the stitch idea I had would work well in the J. C. Rennie yarn - looking particularly at the drape and stretch. I was pleased with this so went ahead with stitch and row calculations for the body of the top.

 
All in all, I'm chuffed with how this design worked out. There's opportunity to go as wild as you like with the colours or to go super simple and crochet it all in one colour! Like I said last week - the choice is yours! 
 
You can buy The Journal of Scottish Yarns, issue 4 on their website and in many local yarn shops in Scotland and beyond.

Until next time, happy crocheting,

Marta xx

PS. Be sure to tag me on social media if you make a Sunset Song Top!