And he's here!

He's here - he's no longer legless or even armless - and he has eyes... he's not quite so happy with his nose but we'll just leave that one for now and see what happens. May I introduce Owen?

Sock it to me

There's something really calming about always having a pair of plain, easy to knit socks on the needles - all ready to go in their little project bag which can be grabbed and stuffed into a handbag at the last minute. You can knit them in the car and on the train and in the waiting room and all sorts of places. There's very little to think about with plain knitting, but the fab colours and patterns keep you going. So here's the latest finished pair - all purpley and soft.
 And I'm already on the second one of their successors - Don't think I could travel without a pair of socks on the go...

It growed!

So the blanket wasn't really big enough, and I did have 5 balls of wool left (and some odds and ends), so of  course it had to get bigger. I picked up stitches and extended it log-cabinwise, then added an icord edging. I don't know if it's how you're meant to do an icord edging but it seemed to work!

Mum's birthday Shetland shawl grew pretty quickly too - just over 10 days of knitting then a day to block it out. I love the way the colours wave in and out with the Old Shale pattern. It was great to do and I think she liked it!

Muffins and blankets

Bake number two from my Christmas book - Blueberry and Lemon Muffins - with a secret bite of cream cheese in the middle and covered in lemon drizzle - very nice indeed! And I learned how to use the whisk bit of my food processor (and where it was).

For some reason which I can't work out my thighs get awfully cold these days - so they really needed their own little lap blanket. Funnily enough I had some Christmas money left over and John Lewis had a sale on so some of the Rowan Felted Tweed Chunky came home with me and is now halfway to being a lap blanket:

I know this isn't quite in the Cold Sheeping 2012 spirit but on the other hand I didn't want to eat into any of the sweater amounts of yarn and I didn't have anything really suitable anyway..... honest. And this is reinforcing how great it is to buy something and start it immediately!

He that hath ears to hear

He that hath ears to hear ..... currently also speaking or seeing no evil! One leg is almost finished but I need to go on a  button hunt first as they're needed for the joints. But Owen is becoming more bear like every day.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year folks! And since I got my own internet access and new laptop sorted out in December then there might even be a few more posts this year....

So how did the cold sheep go? Well I knitted over 15,000 yards - but have to admit I did add some to the stash too. But I learned some things. It's a great feeling to buy something and come home and knit it up immediately! It's good to buy things that you know what you are going to do with!

The stash is now mostly large amounts - most of the odd balls got used up last year - so 2012 will be the year of big things....

But first, my first foot, Owen - currently the headless bear but getting there.

One week in July

last week was lovely - a week spent in stranraer with my mum the pair of us plotting and planning some knitting projects to use up some of our stash - mostly to finallyy to finish off our cottons. So a lot of time was spent looking at patterns and on ravelry but we each now have 5 project bags with a pattern and wool in each one ready and waiting.

I even managed to finish one that I started - a lacey scarf in RYC Silk Cotton only 2 balls at the grand cost of 80p each in a John Lewis sale a couple of summer's ago!

 W e also had chores to do - Alex the tiger was needing an operation and a bath !

And finally peace was shattered when everyone else came home - guess where Andrew had been!

The Cold Sheep bug

Well I've been good since New Lanark in April and haven't bought any more wool - but I've knitted up lots! Some of that was thanks to the impetus of a Cold Sheep Knit Along over on Ravelry - so my tally for that was a baktus scarf, a pair of cosy socks for my mum, a cowl and fingerless gloves to match, a rainbow shawl from kureyon sock yarn that didn't want to be socks, a pair of socks in fingering weight yarn I brought back from Germany and somehow they magically match each other, and a thick hat that covers my ears for the winter! I've also finished a danish tie shawl and a pink cotton sweater. So am feeling good about it all!

We went to New Lanark!

Knitting again! And cake too.

Yay! The knitting embargo has been lifted ... at last. As long as I now knit with my new correct posture .... and of course not for too long without a break (Hmm). The arm is still a bit stiff but nothing like what it was. So a wee catch up - I only did half the Belinda as the variegated kidsilk I got to do the other half didn't really match in the end. So it's a scarf instead and lovely and soft too. Then it was on to finish the waistcoat ... the one that I thought about ripping out at least 4 times but persuaded myself to keep going. Bad move. The construction is ingenius but it only fits a beanpole which I am not. After a session spent pinning it onto my sister to see what could be done it got ripped out. Much to the joy of my nephew who got to do some of the ripping out. I was down at my sister's and we'd planned to watch Harry Potter that night so it was a quick Ravelry pattern search to see what I could find... and I found this great looking shawl which I thought would suit the wool. Of course the pattern was in Danish. But luckily enough I found an English translation so started off the lace edging. And after faffing around with needle sizes and exactly what to do with the yarn overs I think this is going to be good!

And the cake. Well I decided to use my Tesco vouchers to get Good Food magazine - new recipes to try out, hopefully healthy eating etc etc. So of course I made a cake! Kind of a lemon drizzle cake with potatoes and gluten free flour. And it worked.

Cold Sheeping!

I moved home at the end of the summer and was rather shocked to discover how much (among other things...) wool I possess. Some  of it has been with me rather a long time - like the wool I brought back from Harris in 1991.... eek. So even though I did get rid of some there are several rather large plastic really useful boxes in the spare room, which my partner says goes 'meh' whenever he opens the door. So I have been very good and not bought any more wool AT ALL since July 2010 - and then just recently I joined a Cold Sheeping group on Ravelry! So that's it in 2011 I am cold sheeping!! No more wool to be bought til I have used it all up....
But I have to warn you - such resolutions are dangerous. I spent a weekend sorting and organising and making notes of what I had. It was the first weekend I was at home after the New Year so of course I was rushing around like an eejit trying to get all the cleaning and hoovering and washing done. And later in teh day I realised my arm was sore. And almost two weeks later it still is! Apparently I have tennis elbow. Sigh. Which of coure means no knitting and lots of rest. So my question is how do you relax when you can't knit?

Finally finished Christmas and New Year!

Well that's me back home and finished with all our gallivanting over the festive period - from home to OH's mum's in Dundee then to my family then home then back to Dundee then home then a quick New Year surprise trip down to my mum at Stranraer. Whew. No wonder I'm tired and have spent today kind of faffing about before starting back proper into all the things I need to do! No pics of all the fun things like playing with younger nephew's new pool table and being rubbish at Wii games though...

View from the living room window a couple of days before the big day...

 Dinner table reindeers and cake...

 The Christmas knitting revealed! A herringbone neckwarmer and wristlets in Rowan Big Wool for mum:

 And a Noro Transitions cowl and wristwarmers for my sister:

And of course snowman and the felted tree came with us on our travels!

It's getting close to Christmas! knit knit knit....

And I always think of red - probably my fave colour - is such a Christmassy colour. I did this Lacey Baktus for a present for my partner's mother - who's in hospital just now. It seemed such a cheery colour and might hopefully ward off any draughts round the neck! The wool is from the stash - it's Fyberspates BFL sock wool which I got a job lot of 6 skeins last year and have just about got through them! I find although the socks are lovely I wear holes in the bottom of the heels which is kind of depressing so wanted to try  something else with the yarn instead.

Blocking it was a bit problematic - I didn't like all the little pin scallops I got or the way it was all kind of skew whiff so used the Yarn Harlot's method of thick string and pins - with a couple of needles in there for fun as well! I quite like the string idea but will need to get some blocking wires too I think!

In the bleak midwinter ...

Well the snow lasted for two weeks - of only venturing out on foot all wrapped up as if for an Arctic expedition (complete with walking poles!), occasionally starting the car after clearing it out of it's igloo and pretending it was going somewhere, and of course of sitting inside knitting and keeping warm! So I finished the Debbie Bliss  Diagonal Front Jacket and have a pair of Fuzzy Feet done in Cascade 220 ready to felt (and yes they are meant to be that huge honest, my feet are not that large). And did some more sorting out of stuff since I moved flat recently and need to get cupboards and things all sorted out!

And so to autumn...

And the need to use up stash in covering extremities! So this bout of chest infection inspired knitting has come up with two pairs of wristwarmers - the pink alpaca and a 2x2 rib that didn't make the photoshoot - a cabled cowl (very cosy) - a calorimetry that really does keep the head warm and works with hair up - cabley fingerless gloves to match the cowl - and last but not least I finished off the blanket! At least I hope it's finished - it still looks a tad narrow on the bed....

We went to Woolfest!

Yay! My sister and I went to Woolfest last weekend and had a lovely time. We stayed in a great B&B with Herdwicks in the field outside and a wee tea room called The Flock Inn with a sit-ootery too. Saturday we headed to Cockermouth and spent all day walking round the stalls looking and touching and going oooh - then it was a quick whizz round before it closed to buy all we wanted to buy! I got some knitting wool - a kit from The Wool Shed called The Weskit which is a really unusual design but apparently very 'me' so my sis says. I also bought lots of fleece both for needlefelting, but also for wet felting and because I have a real hankering to start spinning again.... (watch this space!) So got some merino dyed tops, lots of different types of fleece to try them out - Gotland, Jacob, Corriedale, BFL, Wensleydale, some Jacob xNorth Ronaldsay and Jacob x Suffolk plus some other fibres to try - black bamboo diamond, soy bean and so on. I also got some off cut bags of bits and pieces of felts etc to play with, some brooch backs and keyrings bits to also play with, some olive oil soap for felting, some more felting needles, some hand dyed muslin and white silk to try nuno felting, some great notebooks......

So what do you do when your family is away on hols?

Why you use their floorspace to block shawls! And very handy it is too - saves me from having to walk over damp towels and stretched out woollies in my room. The pink one my mum knitted about 3 years ago from some alpaca dk and she uses it a lot around the house and as a bed shawl, so it's been in the wash. The other one is my first clapotis done out of Natural Silk Aran. And I must remember to get more glass headed pins as they're much less painful after pushing in several hundreds of them...

And I've finished the waistcoat from Cotton Jeans! It's the Urchin pattern from RYC Classic Beach book but I wasn't sure about having a short sleeved cardi so just turned it into a waistcoat instead. I didn't put buttonholes in the band as I'm thinking of making it some kind of edge to edge thing instead... okay I just hate doing buttonholes in cotton - I can never seem to match them up properly somehow as cotton is pretty stretchy.

So next on the last summer sale yarn stash bust is the Diagonal Front Jacket from Debbie Bliss Home book - I'm using Rowan again - silk cotton this time - 20 balls in a lovely brick shade for 80p each last summer... can't beat that really.

A good Easter!

Well the sun shone, eggs were painted and rolled, cakes were baked and eaten, the nephews ate the chocolate while the grown ups were good and didn't, little chicks and bunnies got found in the garden and lots of pics were taken! So, definitely a good Easter! I've been knitting away on the Rowan Cotton Jeans and have pretty much finished the Urchin - as a waistcoat though I think as I'm not that fond of short sleeved cardis. Just got the button band and finishing to do. I wore the striped Buckland cardi on Saturday which was good - but the cotton has stretched quite a bit on the picked up button band edging so think I might need to frog and redo that bit. Bother! I hate doing button bands ...