I want to knit ALL the shawls

I never thought I'd be a shawl person.
Then I knit a Hitchhiker and was hooked.
Shawls are a great way to showcase those beautiful hand dyed skeins that accidentally fall into your basket everytime you spend more than a few minutes browsing Etsy. Or is that just me?
Anyhow as I can rarely afford to buy sweater quantities of these yarns my single skeins stash is ever growing and, as I promised myself earlier this year that I would not buy any more random skeins until I'd used what I had, I have been drawn more and more to shawl patterns.

Last month I finally found a pattern worthy of my two special skeins of Blacker Yarns' Cornish Tin.

Helen Stewart of Curious Handmade released a lovely shawl pattern named after the Lake District home of Beatrix Potter -  the Hill Top Shawl is a cosy large crescent featuring wide bands of garter stitch alternating with bands of simple lace.  Helen's shawl was knitted in one colour but I knew there wouldn't be enough yarn in one skein so I decided to knit the garter in the Levant Grey and the lace panels in Dolceath Turquoise. If you want to knit a two colour one like mine i have listed exact quantities in my Ravelry project notes. The shawl knit up really quickly and with Helen's unique percentage method of pattern writing keeping track of progress, and yarn requirements, super easy.

wearing my Hill Top Shawl at Hill Top!

I love it so much and when Helen announced her new project I couldn't wait to jump in!
The Shawl Society is a series of six brand new shawl patterns released over six months. There are no previews - each pattern is a surprise - but a quick look through her back catalogue of patterns has convinced me that these will all be shawls I want to knit (her Pebble Beach has been in my Ravelry queue forever!) and I signed up there and then.  A Ravelry chat thread has been set up in the Curious Handmade group and there is a real buzz of excitement around the Shawl Society already with lots of speculation about pattern possiblities and yarn choices. I for one can't wait till the first pattern release and I am working hard to finish what I have on my needles so I can cast on straight away.

So maybe this year I will get to work through my single skein stash. Which means I don't need to feel too bad when another gorgeous hand dyed skein accidentally drops into my Etsy cart...

If you want to join the Curious Handmade Shawl Society there's a special earlybird price of £9.95 (+VAT) for all six patterns if you sign up before the first pattern release on 9th June 2016. You'll receive a few emails from Helen with hints about yarn choices and quantities but each pattern is top secret until it's release date.


I'd love it if you could join me in The Shawl Society. Do let me know if you decide to sign up and we can knit all the shawls together!

Hello and welcome!

Hello and welcome to my brand new blog!

Let me introduce myself.  My name is Anthea, although you may know me as Forest Flower, and I am a knitter, designer and general all round crafty person who loves to create beautiful things with yarn, bake (and eat) scrummy cakes, read good books, potter in the garden and take lots of photographs.

I am no stranger to blogging having maintained a successful 'crafty mummy blog' - Tales from Mount Pleasant - for many years, but I have found myself more and more wanting to blog about something I love almost as much as my family. Something I can fully immerse myself into because the passion is strong. Plus my now 8 year old son is rather more reluctant to be photographed for humourous parenting stories/product reviews than he used to be!

I am starting fresh because it feels like the right thing to do (and I am ALL about the feels)

In this blog - knit.home - I hope to share with you one of my greatest passions: my love of yarn crafts. Knitting, primarily, but also crochet, felting, weaving and spinning and of course an appreciation for the yarn itself *. Although a life long knitter it is only in recent years my knitting mojo has pretty much taken over my creative life and the desire to discover new yarns and techniques and create new designs can almost be overwhelming.  I hope that this blog will enable me explore even further this more-than-just-a-hobby that makes me who I am.

Blogs are great  resource, full of ideas and inspiration and I hope to provide you, my lovely readers, with plenty of content to inspire you on your own fibre journey, wherever it may lead you. I hope also that you will share your journey with me so that we can grow and learn and enthuse about all the yarny goodness that is out there together! I know it's all a bit bare at the moment but let's look at it as a page full of potential just waiting to happen...

So please pop by again. Subscribe by email or follow me on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter for blog updates. Let's keep in touch. It could be the start of a beautiful friendship.



*yes this does possibly mean lots of stash related posts. I am not ashamed.