Estella

Yesterday, seeing as it’s now September and no longer officially ‘summer’, was warm and summery and not at all like the dismalness that has prevailed since June. My friend Jamie has a new camera to play with and consequently volunteered to be take some photos of my new beret (er that would be one of my new berets). We had a lot of fun wandering around pretending to be tourists and investigated the interior of St Giles cathedral, which is very pretty and almost certainly on every list of must see sights in Edinburgh. We’re both from here but neither of us had ever been inside. We also went to the museum of childhood, an old favourite but way less creepy since they’ve turned the lights up in the doll room. It was warm enough that buying ice cream didn’t seem ridiculous and it certainly added something to our tourist pretence, but we did at least resist the urge to ask the real tourists stupid questions (eg. where’s the castle?).

My local tip is that this lovely herb garden is off the royal mile, near the bottom just past the graveyard. It doesn’t seem very well known, and doesn’t look like much from the street so it’s always quiet and peaceful. At least a little like a secret garden.

Being a tourist, even a pretend one, is hard work, especially in a city that it is impossible to go anywhere as the crow flies and in which the ground is never flat, so we spent the evening vegetating and watching Tank Girl. We may be two of the only people who love that film, although that’s not the only reason we’re friends. We also discovered, while trying to find out what else Tank Girl has been in on IMDB (umm… nothing very notable) that Jet Girl = Naomi Watts. Well that would be why she looks so familiar, huh?

Anyway, Estella, aka star stitch beret. These photos, with their pretty back drops, are maybe not the best for actually seeing the detail – don’t worry though I’ll take some boring but clearer ones for the pattern. Unless you like mystery knits? It’s basically a nice slouchy beret, although it would be very simple to make less slouchy, in a two colour star stitch pattern.

I love this yarn, baby lama from Mirasol. So very soft and not at all itchy in the way that alpaca so often is. The colours are beautiful, I spent a good twenty minutes sitting on the shop floor trying to choose, these photos really don’t show the depth of the colours. Some of the proceeds from the yarn range also goes to funding a school in Peru, although I couldn’t find much in the way of exact details about what percentage etc. My cynicism aside the yarn is gorgeous and the project certainly seems to be worth supporting. They have a bunch of different partners to distribute the yarn in different countries so I think that it’s fairly widely available. According to the shop display it’s exclusive to John Lewis here. There were 3 other yarns in the range, although they didn’t have the wool / cotton blend while I was there or I might have bought some of that too, there were also some pattern booklets but I’m not sure what they’re like. I think they’re all designed by Jane Ellison, who also seems to have been involved in designing the branding and yarn.
Pattern soon – and I really mean that this time. It shouldn’t take too long because I really am getting better at writing patterns as I go. Next mission – writing a pattern before knitting it. I’m convinced this is a skill that I’m going to need to develop in my efforts to be a professional designer. Did I just type those two words in reference to myself? Eep.

The dress is from Jigsaw, about a year ago. I’ve reached the conclusion that my special occasion clothes will never be worn if I wait for suitable occasions to turn up. That it makes me happy seems like a good enough reason to wear them just because, and photo shoots are always a good excuse.