Need to STOP! (And I don't want to)

Morning,

Does it count if I made a new year's resolution to stop spending as much money on yarn if I buy them before it hits midnight?

I bought 2 skeins of yarn yesterday. One from Goddess Knitting, and another from a little shop called Wollmeise.

Yep.

I fail at not spending money on yarn. I ordered the Goddess skein from the website direct, but the Wollmeise is coming through swaps with ever-so-kind-and-enabling Ravelry users. I'm also in talks to buy another 2 skeins, just waiting for the payment details.

Excited! I'm getting a skein of 100% merino Ballerina (a luscious purple that I've seen a gorgeous shawl for, my first lace work?), a skein of 80/20 twin WD Vergissmeinnicht (Forget me not which will make lovely socks) which are lovely, and (supposedly) lastly a skein of 100% Fuschia which is a shocking bright pink that would make amaaaazing socks :D

Now I'm really impatient for them to arrive (which will take aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages, and I'll have to pay for customs probably) and then not buy any more for the next 3 months. Which will probably be really easy, on account of how hard it is to actually buy them from the online shop when there's an update!

At midnight tonight I can start making my sock for this month's YOSS sock!

xx

Crafty New Year Resolutions

Morning,

I've decided to make some crafting new year resolutions. Care to join in?

This year I intend to:

- learn to use my sewing machine properly, and make a garment that I can wear
- knit more socks!
- complete my knitting course, and my project for it
- update this blog more often
- complete a 52 photography project (1 picture a week, minimum)

At the moment it's fairly open ended, which for me is good because I get tied down in specifics and then if it doesn't look like I can do it then I give up.

I'm going to join and knit up more socks as part of the Ravelry group 'Year of Stash Socks 2011' which aims to get people using all the lovely yarn hidden away in stashes and make some lovely socks to display them.

I'm going to sign up because as of right now;

- I have 5 skeins of sock wool that I need to use before I buy more in the next Knitting & Stitching shows, and so that I can get better at knitting overall.
- At least one pattern of the 2 provided each month will be free, so that will help budget wise - and I won't be buying yarn and then not using it, which will also be better for my budget as it will (supposedly) stop me from buying any new yarn!
- I liked knitting my first sock, and I want to see where it goes :)

I also subscribed to Making magazine yesterday, so that will provide lots of lovely inspiration for dressmaking ideas, and the more crafting I do the more pictures I take of what I make, and the more the blog gets updated!

It all ties in very nicely! What are your new year resolutions?

xx

Merry Christmas!!

And a happy new year! I hope you all have time to do something you like over Christmas :)

Yesterday was lovely. I had a sewing machine!! Well excited about that, does anyone know of any blogs with sewing tutorials on? I've not used one before so I'm looking forward to doing new projects and learning as I go. There is a dressmaking for beginners course run by the centre where I attend my knitting course, but it's 15 weeks long and it's going to be too difficult for me to rearrange all my shifts in work so that I can attend them all.

I also had a brilliant knitting solutions book (I'll get the proper name soon) which is written by an experienced knitter and is basically full of answers and solutions to problems knitters may come across. I've only had a quick flick through but it does look great - a brilliant Ravelry alternative if I can't get online as well!

I made a chocolate log yesterday, I'll post a picture soon. It looked pretty good (even if I say so myself!).

Unfortunately 3 out of the 4 of us are ill with something, but it's still nice to be home even if I am ill!

Merry Christmas xx

Finished!!

Evening!

Only a quick post as I'm desperate to go to bed (and the toilet, but that's the Guinness talking)!

I finished my sock last week and I love it! I've ordered another two skeins of wool from Abstract Cat yarns as a Christmas present to myself!

I've also started and completed a scarf for my friend Angharad. She picked out some Sirdar Squiggle yarn in 'Applejack' back in October and I've been wondering for ages what to make with it. It's a super chunky yarn made of two chunky yarns twisted around each other - and each strand is variegated which means there are different colours running throughout it! Took a long time, and some Ravelry advice but I decided on a scarf pattern in the end. Actually only took about 3 hours to knit from start to finish, really quick and it actually looks pretty good to! It uses twisted drop stitch so each stitch opens out and shows the construction of the yarn with the double strands. I think it looks pretty good, and it should be nice and warm and cosy!

xx

Sock Progress!

Morning!

Gosh I haven't updated my sock report on here for ages! I literally spent the week before last knitting my sock every spare moment I had - on the bus, breaks, at home... Then an expansion for one of my favourite games was released and I spent a week pretty much just playing that!

I've completed the gusset (which took forever). Knitting 7 inches of stocking stitch is really tiresome and boring, to the point where I was just getting bored of the whole thing so the game was a good distraction.

However I'm pleased to report that tonight I have finished the toe shaping! Yay!! I'll post a picture when it's finished, but I think I've just got the kitchener stitch to do to stitch up the seam on the toes. Not really looking forward to it as it does look a little confusing on the tutorial I'm using (Silver's Sock Class) but if I can turn a heel then I can definitely do it :D

More pictures soon!

xx

Turning the heel!

Well, not quite. But I'm getting to that point! Exciting :-)

xx

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Inspiration

I know exactly what to with my other skein of Pool Party :-)

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Ripped my Sleeve

Evening,

Monday night was Knitting Night. Week 4 of the Knitting course. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'd nearly finished my sleeve so I took it along with me, and Gabrielle came to have a look at it. Me being impatient and overeager - it turned out I'd read the pattern wrong, and instead of doing increases on each end of a certain row, I'd only done them on one side. I ripped back 82 rows! Then started another so that I can steam the kinks out of the old ball so as to not affect the tension in any way.

Bit of a horrible day in work last night. It seems like everywhere apart from Reading has had snow this week. One of our courier collection points was snowed in, and meant that instead of us getting ~100 samples at 5pm when there were lots of us around and plenty of time to process them, we were told we were getting 120 of them after 10pm!

Didn't make the for the best evening. We finished all the samples by 9pm, and then had to lose 1.5 hours. Thankfully I had my knitting with me so I did about 12 rows of my sleeve which is good.

The exciting news for yesterday is that more wool arrived! I naughtily bought some more Abstract Cat yarn last week. I blame Laura (the lady that makes them) for making them look so pretty! She currently has a sale on (so be quick) and I picked up two skeins of Pool Party. I'm not supposed to be buying any until after Christmas but I justified it because it was on sale... hehe!

I rolled one into a ball while I watched a documentary on iPlayer, thankfully it didn't take very long!

I did think about using them for a shawl or something, but I've impulsively just cast on my first sock!

It's so pretty :) There's plenty more left on Abstract Cat if you fall in love like I do!

I didn't fancy knitting any more of my sleeve, and this week was Sock Knitting focus week on the Knitting course. We have two ladies making their first pair of socks on magic loop, and on Monday Gabrielle brought in several pairs of hers to better show how to construct and turn the heel, and finish the toes.

I've been saying that I was going to make socks for a while, I bought my 2.5mm dpns two days after I went to the Knitting & Stitching Show back at the beginning of October. Well now I'm finally using them! I'm using Silver's Sock Class as a tutorial, which has plenty of pictures of the different stages on dpns and I'm trying to get used to holding 4 needles at once!

Wish me luck!! 

xx

A Sleeve!

Sorry for the bad picture!

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Have a look at these beauties!

Evening :)

How cool are these?!

I randomly found this link and saved it so that I could post it on here, they are fab!

Last night's knitting class was fun. Three people couldn't make it so we pulled the tables together and sat ourselves around one giant one, instead of around 4 separate ones. It made a big difference, and it was much nicer and easier to talk to everyone.

I showed Fabba my trick of picking up dropped stitches, or whenever I need a helping hand by using a knitting marker pin that one of the class leaders hadn't seen before. In turn, they checked my pattern and made sure it was okay, helped me work out my right and wrong sides for my knitting and I got stuck in with my sleeve!

Tonight was Photography night (PhotoSoc). It's the first one I've been to this academic year, as I've just been busy in work, ill or just didn't feel up to it! Bad habits :( Tonight was a practical studio session which was unlike the one last year in that last years was specifically so that the DramaSoc could get shots done for an upcoming play programme. Tonight's was more on different types of lighting, different ways of setting the shoot up to achieve different effects etc. And I got to have a go! Last year I only had my digital compact, which while fully manual is not ideal! I couldn't attach the flash sync, so had to try and time my shots to catch the flash set off by those doing the photography with SLRs using the flash sync. Kinda difficult! Plus at the end of it all, even thought I got some good shots, the ISO noise rendered them useless.

Tonight I had my (borrowed) SLR and now I just need to have a look and maybe do some tweaks before I can put them on Flickr :)

Happy Sara :)

xx

Casting on a sleeve

Morning,

Just thought I'd pop this up quickly before I head to work.



Cast on a sleeve last night. This is the cuff, 10cm of K1, P1 ribbing. I don't think it's looking too bad so far...

xx

Got my wool, I'm good to go!

Evening,

Life is pretty good (hopefully). Dat's currently in the middle of his triple bypass operation. It was scheduled for Wednesday but an earlier slot came up, they asked if he wanted it and Dat said yes. 

I've just bought my yarn for my jumper pattern! I started a vintage knitting course last week. Last week was about meeting everyone, talking about the course and picking some patterns that we each liked. I found three I wanted to do, and after having some trouble with my favourite (second most difficult of the three) I'm now making the easiest pattern. I've not made a jumper before so it'll be challenging. It's a 36 line repeating pattern so I'd best not mess it up!

I've got a green/turquoise chunky acrylic yarn. It probably won't me amazing but I'm learning :) At £1.79 a ball it was most definitely a shit load cheaper than the other yarns I saw on the weekend!! Huge difference between £180 and £15!

Will post a pic of the colour when I manage to take some in natural light :)

xx

Knit Cafe book

Evening!

I hope you're well. I'm freezing and watching the boyfriend go kart at a random spot in London. It's his friends birthday and they were supposed to start at 5.30. They started an hour later, but are only now actually racing!

I'm pretty content though. I visited Loop and I Knit today. I was hoping to buy some yarn to knit my vintage jumper pattern but I worked out it would cost me about £160 to buy the necessary amount in Loop. Gutted :-( It was full of gorgeous yarns, and I was quite happy to stand, look and stroke! Tom was with me and a bit bored though, so we left and went to the pub to see the second half of his favourite football team play. Compromise eh?!

After that we travelled to Waterloo to visit I Knit. By this point I'd decided I was going to make the other jumper pattern, which is slightly easier and knit in DK on 7mm needles instead of 4-ply on 4 different sizes! It was still pretty expensive to get the necessary amount of DK though so I gave up.

I'll have to try again at Jacksons on Monday. The most expensive 4-ply they had was £4 a ball. Granted it probably won't be as pretty, but I think I should play it safe to begin with until I know the pattern and know I like the end results!

On the way to go karting we walked past a discounted book store. I picked up a copy or Knit Cafe for £3.99 which is well worth it (rrp £9.99).

I've just read the entire thing while waiting for the go karters. There's a few patterns in there I just know I'm going to make! If you find a copy take a look.

I'd love it if there was somewhere similar in Reading, I love the whole feel, idea and philosophy behind it. If I could open one, I would :-)

Have a good evening!

xx

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Quiet one?

Waiting for Tom to finish his pint and watching his football game so that we can go to Waterloo to buy some wool :-)

xx

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My vintage knitting pattern!

On Monday I went to the first class of the Generations Together, Knitting Together course I enrolled on.

We spent 2 hours talking about the course, what we hoped to get out it it, knitting, yarns, and looking at hundreds of patterns.

I picked out 3 that I liked, and most importantly (for me) that I would wear. I see lots of gorgeous patterns but I'm never sure I would wear them. These I would :-)

I got some photocopies done so that I can make them even after the course finishes.

I've chosen to make the one in the picture for the course. It's from an Elle book of designs from France, 1984. It's the kind of thing I would wear with jeans or leggings, day or night :-)

It's knitted in 4-ply which is the same as sock wool, so its gonna take a lot of time but I'm looking forward. It'll stretch me, which is good as there are plenty of ladies there that will be able to help me.

It's a sweater so it involves making up, changing needle sizes, diagonal ribbing, and shaping. I wouldn't have dared try something like that otherwise. I can't even work up the nerve to knit socks!

xx

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Christmas cards are done!

This is a sneak preview of one of the Christmas cards I've done this year. I won't post the finished ones in case an intended recipient sees them, but I'm glad I have finished them.

I've been doing these while giving my wrist a rest from knitting.

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Lucky, Lucky Man

Morning,

My grandfather had a heart attack on Monday. He died three times. He was running for a train to go to a Ramblers meeting (he's a really fit man for his age) and had run up 2 flights of stairs, across a bridge and down 2 flights of stairs. He bought his ticket, sat down on a seat on the platform and keeled over.

Incredibly luckily there was an off duty policewoman and an asian student also on the platform. Someone noticed Dat had collapsed and they both knew first aid and went to help. They did CPR on him for 20 minutes until the ambulance came. He had another heart attack on the platform during the CPR, and another inside the ambulance where they used a defibrillator and brought him back again.

This all happened at 9am. I turned up at the same train station at 10.30am, got my train from the same platform quite happily and went home. There were no signs of anything having happened.

I then had a text from Mam at 3.30pm to say that he'd collapsed and she'd be in touch. Over the next half hour or so she told me what had happened.

He's currently in Coronary Care which is basically intensive care. They're hoping to move him onto a normal ward soon, if not already, as his blood pressure and heart rhythm are stable now. We're waiting for a bed to become available at a larger, specialised hospital. They rushed him to the nearest available one when he collapsed, but it doesn't have the necessary equipment to see whether he needs a stent or a bypass operation. He'll be moved to the larger hospital to have the tests and the operations if needed.

He doesn't remember anything from Monday. The off duty policewoman turned up at the hospital afterwards to return his rucksack which had been left on the platform in all the fuss. It had his car keys etc in it, so when Dat had come around he'd been fussing over it. This incredibly nice, good person went to the hospital and asked around to track him down and return the rucksack. She met Dat and my Auntie who was with him, and they got to say thanks personally to her for saving his life, which is an awesome thing. They are going to try to track down the Asian student to thank as well.

He was very, very, lucky.

xx

Stocking up!

Plenty of fun for the next few weeks :-)

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Postponement :(

Afternoon,

Just got off the phone with a lady from New Directions. My knitting course is being postponed for a week while they wait for a few more people to enrol :(

It now starts on the 8th instead of the 1st, which wouldn't be a big deal except that now I have to get people to swap shifts with me again, and it will involve two people instead of one straight swap.

Little bit irritating but can't be helped.

xx

Pizazz!

Howdy!

On Friday this lovely package was delivered for me in work, it certainly cheered me up! (The pictures were taken at home, not in work - no twister bed covers in work unfortunately!)

(I'd already been impatient and opened it in work, and then wrapped it up and opened it again to take pictures of it :)

Ta dah! Isn't she gorgeous?!

I'm completely in love. The colours are gorgeous (although still having camera colour issues, it's even more beautiful in the flesh/yarn). 

It didn't take very long to wrap into a ball either - unlike the 1000m laceweight yarn I bought in the Knitting & Stitching show which took Mam and I three hours to do!

I'm chuffed, now I just an easy sock pattern for me to make my first pair of socks with!!

Don't forget you can get your hands on some of this if you visit Abstract Cat Crafts on Folksy. You just need to make an account and off you go! I highly recommend it :)

xx

Manic Weekend!

Evening,

I wanted to post yesterday but life got in the way :)

I came home on Saturday morning to help decorate my brothers bedroom as a surprise for his 17th birthday. He's currently in Canada for the next week with school, and has no idea it's being done. The old Manchester United stuff has been binned, and the new stuff is coming in!

Mam first mentioned it when I asked what she'd like for her birthday two weeks ago. She replied that she didn't want anything, but it would be a big help if I could do the painting for Daniels room if they decided to do it. Based on this I assumed that I'd be spending Saturday afternoon painting!

Nope.

I got off the train and went straight up to see my Grandparents to collect Mam who was looking after Gu (she needs a carer). Neither Dadcu or Mam could decide quite how the wood of the new furniture they'd bought on Thursday looked, so Dadcu and I went to the furniture store to see it. They both remembered it as being quite dark, almost black.

Does this look almost black to you?!

(The dresser, not the chest of drawers!!)

This is the floor in his room at the moment. We were trying to match it which proved a little difficult. We figured with a red tinge (the furniture is rubber wood that has then been treated and originally looks more like pine) that a dark floor and white walls would go well.

Once we got to B&Q we decided that the walnut was the best as the mahogany would have too much red in it. Except that the mahogany has been discontinued. That's pretty much where Saturday ended.

This morning we went looking again. We eventually found a shop with the 2.5 ltr tub of varnish in stock, but he sticker for dark oak was lighter than the medium oak! So we befriended a man in Focus who made a deal with us: We could have the 2.5 ltr tub of dark oak (which was £47.99!!!) and take it home with us and test a patch. If it wasn't what we wanted we could refund it, even though we'd opened and used it. That was really kind of them, so that's what we did.

We decided that it should be okay, and tbh Mam and I were not really in the mood for any more driving! Instead we emptied and sorted through everything in the room. We hoovered and washed the floor. Then I got rid of all the blu tac off the walls, and we tackled these things while waiting for the varnish to dry:

The theme used to be football, so there are a lot of football stickers on the wall! Or used to be :)

Unfortunately taking off those pulled some of the paint off. Bit annoying but no big worry.

My foot and my painting jeans :) It's been quite hard getting my camera to pick up an accurate colour, quite frustrating.

Once the varnish was properly dry, we then started re-arranging everything so that we could clear half the room to start varnishing the floor.

We took a break to top up on some liquids! (The rose was mine :) )

And then it was time to varnish! The tub came with it's own pad-on-a-pole that we used.

It came out a lot darker using that. We did the patch using a brush because if we'd used the pad and the colour hadn't been right, there's no way we would have been able to refund it.

By this time it was 6pm and I had to leave to go and look after Gu while Dadcu went to Choir practise. Mam finished off the half, and when I came back it looks like this:

Dark oak did indeed turn out to be dark in the end!

xx

Folksy Lusting

Howdy,

Thought I'd cheer myself up by browsing Folksy - always a dangerous idea!! (I've used smaller photos as I don't want to annoy the sellers. Click on the links to see the item in full!)

I bought myself this on Tuesday (to celebrate pay day, plus I couldn't resist!):

It's available from Abstract Cat Crafts and I just love it. I'm looking forward to trying out my new dpns when it arrives. Each is hand dyed and hand painted, and I just *want*.

[I should probably explain I own about 100 pairs of socks, and each one is different. I kinda collect them :) So my colourful sock urges have spilt over into yarn buying!]

I'm lusting after the Bejewelled, Doodlebug, Gershwin, English Country Garden, Hippy Chick, Big Top and Birdhouse yarns that are listed at the moment! I'm being very good though :) I might add them to my Christmas wish list!

Next is this Nellie The Elephant photo frame from Marge Designs. I have a similar box frame that I bought when I was 11 or 12. It has a teddy bear sitting on the toilet, reading a newspaper in his bathroom. I loved it then, and I love it now. Something about it tickles me :)

I love these owl earrings from Szeya Designs, they're exactly the style of my friend Liz. She always had the quirkiest, coolest earrings in school and these would be right up her street :)

And finally this Petal print from Arty Herberts. Each print is unique and is part of their 1 million pieces of art project. This one is number 0627 :)

What have you found on Folksy this week?

Happy browsing!

xx

Emergency Executive Decision!

Evening,

I've decided to stop with the shawl.

1) I'm not enjoying knitting it any more, because I'm stressing myself out trying to knit it as quickly as possible. When each row is taking about 15 minutes to knit that's not exactly possible.

2) I opened it up fully on my 32" circs today and I have made a lot of mistakes from rushing. There are about 6 holes that I don't really know what went wrong, but I don't really want to give Gu a holey shawl! There's also a dropped stitch that I'm lucky hasn't run but stayed put. It's about 6 rows back though, and at 149sts per row, that's a lot of work to frog.

3) The killer: I don't think it's going to be big enough. I've checked the pattern again and I'm fairly sure that the designer was using a chunkier yarn than I am. I'm using DK yarn but the pattern says you should be able to get 4.5 sts per inch. That's not DK gauge. Gu's a size 16 and it's going to go around her shoulders, and I just don't think it's going to be big enough :(

So what's the plan of attack?

I'm going to take it home with me and cast off. Without cutting the thread. Then I'm going to measure it on Gu when I visit and see how much bigger it needs to be. Then I'll have fun(!) frogging the entire thing back to the start, and rewinding the yarn back onto the balls again.

Then I'll start again. But I'm going to go slowly, and aim for Christmas. I'll be saving my wrist, and my sanity!

xx

Knitting Aches and Pains

Evening,

I'm starting to be in pain now.

My job involves a lot of manual labour, which puts me at a higher risk of developing RSI. I injured my right wrist 4 months after I joined, through shaking bottles (part of the job and needs doing about 150-300 times a night). It took 9 months for the pain to disappear completely. The occupational health nurse told me to get trained in more areas - very helpful!

My wrist started aching yesterday, but I have an on-going problem with another aspect of my job exasperating the old weakness so I assumed it was from that. I didn't do much knitting last night, but I did about an hour or so this morning.

This afternoon while knitting at my tea break in work, I started getting a cramp like pain. I assumed it was because I was trying to go fairly quickly so that I could finish the row and return to work. I don't like leaving my knitting in the middle of a row!

This evening while working I noticed that the cramp pain never fully left, which is not a good sign.

I may not be able to finish this shawl after all :(

xx

Shawl Update

Morning,

The shawl is coming along nicely. I've done up to the 4th increase which means it's grown from 13 to 121 stitches which is pretty time consuming. I've been knitting for about 6-7 hours today, it's time to go to bed soon!

It's now long enough that it sits on my shoulders and is about 8 inches in length. That'll get longer after blocking which I haven't decided quite how to do yet. I know I'll probably end up taking it home on Saturday and blocking it there with Mam's help, and hopefully it will dry by Sunday or Monday morning and I can give it to Gu. If not, I can leave it in Mam's capable hands and she'll deliver it for me when it's ready.

I reckon I'm about 40% through now. The pattern states that a shawlette will probably reach increase row 8 or 9, and I'm halfway between increase rows 4 and 5 at the moment so I'm halfway technically. However seeing as it still needs to increase from 121 to 241 stitches the slowest part is still to come. Each row is taking me about 10 minutes to knit or purl. I've watched 6 episodes of Merlin and 1 episode of Mock the Week today! I have to have something on to watch or I just get bored and put the knitting down. I think it's the sheer amount of stitches per row which are putting me off slightly, I loved making my scarf!

It's 2.30am so definitely time for bed now, night!

xx

Hoarding Again

Morning,

I hope you all had a lovely weekend. Today is the Tom's birthday, and he decided that he wanted to go see his favourite team play on Saturday for his birthday treat. He supports Aston Villa, so we had a nice day in Birmingham. Wandering around the shops in the morning, then some lunch and a train to Villa Park.

I've cast on a new shawl for my Grandmother. The pattern can be found on Ravelry. It's simple enough but I think it looks pretty cool. It's my first time using circulars, which I'm kind of enjoying so far. The pattern's kicked me up the bum a few times already though! The first time I realised that I'd been doing the M1 increases the wrong way - instead of lifting with the left and knitting into the back of the loop, I'd been lifting with the right, transferring it onto the left needle then knitting into the front. Silly Sara! I spent 25 minutes on the train undoing that whole row on Friday on my way to see Tom. I've already done one row of increases like that but it's too far back and close to the neckline so I'm going to leave it.

Last night after working out how to do the M1s (and knitting using a darning needle because the increases are so tight) I realised that I had double the amount of stitches I was supposed to and had been on autopilot doing K1, M1 increases instead of M1, K2. So I then had to undo 3 rows very carefully to get back to that, using the darning needle to put the stitches back on the needle (I'm hopeless at frogging, I normally always drop stitches)  and then knit the whole three rows again.

I'm doubtful I'll get the shawl finished by the weekend as I would like (I'll be going back home for the weekend so I could give it to her then) but I'll do as much as I can. Finger tip pain permitting!

I hit the craft shops yesterday afternoon. I've been meaning to make some Christmas presents this year since around July. I finally tracked down the two things I need to make them, which was no easy matter. Thankfully one of them was reduced by an unexpected £2.50 which helped alleviate the fact that the other wasn't £7 as I'd thought but closer to £12!

Oh well :) Now I just need a bigger room to put everything in, as usual!!

xx

Family

Afternoon,

I have a small stash of scrapbook paper 6x6 that I've had organised according to colour for over a year now. Last week I wrote a letter to my friend, and decided to use some of my stash. I came across one sheet that I bought in a pack off Ebay which I love. I think it's especially relevant to her, so I've decided to post it to her, but I want to write some of the quotes here.

It's a piece of 6x6 covered in different quotes and sayings, on a brown background in different fonts, sizes and colours. Kinda like a Subway art sign.

Families are strange and wonderful
Nothing is crazier than family
Fam-i-ly n. I. A group of relatives, especially parents and their children
The family is one of nature's masterpieces - George Santayana
Nothing says home like a family together
In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future - Alex Haley
I love my family

xx

My Blanket

It was my Mams birthday yesterday so I'm back home for a few days. I took my knitting with me to show Mam seeing as she was the one who introduced me to it.

Mam has a needle case with about 20 needles in it that she's given me! It's got straight, double pointed, cable and circular needles. I'm hoping I can get her to keep some of the duplicates and get her back into knitting. Probably wishful thinking though.

While looking for the case in the attic, she found my baby blanket that Gu made me. I'm the only one of the grandchildren to have one, I was the first of 4. The blanket is gorgeous. It's made in a cream baby wool, and in an intricate leaf lace pattern. It must have taken months to complete! She was a really talented knitter. It's taller and wider than I am 23 years on so I snuggled up under it last night while watching the tv feeling loved and cosy.

For the time being it's going to stay at home safe, but when I get a house of my own its going to have pride of place.

xx

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The Knitting & Stitching Show - Haul!

These are my pictures of my Knitting & Stitching Show 2010 haul.

(Please excuse the messy bed, I was about to climb in for a nap :) )

General spread picture :)

This is the copy of Let's Knit and the contents of the goody bag it came in. Behind /under it is the copy of the book with 70+ designs.

The pile of leaflets and business cards that I picked up on my way around. If I liked a stall and wanted to keep the name for future reference, I picked it up! Fair few about ribbons and fabric, as well as knitting yarns and supplies.

The show guide. To be perfectly honest I could have done without it, as I already had a map from the workshop letter. I barely used it, but it does list the details of all the exhibitors and vendors so may be useful in the future.

I loved these mini buttons :) Not entirely sure what I want to do with them yet, but they are gorgeous. 

I picked up these stars first, then the buttons above. I absolutely love polka dots, and my favourite shape is a star. These are just me all over :) The minimum £10 for card purchases helped out a little...

This is my stash from the Beginners Knitting workshop. I chose to go for 4mm needles which meant that I had a choice of this black/grey tweed wool, the same in blue or a purple/burgundy colour. As my jacket is purple and I already have a blue scarf in the making, I decided to go for the grey/black. Might make something for my Dad someday. 

If you chose the 6mm needles then you got to choose between this rainbow coloured yarn or a light purple yarn. The rainbow yarn looks kinda natty, but is incredibly soft. I think it's a polyamid/merino blend. We were invited to take a second ball of yarn and I was the only one who chose the 4mm out of 5 people :) 

These are kits! The red polka dot (see the polka dot obsession?) makes up a cupcake which I plan on using for a pin cushion. The black polka dot kit makes up a waistcoat for a wine bottle. It made me giggle loads when I saw it, and I usually buy a bottle of wine of my Dads birthday, so I've decided to make this for him. (He'll never see this blog so it's safe to post!)

These stamps are so pretty, the heart one especially. I enjoy making cards (when I'm in the mood for it, I go through phases in everything). I'm pretty sure I've seen the butterfly stamp in a book, in a chapter that taught different stamping techniques. All the same, they were both reasonably cheap and pretty!

These are my skeins. The teal on the left is the most soft I've ever felt (and expensive at £13.99!) and the purple sock yarn on the right was close behind at £12.50. How have I gone from buying balls of Sirdar Big Softie at £2.45 a ball to these at £13.99 a skein!?

Individual shots. These have also gone on my Ravelry profile.

Now I just need to figure out a sock pattern, and what to do with the other!

xx