Ever wondered what inspires me? Well you can find out in the July issue of Knit Today where I come under the spotlight in their regular ‘Last Word’ feature. There’s also a chance to win a copy of ‘Collection One’ and a hank of the Knitglobal sock yarn in the Freebies competition on page 53.
Month: June 2011
The highest form of flattery
I signed up to Pinterest quite a while ago and never really did anything until a few weeks ago when I thought ‘I’ll have a go at a wee bit of pinning and create a board’. Feeling in a colourful mood I put together a board that would inspire me in terms of colour and texture, things that would lift my heart and make me smile. One of the images I pinned is one of the most truly beautiful objects I’ve ever seen. You’ll probably know that I have a bit of a thing for beads anyway,but what could possibly be better than a bead in a great colour? A beaded bead in 2 colours!
- Brick Stitch Geometric Beaded Beads byjeanpower.com
I have absolute no idea how you would even start to make something so perfectly stunning but coming across it made my day so I added it to my board. As it turns out I wasn’t the only person to be inspired by it as I got a lovely tweet from Helen who runs Ripples Crafts telling me that my Pinterest board, and in particular this image, had inspired her to create a new colourway for her Silk /Merino 4ply yarn. The result is…..
Ripplescrafts Silk/Merino 4ply sh name - Jeanette! Thank you Helen for paying me such a HUGE compliment and naming the shade after me. The yarn is available from www.ripplescrafts.com and should you want to create your own beaded bead ( and who wouldn’t?) you can buy the instructions as a download from www.jeanpower.com
Gladstone bag – alternative handles
Since it was first published in The Knitter issue 10 the Gladstone bag has become one of my iconic designs and a lot of that is due to the fantastic handles used which beautifully sets off all the colour, beading and texture. The Lucite handles, originally bought from Bloomsbury trading when I used to run HKhandknit, were one of the many things I stashed when I closed the shop thinking “these are SO gorgeous I’ll stash them until I dream up a design in which to use them “. Well Gladstone was THE dream design for this particular pair of handles but sadly they’re no longer available from either Bloomsbury / Pavi Yarns or Trendsetter Yarns themselves. ( Just as well then that I stashed another 2 pairs in different colours!).
Anyway, after a great deal of online research I’ve come up with an alternative handle which could be used. They don’t have quite the same look as the Lucite handles which were actually quite expensive but they’re easily available and very reasonably priced plus, having checked this morning I am reliably informed by www.fun2to.co.uk that the fabric top of the bag WILL fit into the opening in the handle once the fabric has been felted. You can see their range of wide bag handles here
jeanettesloan.wordpress.com 