Easter Holidays

Back from holidays, and already i'm looking forward to the weekend!

It was nice to have some time away though, it was reasonably cold up at the beach, but we still enjoyed it. I won't go into great detail about what we did, but here are a few of my favourite photos from the trip. The whole lot are here if you're interested.

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Before Easter I was telling you about the easter chick presents I was making for the family - now they can finally be revealed! Free pattern here.

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I mentioned that I would be taking Buttony with me to work some more on that... well, I did take it, but it didn't even get to breath in the salty air, it stayed in its bag the whole time! I wasn't sitting around doing nothing though, i'm making a Fireman Sam toy:

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He's adorable!!! And SO fast to knit - I started his first foot last Wednesday night, and by last night (Tuesday) i've done all but sew on his hat, embroider his face, and make some hair! I got the pattern from my Aunty, who pulled it from a magazine, so unfortunately I can't tell you any more details about the pattern. On the drive up to the beach I made the black beanie i'm wearing in the photos above (Hot Head - Rav link here) so it felt like I was very productive!

Our easter family tradition is to drive up north 15 minutes to the big easter fair - they have everything you can think of from bands to white elephant stalls to garden signs - and of course I was lucky enough to find a stall with second hand wool ~big cheesy grin~!!! I was also allowed out the day before to have a look around the shops, since I had to find Sam's stuffing, and happened across a yarn store with a bargain bin that started calling my name.... so I suffered from a small dose of yarn enhancement over the weekend too:

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1. Patons Inca - maybe for a shrug?

2. Cleckheaton Vintage Hues - for a new scarf

3. 150g of dark green 2ply - for a lace shawl, one day!

I also happened across some cheap second-hand fabric at the fair, and I couldn't resist that either! I've found a neat pattern for some fabric boxes that I might use it for. What do you think?

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I think that's enough from me now! I'll be back in a couple of days when i've finished Sam to give you a proper introduction.

~Happy Knitting!~

Stash tidy up

Sadly I didn't make it to the carnival on the weekend :( When I got up on Saturday I was hit by a strange cleaning bug which wanted to attack my room - and since that hits so rarely, who am I to say no? Room cleaning went well, thanks to a quiet house and trashy Saturday tv! I even vacuumed! (and broke the vacuum cleaner, but its all better now...)

After that was done, I consulted my Yarn Harlot page-a-day calendar, which suggested a good weekend chore would be to clean out one's stash, not only to remind it what the light of day looks like, but also to remind yourself what you have! Here are my results:

Most of, but not all of, my stash - collected since April 2008

Ok, now I realise that I probably have enough stash to last me a while, and I have no excuses whatsoever to go and by more! (Well, I do - one of the managers at work is having a baby girl, and I don't have any nice pink in my stash to make something, but I promise that's all i'll buy!! Cough cough...)

It is also now resorted into the different types of fibre - bamboo and cotton, mohair (of which I have an awful lot!) - as well as a box of yarn for toys, and one for odd balls and leftovers that can be used for charity stuff. Out of that I was able to sort out which yarns are predestined for projects, and bagged those together with their patterns so I can just pick them up and go when i'm ready to start. I also have a box of 5+ balls of different yarns which are pure stash with no projects in mind - the fun part will be matching those up with projects :)

Knitting update

With all that lovely fibre floating around, of course I was tempted to knit something! Details to come shortly.... Once that was done though I carried on with some squares for the Casa Kiwi blankets - I think I almost have enough now to make one blanket, with promises for more squares from a couple of others to come! I was asked the other day if there was any information about this project on their website, which of course there isn't, because they don't know its happening - it will just be a lovely suprise when these blankets turn up! Feel free to comment if you want to help out :)

Quote of the week

It turns out my page-a-day calendar also does quotes for Sundays! If any come up that are share-worthy i'll pass them on... This week's one is particularly inspirational, and something i've come across in my thinking before:

"We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about."

- Charles Kingsley

So, what are you enthusiastic about? For me, its definately my knitting, as well as my bass guitar (she's at the doctors at the moment, i'll introduce you to her when she's all better!)

~Happy knitting!~

Charity Knitting

The Ravelympics are officially over! I crossed the finish line with three projects for two different teams in two different events. My Sassy you've seen, so the last of the games was spent working on projects for Team Charity.

I got this little hat done:

...to go with these little booties that i'd made before:

...which meant that I got this new medal:

I also finished off one of the booties to go with the little moss stitch beanie i'd made before, but i've labelled that an UGH because it came out all wrong!!! As you can see, the length of the foot is huge, but the ankle is the right size...

After this I gave up and started on Coachella in a lovely suede-ish yarn - its like knitting with chocolate! Because the yarn is thicker than called for in the pattern, i'm knitting the xs size on smaller needles to hopefully get somewhere around the small size... if it doesn't work i'll frog it and try another approach, maybe with some new yarn.

Speaking of new yarn - I went stash shopping on Saturday, much to Mum's disgust!

Yeah, they are kinda the same colours, but they feel so different! Now to just find a project to use them for...

Happy knitting!

It's all go!

The Ravelympics have begun! I'm a bit slow off the mark, for a whole lot of reasons, but I have four inches to go on the body of my Sassy, then the sleeves, then its done! I might even have some yarn left over! Then i can get started on some charity knitting, and if I still have time, I'll carry on work with my Baby Kimono which has been hibernating for a while.

I finished my pre-games Shrug project on Friday night, and wore it to church with lots of positive comments and requests for the pattern :) I decided to 'basically' stick to the pattern; my only mods were to lengthen it a bit and add an extra couple of rows of ribbing to the bottom, but its more cropped than the mini-cardi I made before from the same pattern.

The rest of my weekend was spent unpacking, although my big weekend project was to sort out my stash! I got some canvas boxes from the Plastic Box and printed off the specs from the Yarn Standards website to use as labels on the boxes, then in consultation with Ravelry, I sorted them by weight/ply into the boxes. Some boxes got two labels, because I didn't have much of each weight. Hopefully now it will be quick and easy to find the right yarn for a project!