I've done a lot more swatching than 'end product' knitting over the past year. Luckily I like swatching. Clara Parkes talks about swatching as 'taking your yarn for a walk' - not just as a means to check gauge, but as a way of getting to know it, to see if you're going to get along and where your yarn might best be employed. I've been 'taking my ideas for a walk' over the past year and it's been fun - sometimes frustrating, sometimes rewarding - and there's still more exploring to do.

So I've made very little this year, apart from a big pile of colour-clashing swatches.  As much as I've loved it, I've been itching to get an actual thing on my needles, some tangible proof of my efforts with contoured intarsia. 

A good knitting friend's thirtieth birthday gave me the opportunity, though a May birthday excluded anything too cosy and I decided on a bag.  She's a fellow cat-lover, so I wanted to incorporate a cat motif that I've been working on.

And I used a diamond pattern on the back:

There's a definite texture with contoured intarsia that isn't there with traditional intarsia.  I have to admit to blocking these with the quick and effective treatment of placing a wet tea-towel on the knitting and blasting it with a hot iron. The blocking works its magic, but the texture isn't completely tamed. I see it as part of the charm. 

What do you think? I have loads of ideas for what to do next, but I'm currently doing more swatching, with cotton this time, to see if I can persuade an inelastic, less forgiving fibre to work with this technique. I'm not convinced yet, but I'll keep trying because I have a summer top in my mind that won't go away.

Wendy x

Last Saturday I went down to the Grand Opening Day of Wild and Woolly, a yarn shop which has just opened its doors on Lower Clapton Road in East London. I had already heard that Anna, the owner, was stocking some dribble-worthy yarns, and I wasn't disappointed.

I went with a friend, who was taking her first yarn shop trip (and on her birthday too), plus my two boys and one of her children.  We were greeted with a busy shop, and there's nothing that warms my heart more than to see lots of people in a yarn shop.  Within moments a plate of cake was in the children's hands and a glass of bubbly was in mine, and I could tell that I was going to like it there.

The children were also set up making pom-poms, so for the first time in years - years! - I had all the time that I wanted to gaze at, squish, stroke and take in the heady scent of yarn in a yarn shop. Thinking about it, the last time I even tried to go to a yarn shop with children was when my eldest was about 18 months old. He played a game that went something like: 'See how many balls of yarn you can you pull off the shelf before your mummy catches up with you - while she simultaneously collects and replaces the yarn that you're dispatching to the four corners of the shop!' Great fun for everyone! Except mummy. And the yarn shop owner.

One squish was enough to know I was going to buy this:

It's West Yorkshire Spinners' British Mohair. It's like owning my own personal cloud, with just a touch of crispness alongside the fluff to intrigue the senses. I placed it on my swift ready to wind into a yarn cake and marvelled at its drapy wispiness.

I haven't yet decided what I'm going to knit with it: my youngest wants a minecraft sheep and I'm considering that. But I'm also mourning the loss of the original twist of cloud; I need to buy another one just to keep!

There is a lot of colour in Anna's shop too, it's just I'm in a sheepy phase at the moment.  And of course you can never have enough sock yarn.

So thank you to Anna for my wonderful yarn, plus a Grand Day Out. I will be returning, even if I have to take my own bubbly.