As blogged about at Clasheen the last couple of weeks have really been totally taken over by golf, Open Week duties and a wonderful ‘Felt and Nostalgia’ workshop with Jeanette Sendler. Thankfully I discovered the wonderful world of Jane Thornley’s freestyle knitting and this has given me a textile related fix in the evenings when I have been too tired to felt or do anything else except collapse on the couch. Coming from a felting background I must confess to being a total natural fibre snob but it has been quite a revelation discovering some of the new environmentally conscious yarns and exploring all the different renewable or recycled sources that they have been created from. Freestyle knitting encourages a playful sense of stitch and colour combining, nothing is forbidden and mistakes get turned into successes, my kind of style! Yarns that I previously thought horrendous can, (horrendous being a subjective term) in combination with more restrained fibres can have the ability to lift the knitting and give a little pop to an otherwise plain piece of work. Deciding that nothing ventured nothing gained I ordered a batch of oddities at knock down prices from Kemps Wool Shop just as an experiment and as soon as they arrived Carmen (we had been felting together when the post came) oohed and aahed over some of the more whacky offerings! Immediately we looked at each other and simultaneously decided that a freestyle scarf in peachy teracotta tones would be my hand made Christmas gift for Carmen!!! Here is a picture of it as it progresses on the needles.
Scarf for Carmen
The bamboo tape is an absolute dream in the hand, beautifully soft and in lovely rich shades but I suspect it will not be the easiest to weave in and secure the ends, not worrying about that at the minute however! The yarn that has been the biggest revelation is Patons ‘Coast’ in soft teracotta (they call the shade salmon), it is a polyamide, acrylic, cotton mixture with little ‘tags’ sticking out and I am finding it gorgeous to knit with. Kemps is a wonderful online shop if you are looking for cheap and unusual yarn, my package of 14 balls only came to £15.96 including P&P and I will be definitely ordering from them again!
Clasheen Uncut 
I would like to start free style knitting, is this something that I have to attend a class of can I read about it and do it
Hi Marietjie, The idea is that you knit or crochet whatever stitches and in whichever colours you like at any given time but I think if you look at Jane Thornley’s website and patterns they would give anyone inspiration to start! Good luck.
Thanks Nicola for the advise, I am going to give it a try, I like to crochet and knitting and needlecraft, if I can put this all together it can only something magnificent, will let you know once I have started with something, boy do I need inspiration