Spring

Spring is very tentatively arriving in Wales - the days are certainly longer, and we've had moments of glorious sunshine and spring flowers peeking through the mud, but the temperatures are slow to follow.

That said, lambs are appearing on the hillsides around us, meaning that I have once more become a menace on the roads. It doesn't matter how many widdle wambs I see in my lifetime, they still make me lose all my composure!

Things are busy at Casa Midwinter too, mainly because I seem to have come back from Edinburgh wanting to Cast On All The Things.

First up is Masgot by Justyna Lorkowska. I've been eyeing up this cool garter stitch design for a little while, and really wanted to make it in our Thin Pirkkalanka. As I know having already made Colour Affection with it, it's a great yarn for garter stitch, and the generous meterage goes such a long way that it is perfectly suited for Justyna's huge shawl designs.

The colours used are Natural Pale Grey, Chartreuse and Plum.

Mark finished his latest (third!) Linus in lightning fast time too! He cast this on at Unravel in Farnham, but had to frog quite a large section as he'd completely forgotten about the garter stitches down the sides! The end result is lovely though, the bright and happy rainbow gradient of the Lapland colour way set against the soft natural white. A perfect springtime Linus - light and cheerful, but quite capable of keeping those poor temperatures at bay. We haven't listed this as a kit yet, but if you put the White and Lapland in your basket, we will include the pattern for you :)

Mark has now working on the Fika shawl by Karie Westermann. Karie designed the fundamentally Scandinavian "Hygge" collection for us last year, and judging by how often it appears in her Instagram feed, the Fika shawl seems to be her favourite. We're going to have it on display just as it was designed, in the gorgeous Deep Orange shade - both yarn and printed patterns are available in the webshop now.

Of course, if spring is coming to your area a little quicker than it does in Wales, you may be thinking of things less woolly. I have been unpacking and winding a new delivery of linen yarn this week, and dreaming of cool, draping summer knits. The little "Sweet Pea" packs are now also back in stock, in a slightly different format to last year. They now come as a selection of of 7 mini hanks of 50 meters of yarn each, grouped in various colour themes, and work wonderfully either a few packs together in a multi coloured project, or combined with the regular 100gr hanks as stripes or colour accents.

Personally, I have chosen to use mine for a Granny Sunburst scarf, combining the Glow pack of warm colours with the midnight blue Ink, but the possibilities really are endless to mix and match.

This weekend we are off to Wonderwool again, marking our second birthday! We'll be bringing all of our usual range, plenty of Linus kits in some new colour combinations, the Sweet Peas and maybe even a little taster of something completely new ;)  Hope to see you there!