Tarndwarncoort

'Tarndwarncoort' is now indelibly marked in the hearts of the six of us (Snb Rosanna) who ventured to the Western District to stay at the National Trust Property, Tarnwarndcoort. The property has been in the Dennis family for around 150 years and Wendy, Dave and Tom Dennis are wonderful hosts.

We stayed in the historic homestead, where we could sit on the verandah and knit, taking in the view and the sounds that surrounded us.

From our kitchen, breakfast room we sat and

knit around the fire with the most wonderful view of the shop! It was a real trial to make the trek across the yard and decide what purchases we 'needed' to make. Made worse by staying from Friday afternoon till Sunday afternoon, by being able to go back and make that 'extra' purchase.

As this was mostly self catering we managed to provide a wonderful feast each night and the 'leftover' lunch on Sunday was magnificant. We even managed to make S'mores - Graham crackers, Hershe chocolate and toasted marshmallows. Even my sweet tooth could only take two! But we did giggle.

Here are my purchases!

And, I did manage to get some spinning done. I finished the extra yarn from the puff yarn, spinning a single and navaho plying. It now goes into the stash to wait with its' partner for inspiration!

The blue is some Wendy Dennis rovings, plyed with blue cotton.

I must admit that both were plyed when I got home. I was tired and on a roll!

I do love stitch patterns

Two projects this month have given me the joy of having to find an appropriate stitch pattern to highlight the yarn. As you may have gathered, I do love stitch dictionaries. I can walk past many a pattern book, but will walk over hot coals to get to a new stitch pattern book.



The first yarn was bought from Wendy Dennis at this years sheep and wool show. I had no idea what sort of pattern might suffice.

I have a lovely book: 'Traditional Knitting Patterns from Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Italy and other European Countries' by James Norbury, which I do love. I found a pattern called 'Mrs Hunters pattern. It's a lovely simple four row pattern and it worked. However, it did skew to the left and would need a little blocking when finished.......This is where I made my mistake.




I decided, in my folly....I had found the perfect pattern....to try and find another. Of course none worked and eventually, giving in to common sense, went back to Mrs Hunter.











It only needed light blocking and is just gorgeous. Lots of movement and of course the yarn is just gorgeous, as you would expect from Wendy Dennis. The joy of knitting is every single length of a beautiful yarn passes gently through your fingers as you watch it grow.




The next yarn is my fine fractal yarn. If you recall (I think I blogged about it?) I was a bit disappointed with the result. However, I now have a request that I knit the yarn up, if the person requesting can have first choice. I am very happy to do this.



The journey for this yarn was a little different. I knew exactly what I wanted and explaining to a friend, found it in a Barbara Walker book (which I don't have, but will one day....), but I then was able to find it in my Traditional knitting book. Hooray! I just love the way the fabric moves, it will work perfectly.....







No, it didn't......it needed larger areas of colour, so I went in search again....how about this one?







Yep, I think I like it!







aaaagh, knitting.................