Hello!
I finished another knitting project since I last wrote here, a whole shawl even. In truth, much of it was knitted over the end of the summer holiday, just before work and school started up again. It's the Hedgewitch Shawl by Canadian designer Nat Raedwulf and there was a fun knitalong happening over midwinter/midsummer that I was inspired to join after watching an episode of the gentle knitter podcast (highly recommended if you love knitting, by the way).
I wanted to use yarn from my stash (aka the box under my bed) and settled on a beautiful grey-mauve yarn that was a gift from my friend Susanna a few years ago: two skeins of Purl Soho flax down that she bought when she was in New York. I'd been waiting to find the perfect project for it, and I found it! It's the most beautiful soft yarn, and it was lovely to knit with. For the shawl's border I used some grey possum/merino, also from the box under the bed.
The shawl's design is very simple but it has a feathery textured pattern and the finished item is quite large - I can't wait to wear it when autumn comes around. Tom's joking that we won't need firewood this year. If you follow the designer on Instagram (@wolfandfaunknits) I believe she's having a sale on her patterns for 24 hours or so, so it might be the perfect time to buy this pattern if you like it!
More information about my version of Hedgewitch, including the yarns and needle sizes, etc can be found in my Ravelry notes here.
+ + + + + + + + +
My favourite summer fruit is cherries, and to my mind cherry pie is the next best thing, but I never seem to have enough cherries to use in a whole pie. But it's easy to find them in jars any time of the year, and that's how the pie in the photo above came to be. For this pie, I used my favourite flaky-ish pastry recipe (you can find it here - just ignore the apple filling part of this recipe) and then I used the cherry pie filling recipe from this recipe. It was delish! And I'm sure it would still be so without the brandy if you prefer ;)
= = = = = = = = =
And lastly, i wanted to show you this beautiful calendar I was sent by Making magazine. It's a real beauty - with watercolour paintings of a plant or animal that provides fibre for us to craft from, along with a plant that can be used for natural dyeing. When my sister and I were kids, we used to excitedly flip through calendars to see what the picture was on 'our' month (to correspond with our birthdays). In this calendar, October has a painting of a cochineal bug and a hemp plant. Perfect.