Pleasantly surprised.

I'm amazed by the wonderful response to my knitting patterns.

I was fairly sure that  a few people would want to try them as folk have been asking  about them for a long time.

However I never thought that so many creative people would want to have a go with my knit and felt projects and patterns!

I did spend along time planning them last winter and I could not have produced these kits and pdf patterns without the help of my beautiful daughter who graces the "how to" pages as my hand model. Or my incredibly supportive husband who does all my Desktop publishing. (oh I'm starting to sound like an Oscar award winner here!)

I'm so enthused that I am going to treat myself to some time playing with new ideas and seeing what other patterns I can develop. In the mean time I just have to write the pattern for this latest bag, which has been drawing admiring comments at craft shows this year.

It's a very pleasant surprise to have a success that enables me to get more creative.

Made for ..... ME!

I often make custom bags for folk I meet at craft shows, I enjoy the creative interaction as we discuss colours and styles.
However the "shoe was on the other foot" when Julian from Swordweaver  offered to create a necklace for me.

Julian asked me what design I might like?

A simple question indeed.

What would I like?

I had no idea, in fact the very notion of thinking of something "just for me" was quite foreign to me.
This lack of creative inspiration surprised me. Usually I have ideas overflowing from my notebooks and sketchpads but something to be created for me alone was a new and slightly scary concept.

Well Julian and Jane are very talented and patient folk and each time we met up at craft events I would be asked again if  I had any ideas. Eventually I tentatively asked if he could create a pendent with the Yin Yang symbol on it?

  And what a joy my necklace is!! 

Created from titanium so it will never tarnish or scratch this eternal symbol is a very special to me. I had no idea how Julian would interpret my idea, not even that he intended to make it from titanium, but my finished pendent has such  life in it, the colours change as I move reminding me of the constant changes in the balance of life.

It is a source of delight every time I wear it.

The time has come (the walrus said)

to talk of many things.

of shoes and ships and sealing wax

and cabbages and kings.....

or

 

 ....of purses and patterns and pdf's!!!

and lots of felted things!!

After many, many requests to publish my pattern the time has come (as I surely knew it would)   for my little felted purses to travel out into the wide world and set up home on other folks knitting needles.
I will settle down soon and translate the pattern from my, well lets be kind and say "shorthand version" into a more standard form that everyone can understand.

 And if you don't knit, fear not I will still be making more to take to craft events and of course put in my online shops.