I've lost my knitting mojo

Actually, I have been really busy doing other things, and haven't made progress on much of anything. It has been getting me down, since my head is full of ideas about what I want to make next! So I have been telling myself to enjoy the process, to look on my knitting and crochet time as ME time, and not to fret about not finishing things. But finishing things would be nice too. :-)


Last week, I spent sewing because we went to Jorvik Viking Festival. We hadn't been last year, in fact, we missed all of our re-enactment shows last year, so it was really nice to get back to seeing a few people we had missed. Al and I and C and M went, as S was working and R was away with Scouts. I had to make C all new kit as he had outgrown his, and I kept getting it wrong, and having to unpick stitches. It was just one of those projects.

In the end, he was presentable, and I can go back and finish it properly, hoping that it will fit for a while. Here we are enjoying ourselves.













Now, I will at some point have to make some more kit for Easter. Cloaks, dresses, shoes, and tunics are needed. Since I have weeks to do it in, I will no doubt, leave it to the last minute. :-)

slow going

It seems to me that January was a bit dry for knitting and crochet projects. I did a couple of birthday presents, a couple pairs of fingerless gloves, started a pair of socks that will be going on for a while, and 3 berets. But I had said I wasn't going to buy any yarn to start anything new, and except for the birthday presents, and the things made from the leftovers for the birthday presents, I didn't.

Now, though, I seem to have a glut of things I want to do, and absolutely no time to do them. I am working on a nice pair of socks for Al for my Feb knit-a-long with Violet Green yarn. Progress is very slow!

I am still working on my gloves with my December Christmas Congo from the Getknitted Sock club, M wants me to make her a hug with the yarn she has dyed, (if you don't have a ravelry account and you want to see a photo of the hug, go here), I have won a yarn raffle, and cannot wait to start making something beautiful from a skein of this, and my Feb sock club yarn should arrive soon as well! What am I going to do?

In the mean time, I have managed to finish this baby hat for the Pilates teacher's youngest, we have spent a nice couple of days with friends in Leicester, and the activities that I have to taxi children to this week include African drumming, trampoline, Brownies, French, Youth beat group, Choir practice, Drama, Arts Award, Scouts, and Guides. Thank goodness I have some friends helping me to get them to other things and R is old enough to take the bus!

Tomorrow I am going to drive S to an open day at Bristol University. If the train wasn't so bloody expensive, I could have a nice knitting and purling journey, but instead I am driving. :-(

I suppose the good thing is that I have been doing a lot of stuff, within the house as well as without, with the family. But it all cuts into my making time, and I don't see the end of anything in sight! With that in mind, I am going to make sure we have a quiet day today, until the evening at least, and I am going to knit. I really don't want my Feb KAL, which is my first KAL, to turn into a March KAL!

I am off to be productive now...

Felting and dying

Well the felted bag experiment went a bit awry. The navy yarns have felted, but the lilac coloured one didn't. It has had only one wash, so I will try again soon, and see if there is any improvement. I do still like it, I just may have to sew in a liner before I can use it.

On a brighter note, M and I did some more dying of the yarn that Martine gave us. M choose red, purple, and pink, and just squirted her little heart out, covering the yarn in colours.



It is lovely, but who knows when I will get a chance to knit with it. I now have my Violet Green sock wool that I am making a pair of socks for Al with, and my Get knitted sock club yarn that I am still working on my gloves with, a pair of socks for me, and several babies around for whom I have to knit baby socks, plus an urge to do more felting.

And all when life seems to be getting too busy to get anything done!!!!!

Snow!

Yes, like everybody else in the country, we had snow too yesterday. A group of home edders were meeting at the park to go sledging so we decided to join them. I am so glad we went! There isn't much you can do at our house with the snow. We did make 3 little mini snowmen with buttons for eyes, etc. But there wasn't enough snow to do much else, and our garden is a little thing, so we headed for the park, and had a great time. At least C and M did!

They got to use that plastic sled that has been in the garden for I don't know how many years! And got to see some old friends and make one or two new ones.

I am beginning to realize that a lot of the people that have been a part of home education for me for the past 10 years are moving on to other things. Or our kids are just growing older and they don't need us too much to engineer their social lives. :-) But it does mean that whereas I used to arrange activities geared towards the older girls, I now should be making a conscious effort to go to activities for C and M. Granted they do do a lot anyway, but they probably miss the trips to the park which I should try to manage more often.

Since I mentioned older kids, R did her radio show again yesterday. The This and That Show on All fm with about 7 or so home ed friends. They have been doing it occassionally for a while now, from the Zion. Yesterday was their first broadcast from the All fm studio in Longsight. They are getting rather au fait with it all. :-)

hmmmmm.....should have taken some photos in the snow. But let's face it, I was doing good to get out and play, and take them to the park.

Peace
Julie
ps, and I made some baby socks for one of the Pilates teachers who has had a baby girl, but forgot to take a photo of them as well. Gloves continue...

There and Back again

The past two weeks have been mad. I have spent a good year really trying to slow down my pace of life, but that doesn't really work when you have 4 kids and a husband who doesn't drive. It is my own fault, I keep finding things for them to do. At least I have found lots of free stuff.

R and C are each doing two free performing arts groups a week. Naturally they are 4 different ones on 3 different nights, and two of them are on the same night as my knitting group meets. But I am glad they have things to do and most of the time I wish I had loads more money so I could pay for more things for them all to do. And pay for somebody else to take them. :-)

But I can already feel myself waiting for half term, so I can have a break from all of the taxiing around. At least our days are mostly quiet. And I am needing some time to do some exercises to keep my back in shape.

I was at the osteopath on Thursday, having been to Pilates on Monday and Tuesday, and spending all of Wednesday in pain. He cracked my back, and unlocked a couple of things and it just felt immediately soooooo much better. Now I have to keep up with exercising to keep it that way. So I am off for a little walk soon, in my earth shoes, and to do a very small amount of yoga, and then to hope for the best. I can feel the muscles in my neck and back on the left side are not used to where they are supposed to be and want to pop back, but I am going to try to keep them sane. And myself as well. Which is getting harder to do. :-)

I am thinking of loads more exciting stuff that I could be writing, but can't be bothered. Maybe blogging isn't for me. hmmmmmm

Peace
Julie

Gloves seemed like a good idea....

I have been making some fingerless gloves, so I thought I would bite the bullet and make some with fingers. After all, I can turn a heel, so why not a finger or 10?

I am using my lovely sock club yarn, Christmas Congo, as I do like the colours and they will look nice with my green jacket. (That is the jacket that used to be Al's that I have always wanted, and he has given to me now that it is well broken in cuz he got another one from Oxfam.)

I have been looking for patterns, and finally found one on Ravelry which is perfect. It is the right yarn, in appropriate sizes, and just looks lovely. Sock it to me Gloves.

So I measure my hand and start knitting, and I get this far.
It is looking good, the thumb is perfect, it has nice long ribbing, and it is too baggy. You can see in the photo that the back of the hand is all folded and loose, and I using slightly smaller needles than are called for.

So I sat around and looked at it for 24 hours, willing it to shrink so that I wouldn't have to start over, which didn't actually work. :-( In the end, I phoned Martine who told me what I already knew in my heart, that I would have to......start over.

Which is what I have done. I have started in the next size down, the Medium. You see, I don't consider myself a medium anything. Everything about me is large, so why do I need medium gloves. Maybe I should just be glad, as I will use slightly less yarn. :-)

And for something different....here is M doing a science experiment with boiled red cabbage water to ascertain the acidity or alkalinity of various things in the kitchen. And to make a big pretty bubbly concoctions. :-)




Oh yeah, and lots of other stuff is going on, which I don't have time to write about, cuz I am knitting some other stuff....

Communication was always my strong point

And fun was had by all....

Well, actually fun was had by me and Al. In May, we shall have been married for 20 years. Our eldest daughter turned 18 last month and Al turned 40 this month. For his birthday, we went away for the first time since we started having kids, without any of them in tow!

Of course, we are skint, so instead of that weekend in Italy I would have liked to treat him to, we managed a £12 Travelodge special in Liverpool City Centre. Not very glam, but then again, neither are we. Or at least me.

We had time at the Walker Art Gallery, had a fantastic meal at Alma de Cuba, which is the most beautiful restaurant I have ever been in, gave up the idea of the cinema because of the bottle of wine, 4 cocktails and lots of lovely food meant we would have fallen asleep anyway. So we went for a little walk, had some ice cream from the Ben and Jerry's vending machine, and went back to our room, where there were no kids up waiting for us, plying us with questions or demands. It was quite nice. And I hope we do it again some day.

Happy Birthday to Al, who is still not as old as me. :-)

Peace
Julie
PS I didn't knit him anything for his birthday!