A new project :-)

I was given a new 6 cup teapot for Mother's Day. I guess I will have to crochet a tea cosy to go with it. :-)

Aha!

 

Here is the lovely green cotton summer dress. It is little big, but still wearable, and probably will be for the next few years.  It is the Ruffled Baby dress   with one fewer increases so as not to be quite so ruffled, and no sleeves, so as to be more summery. Just a row of shell stitch instead of sleeves, which is cute enough for the Babe. Also got some lovely heart shaped spotty buttons that match the green perfectly from Folksy  but necessitated me sewing up the button holes a bit. The buttons are worth it though. :-)

Also, so nearly finished with these socks that I shall just call them finished and post the photo.

They are made with Violet Green sock yarn, doubled and on 4 mm needles. I started at the cuff with a 1x1 rib, over 42 stitches, and then changed to a pattern of k3 p3 for 3 rounds, and p3 k3 or 3 rounds, to give a checkerboard effect.


Have also started a pair of toe ups, but not really following a pattern, more like following about 5 patterns, as I try to get my head around how to do this. Thank goodness for Knitty.com and this great magic toe-up cast on.

And here is cheeky Babe, who wouldn't stand still or look at the camera while I was photographing her in her new dress, but who was more than happy to climb all over me and do her best to prevent me from photographing anything else, other than her lovely smile surrounded by a few dairy free chocolate brownie crumbs. ;-)

Some people might be interested in...

my other blog where I have started writing about home ed more, so I can leave this one for middle aged happiness brought on by yarn, wool, and growing things in dirt. If only one could grow a Rowan plant.

Gone and arrived!

What is gone are the Gentleman Socks. Frogged. With Glee.

I had gone back to them, figured out where I was in the pattern, turned the heel, kept up that twisted rib, and then suddenly I was missing stitches, and couldn't figure out what I had done wrong (which was knit while watching a film.)  I knitted back and bit, and some more, and eventually just pulled out my DPNs and pulled out a few rounds. I found my mistake, and started picking up the stitches again. Usually, this is a fairly straightforward exercise. But with all of these twisted stitches, it isn't. I had out my crochet hooks, was picking up so many dropped stitches, but I was perservering...I had come this far, I was damn well going to continue!

I only threw it across the room once! And then I went back that next day, nice and calm - again determined to finish these damn socks. The yarn kept splitting - I was picking up bits.  And then it hit me. I WAS GOING TO HAVE TO DO THIS ALL OVER AGAIN! I WAS ONLY ON THE FIRST SOCK!

So they have been frogged. :-)  And I am trying to decide what to do with the yarn now. I thought I would try socks on two circulars, or doing toe-ups- or maybe magic loop? But it was all too much for me. I could not make all of the necessary decisions. So I will do a regular cuff down pair of socks, and maybe stick a cable on them or something.

The thing that has arrived is a photo of the one who has flown the coop in her Rowan Felted Tweed jumper that I knit for her just in time for spring. :-)

The other thing that has arrived (after I went out to get it) is some yarn. I know I am supposed to be on a self inflicted yarn buying ban, but Purl City Yarns are having a March Madness sale, and they have King Cole Merino Chunky for £2.50 a ball. I am meant to be doing the Owls jumper for R before autumn, and this would be really good for that project, so I gave myself leave to buy that yarn. :-) R and I hopped on a bus, and went into Manchester, and had quite a nice time. She introduced me to vintage heaven as well. As for the yarn, she narrowed it down to the cream or the green, and they didn't have enough of the cream, so green it is going to be. But the cream would have been lovely. hmmm......I wonder if I can find that online anywhere.....

Progress and the real world.

So the Ribbed Baby Jacket is finally finished! She has actually been wearing it for over a week now, but I am just getting around to posting a photo.  I immediately wanted to start something new, and talked to R about doing some yoga socks for her, but then she went off to college and I changed my mind about the pattern, so I had to start something else. :-)

Am crocheting a dress for the baby in a rather bright green cotton, but I am not really happy with how it is going. It may fit when she is three. And then I got out an old lapel jacket from a Bernat pattern that I started when I was still pregnant and completely forgot about. It would probably only take me a couple of hours to finish, except that I must have been addled by pregnancy hormones while I was doing it as what started out as a jacket crocheted from side to side with 100 now has about 120 stitches. WHAT!?!?

So I thought I would go back to finish some other things I have forgotten about, and am back on the Gentleman's Socks that I started as a Violet Green KAL in Feb 2008. Oh Dear. How time flies. The socks look lovely, but for some reason, this pattern and me are not a good combination. It is slow and slow and slow. So I gave up. But I am back now, and will finish at some point.


At least I hope I will. (No, really, I WILL!) But the real world does keep infringing on my knitting time. Firstly is the Toddler. Lovely, but has decided to distract me from things yarny by wrapping herself up in my working yarn, or just by climbing on my lap, as if it is hers. :-) She is far too cute to ignore, so away goes the knitting. Until I get insomnia.

Plus Al has got this week off of work, and we are getting jobs done. Spent yesterday in the garden getting ready for some planting and rearranging things.

 

This is my new white disentra (bleeding heart). I have wanted one of these for years, and here is it in a relatively shady part of the front garden, behind the snowdrops, and protected from full sun  by the  Viburnum bodnantense. (Just found out what that one is called, thanks to the lovely staff at Hulme Garden Centre,  so I am showing off a bit.) 

Here we have the other bit of the front garden, which doesn't get much full sun because of the plants in the bit in the first photo. Big green pot is strawberries, little green pot is lemon balm, orange pot (to be changed soon) is my favourite Verbascum, (Southern Belle) some of which I have put in the ground there as well. In the terracotta pot is the dessert gooseberry which I took out of the ground because it stopped anything else from going in.

In the ground are tulips (transplanted at completely the wrong time of year, so fingers crossed) and some lovely dark pink Astilbe which is just coming up, and some trailing ivy to cover a bit of ground. It is all there in the photos, but you won't really be able to see until summer, when things are flowering.

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Here is the veg patch in the back garden.
This was Al's digging. :-)

In the corner you can see a couple of pots, these are two of the tree blueberry pots. They are doing well and will be transplanted soon to bigger pots. In the ground are a couple of dessert  gooseberries. This is where the tulips were and why they had to be moved.

Here are the raspberries in front of the new fence the neighbours put up. I hate it. It blocks us off from one another too much - it is too high. But I pulled up all the weeds around here yesterday, and cut back some new shoots so the energy will go in the fruit growth. They are actually budding, but hard to seen in this photo - it is only my phone camera.


Along the fence on the other side of the garden we have strawberries, Michaelmas daisies, chives, more gooseberries, more strawberries and some other stuff which we are not sure what to do with right now.This patch up against the other neighbours fence is in shade most of the time, except in the late afternoon in high summer. I think we are going to put some climbers in, and train them up to the trellis. There is a pretty white climbing rose behind the compost bin which I may try to move. 

 

We used to do most of this with the kids, but they have other interests now, so Al and I just get on with enjoying our middle agedness. :-) Although we did have the Babe toddling around picking up leaves and putting them in the garden bags with us, and eating dirt. Of course.

Some good news and some bad...

The good new is predictable. I have finished something!!! I finished the jumper for S Sunday evening, got the ends woven in, and dear Martine took it to the post office for me, since my hip is playing up (again!)  I am waiting for a photo of her wearing it, weather she likes it or not :-) although she doesn't have to wear it after that.  Here is it, looking sad laying flat on the sofa... (It needs a body in it to make it happy!)

The sleeves are extra long, as that is the way she wanted it - let's hope it has a few years of keeping her warm in the future. :-)

Now for the bad news. The Babe has plenty of things knitted and crocheted to wear, but this was one of the nicer ones. It was a Tiny Tots pattern done in Sirdar denim ultra, and she has been wearing it pretty regularly. But alas no more. Big sister has seen fit to play with bouncy putty stuff and then forget to put it away, and it has gotten on several fabric items. A fleecy blanket has gone in the bin, her denim shorts have been rescued, but there is no rescuing this. Not even after a couple of days in the freezer.

Children are forbidden from buying any more of the dreaded muck, this will have to go in the bin as well, as there is little point in saving the yarn from the pieces that are not affected. I will just have to get back to work on the ribbed jacket I am doing, so the poor babe doesn't have to go too long without a cardigan knitted by her mum. How will she cope? :-)

Still throwing...

(Throwing is a reference to the English way of knitting, by the way.)

I am making progress on the two garments I am trying to finish, the Candy Striped Noro jumper for S - although making it without the stripes and with really long sleeves, and in Rowan felted tweed. I just need to finish a sleeve, and do the ribbing on the sleeves and the bottom, and then get it in the post, and hope that there is still some cold weather so she can wear it.

I am also doing ok on the  Debbie Bliss Baby Jacket for the Babe. I keep looking at it thinking I wish I had some Debbie Bliss yarn to do it in, but I am stash busting, and shall be for quite some time.

Spent the morning on Ravelry, since I couldn't actually knit - because my knitting was in the living room where teen- aged boys were sleeping. But I have chosen a few of my next projects, which will not require me to buy yarn, and shall dress my family and hopefully my feet, in lovely things. Caroline is doing socks, and I want to get back to do some socks as well. :-)

I am afraid I cannot put up any photos of progress because the computer is not recognizing the SD drive, and somebody has mislaid the cable to connect the camera to the computer. You will just have to take my word for it that I am actually making slow progress.

And then I am going to start a whole new pattern, and try to knit continental style from beginning to end. :-) Really.

No, I mean it....