….Jasmine!!!

Yes – finally after more than a year she is finished…..so the details (if you’re interested)

Pattern – Jasmine from Rowan 39

Yarn – Rowan 4ply Cotton

Needles – 3mm needles & 3mm crochet hook

Cast on – Spring 2006

Completed – 22nd June 2007

Thanks to everyone who offered advice/help with the crochet edging, DH’s cousin was staying with us last Wednesday & Thursday and she crochets so she gave me some help as well and I did this –

I don’t know if it’s exactly what the pattern called for but I like it. I finished her on Friday evening and was so pleased as we had friends coming over on Saturday to go out for lunch. I pressed her and chose my outfit to complement her perfectly and we set out into the sunshine together. I was planning to have DH take lots of lovely photos of us in the sunshine by the river in Marlow…..then the biggest thunderstorm in memory struck and we all had to run for home …..so here are some photos taken in our garden and lounge

I was so pleased with my crochet skills that I went off looking for something else to crochet and I have discovered Amigurumi and I’m hooked (ha! no pun intended!!!!). I have bags of small oddments of yarn that I inherited from my grandmother, she used to knit toys and small items for church fetes and Amigurumis seem like a perfect way to use up these oddments – and they are just so darn cute!!!

So, here’s my first ever Amigurumi – “Usagi” (Rabbit in Japanese)

He started out as these little pieces –

The head and body I just made two spheres with increases and decreases, the ears were based on the Best Bunny pattern on the Lion Brand website. The arms were just a spiral of 6 double crochets (that’s single crochets in US). He was made with Sirdar Snuggly Chunky in cream from my stash and a 5mm crochet hook.

I’m pretty proud of him…..and he’s been checking out our house (note the new carpet on the stairs – I’m so excited about it)

What else have I been doing? Well, as you can see from the gorgeous new carpet we’ve been doing some work in the house – the stairs, landing and two spare rooms now have new carpet as well as the lovely new paint job we gave them at Easter and there are curtains on the window at the top of the stairs for the first time in the 6 years we’ve lived here! Wow, after 6 years it’s almost starting to look like a home……

I’ve also been knitting a tea-cosy, this was inspired by my visit to The Natural Dye Studio – Amanda had knit this and I fell in love with it

the yarn is Misti Alpaca DK 4 ply which I got some time ago in a swap together with a Mohair loop from Natural Dye Studio whish has been in my stash for ages – and it has about 300 beads. I’ve got a bit further but batteries have run out on the camera so I’ll have to post finished photos later this week, meantime here’s a close up of the beads

I forgot to mention when I posted about the workshop that I couldn’t resist buying some goodies whilst I was in Suffolk – as well as the tea-cosy pattern and the beads I bought some silk and a pattern for a crochet scarf –

and I bought two lots of sock wool and some beautiful soft chunky mohair

technorati tags:amigurumi, alpaca, crochet, knit, teacosy, beads, jasmine, rowan

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This is a long blog post as I’ve got loads of news to catch up on…

I promised more photos and full story on the Moonwalk last weekend. This week I’ve been feeling jet-lagged from missing a night’s sleep but otherwise fine – no aches and pains which is good.

This is mum and I with our medals in Hyde Park around 7.30 Sunday morning.

Ive been feeling jet-lagged all week but otherwise ok, no aches and pains to speak of so the training was worth it! I’ve collected around £560 from sponsorship which I’m really pleased with. The event was good but I didn’t enjoy it as much as when I took part 3 years ago. This year there were 15,000 entrants – nearly 3 times as many as 2004 – and that is just too many.

We never got clear of crowds and so were unable to get a good power-walk pace going, you were constantly having to slow, overtake and worst of all stop completely to wait to cross roads. This happened 3 times in the first 5 miles and at one point we had to wait for 14 minutes before we could get across, each time you were just getting a good pace you had to stop, get cold and then get your pace going again.

I don’t think either mum or I will do this event again, we will definitely do some more power-walking but we’ll find other events or plan our own and get sponsorship for Breakthrough.

Which reminds me – still time to take part in my prize draw! And tell your friends about it, link on your blog, put up a poster ….whatever.

Knitting News

I’ve finished my first crochet project – ever!! It’s a simple granny square cot quilt in Rowan Handknit Cotton DK, I love the bright colours.

I have loads more of this yarn as I purchased the quantities to crochet a full size blanket and only made a cot quilt so I may do some more crochet with the remainder. This quilt is a baby gift for a friend so I’m glad I got it finished in time. The baby is due in the summer and I wanted to make something summery – a bright cotton quilt seemed suitable and I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

I knit these super-quick this week, they are knit to a basic top-down pattern from The Natural Dye Studio in their Alpaca/Silk sock yarn. Amanda from Natural Dye Studio is running a competition for the Sock Yarn Club members to submit a photo for the cover of her pattern.

J is going to take some photos tomorrow for me to submit to Amanda – hopefully we may get some sunshine.

This is more Natural Dye Studio knitting –

A lace shawl in cobweb mohair in a lovely purple shade. The pattern is the Melon pattern shawl/scarf from Victorian Lace Today and I’m knitting this as a wedding present. I’ve only got a couple of weeks to get it done but it’s knitting up pretty quick. So far I’ve done 18 pattern repeats (out of 62) and I only cast on yesterday. It’s a 6 row repeat pattern over 10 sts and very easy to memorise.

Finally some of the many birds living in my garden –

This is one of a pair of wrens who often visit my patio – they spent a couple of hours this afternoon hopping round in this bush right outside my lounge chirping very loudly at each other. The picture isn’t brilliant as it was taken through the glass of the french windows.

Another visitor was this starling who perched on the table on the patio outside the lounge. Today we’ve been cutting the grass and doing some tidying out in the garden and also seen robins (they always come to see what we’re doing in the garden) a green woodpecker, the collared doves who nest in a bush in the garden and on Thursday a sparrowhawk which came and landed on the sundial/bird bath. Possibly the same one which killed a pigeon on our lawn a few months ago (see J’s photo on his blog here)

technorati tags:crochet, cot-quilt, sock, knitting, wren, starling, moonwalk

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I was reading this post on Stephanie’s blog about her 24 year old baby blanket and it got me thinking….over the past 9 or 10 years, since my friends started producing children, I must have knit at least 11 baby blankets/shawls (that would be Ceri, Ben, Thomas, Michael, Zoe, Gemma, Luke, Isaac, Sarah & Jacob) with one WIP at the moment – that is the baby AND the blanket are WIPS!!!!.

Most of these were lacey shawls like this one

knit from this pattern, which has been so well-used it is now held together with sellotape! The pattern has two different shawls and on the occasions when a friend has produced a second child I have had to remember which style I knit for the first.

Whilst writing this I realised that I have very few photographs of the recipients with their shawls although I know that all were used as I saw the babies on many occasions with them, I just never thought to take pictures for some reason. I will have to ask the parents to search and see if they can find pictures for me.

Anyway, I’m digressing from the point of this post which was, reading about Stephanie’s 24 year old baby blanket which she still has I wondered how many of my blankets and shawls will still be owned by the recipients in 24 years time. Will they keep them and bring them out for their own babies? Will they remember who it was that knit the shawl for them all those years before?

In most cases I have known the parents for most of my life and hope that in 24 years time I will still be in contact and so will be able to remind them.

I myself have three blankets that were crocheted by my Nan -

she used to turn these out like a factory and give them away to the Salvation Army to be handed out to homeless people on the streets. Her friends from church would give her all their left over balls of wool and she would make these wonderful multi-coloured blankets. Occasionally she was given a whole packet of unwanted yarn and so would knit a solid colour or a solid with a border. Then someone would tell her it was too nice to give away and they would be raffled at church or bought by a friend.

She also made them for us as children and the blue one with the white centre and border used to be on my bed when I was a child.

The blue blanket is single bed sized and the two pink blankets are smaller – about 45″ square and these were knit by her later in life and given to me I hope that when we finally get the adoption approval that I will use these on my childrens beds – my Nan would have approved of that.

I love the idea of items being made by one generation, used by another and then handed on down – the sense of continuity appeals to me. I would love to think that my knitting would still be bringing joy long after I’ve gone.

technorati tags:crochet, shawl, blanket, heirloom

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Firstly, yes I have been knitting but no, I have not been blogging. Unfortunately work has been hectic (year-end, audit, staff leaving) so I’ve been getting home late and last week worked Saturday. Also, some of the knitting I’ve been doing is for gifts for people who may read this blog so I can’t post about them!

However, this post is a catch up on everything I’ve been working on since my last post nearly a fortnight ago.

This –

is what I did with the Winter Scarf Knit Kit I posted about in my last post. It’s a super long. super warm scarf in the wonderful Manos del Uruguay. Evelyn suggested the “my so called scarf” pattern but (sorry Evelyn) I decided I have lots of shorter scarves and fancied a really long one but also a scarf that was reversible so I just improvised with a rib pattern from an old knitting book.

this was knit on 8mm needles (US 11), cast on 24 sts (any number divisible by 6 works)

Row 1 (k3 p3)  to end

Row 2 (k1 p1) to end

repeat these 2 rows until the wool runs out, cast off.

I added a fring by just pulling through doubled lengths of wool and knotting.

I really love this scarf and it knit in 2 evenings, I’ve been wearing it ever since. The colours go with so many things – blues, reds, browns, purples…..

My second completed item is another scarf, this was also wool received in a swap – the Magic Yarn Ball Swap - the wool was Garnstudio Drops Alpaca in a lovelyn shade of blue. This wool was SOOO nice to knit with, it’s very, very soft and it just slips over the needles.

The pattern was from the Garnstudio website and is one that my swap partner, Embla, printed and sent along with the yarn ball. It was a very easy repeated pattern to remember and so great knitting for watching tv. I knit it over the past 3 weeks in between other things. It was on quite small needles so took a litle while.

This scarf is wonderful to wear as it is so soft and, being quite long, it’s easy to double up and wrap around so very cosy.  I like the way the pattern bunches up and looks like tree bark -

This was one of my projects for Project Spectrum.

Final finished object is another Halfdome hat

A friend of ours is having radiotherapy at the moment and has lost a lot of hair so just shaved his head. We’ve been having some cold weather and he needed something to keep his head warm but that would be soft on skin made sensitive by the treatment – he needs all the TLC he can get!

I had knit J a Halfdome a few weeks ago and knew it was a super-quick knit so ordered some more Cashmerino Aran which is very soft and knit this in one evening.  Hoping to deliver it tomorrow.

Several UFO’s still going strong …

…yes, that is the second “Monkey” sock in the Sockret Pal yarn finally on the needles.

I have also been continuing to teach myself to crochet, I have been practising with simple granny squares using left over yarn. These three were the tiny bits of yarn left over from knitting socks (l-r, Socks that Rock “Xmas Socks“, Natural Dye Studio “Jewel” and “Cherry Blossom“)

I intended to just use these as practise but I like the way they are turning out and am thinking of making a crocheted blanket from squares made from left-over yarn from other projects as a sort of “Memory Sampler” to remind me of things I’ve knit. Will post more as I complete them.

All of this crochet practise was intended to enable me to complete Jasmine which I am still confident of doing but I’ve also decided to start a crochet project as a surprise gift (can’t say too much – blogs have ears you know!)

This is a sneak look at the yarn and a few completed squares - 

Well, there you go – I haven’t just been sitting on my hands! Off now to decorate J’s birthday cake and prepare for the dinner party we’re having tonight to celebrate. 8 people for dinner – I must be mad.

technorati tags:crochet, knitting, scarf, socks

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