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New Pattern: Ready Fingerless Mitts

I've not blogged in a while. I've been busy.......

Ready Fingerless Mitts is the first pattern in a collection of 3 designs to raise money for Refuge as part of my London Marathon training.

I knitted a swatch.

And then two whole mittens.

The idea behind these was pretty simple: I wanted something to keep my hands warm during cold training sessions. These Ready mitts are ideal for winter running. Pop them on while you’re warming up and your hands won’t freeze, while your fingers are still free to adjust laces, watch and so on. The beauty of fingerless mitts is also that you don’t need a pocket when your hands are warm. I usually just slip my thumbs out and slide them up my wrist to make a woolly sweatband. The mitts are quick to knit up and both the rib and pattern are sufficiently stretchy to give a close fit, without squashing fingers.

Ready Fingerless Mitts £2.50: 

Ready, Steady, Go! eBook £5.00: 

But that's not all. I've also hooked up with a crack team of UK hand-dyers to offer exclusive Refuge colourways to go with the designs. First up is Fyberspates who have dyed this excellent shade of Ready Red for Refuge in their MCN Sport yarn (80% merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon; 265m/100g hanks; £16.00). One hank is enough to make 2 pairs of Ready fingerless mitts, and £10.80 from the sale of each hank will go to Refuge to support their work. The Fyberspates Refuge yarn goes on sale on Monday 4th February in the evening as part of the monthly update. Check out the new arrivals page on Monday evening to be sure of getting a hank!

The next design in the series will be available at the end of February, and uses gorgeous Skein Queen yarn. The sample is nearly complete, so I'll post pictures soon. And the final instalment will go live at the end of March and uses Babylonglegs' wonderful yarn. We are particularly grateful to Babylonglegs for inspiring the whole project. Thank you so much!

Many thanks also to Andy Robinson at Bluefaced.com for kindly donating base yarn to the hand-dyers, thus enabling more of the money from yarn sales to go to support the work of Refuge! Grateful thanks as well to the ever-brilliant Nic Blackmore for kindly donating her formidable layout and design skills to the project. You're both fabulous!

With that, it's off the computer and on with the running kit to run into the teeth of the gale blowing outside.

This is not a viable alternative

I haven't run in nearly a week.  This is a bad thing as it's messing with my training schedule.  Part of this has been work related and part weather related. With snow around, I can't find anywhere safe to run as the side roads and pavements are ice rinks.  I've had to find an alternative:

I really don't enjoy indoor training.  I can't see the point of working up a sweat to go nowhere at all with exactly the same view throughout. In short, I'm frustrated and bored.

The only bright side has been that I've been able to uncover a few gems on the BBC iPlayer.  I don't know how, or exactly why, but I found myself watching Hits of 1978, including googly-eyed Kate Bush and so on.  With the variety of songs, I couldn't match my cadence with anything except, bizarrely, Terry Wogan singing The Floral Dance.  This may be a throwback to my youth as a member of Helston Town Band when I actually played for the real thing. However, national treasure or not, Sir Terry's version remains an abomination and the whole episode was a little unsettling.

With sub-zero temperatures promised for a few more days, I'll be busy going nowhere for a while to come.  Maybe I'll even begin to enjoy it.

Winter is here!

After the best part of two months on holiday, presumably skiing in Klosters, winter has made a comeback this weekend.  Yesterday's run was completed in pouring rain combined with icy wind.  Today was a bit more pleasant as the sun made an appearance, but the cold was pretty bitter.  The next week or so looks like it will be even colder.

I really don't actually mind the cold as I can just stick on another layer and a hat and get out there.  Unfortunately, my current hat is all but worn out, so I will need a new one soon.  Happily, I know where it will come from.  I will shortly have the first of the Ready, Steady, Go! patterns to release as I have my sample knitter on the case right now and the second pattern is a hat that just needs writing up.  Watch this space for photos and further news.