Dogs, UFOs and The Moth

Firstly, especially for Clarabelle as requested.........more doggy pics













Yesterday afternoon I had a little bit of a tidy in my knitting baskets, and uncovered a few UFOs!

I found the Interweave waistcoat that I'd thrown in the naughty corner, but looking at it now it is easily fixed and finished.


The first of a pair of Jaywalkers in the Regia Kaffe Fassett sock yarn. I had hoped that this would have more of the bright blue in it, but most of has disappeared under the heel.




The unfinished pair of socks I received during the Sock Wars Day of the Dead competition. These just need a tiny bit more foot length and a couple of toes.

Cherie Amour in Colinette Iona, abandoned becasue I couldn't work out where to continue the pattern after casting off arm holes!









Then there are the projects I am currently working on sporadically, a pair of Monkeys using Wendy Happy bamboo yarn. Coincidentally I made my other pair of Monkeys with bamboo yarn.

And a Drops cardigan with the ebay yarn that arrived last week.







And of course the super secret own design socks that are not progressing very fast at all.






Then today as I was perusing the sites I like to look at regularly, I came across a tutorial for making Dorset buttons and promptly came home and made this.

I have stuck a bit of magnetic tape on the back and turned it into a fridge magnet.









Yesterday I was looking at mooncalf's blog and was reading the comments left. Sometimes I click through onto the commenters' blogs to see if I can pick up on any good ones I'd like to follow. On one called Peapods I clicked through to a site called The Moth. The Moth is a group of people who meet in two places in the USA and get up on stage and tell stories. The stories have to be true and are completely unscripted. They are a maximum of approximately 15-20 minutes long - perfect for my commute to work. I subscribed through itunes (free) and listened to a couple to and from work today. They were really good. Some people are just born story tellers and can string out an incident that maybe took 5 minutes into a whole 20 minute fascinating story. Give The Moth a try, it's worth a listen.

Follow me.........

See that new thingy under the NaNoWriMo button on the left there? You can add yourself to it so I know who is reading my blog. And you can put one on your blog too so you know who is reading yours. It's new in the "customise layout" section of blogger.

I've also added a photo to the "about me " section so you can all see my ugly mug!!

Mystery Sock clue 3 came out today and I've finished it already! It was just the heel flap and heel turn so I managed it in a couple of hours. Which meant I could concentrate on the baby cardigan I am making for little George. I have almost finished it, just one arm to do. It is knitted from the top down so no seaming, hooray. I did have a bit of a mishap with it though. The needle sizes on the pattern were US sizes and when I looked at my needle gauge to work out the metric equivalents I accidentally looked at the imperial sizes. So I used 5.5mm and 4.5mm when I should have used 4.5mm and 3.75mm. Hence the cardi is bigger than expected. At least babies "grow into" things.

The waistcoat is in the "naughty corner" at the mo, I'm not entirely happy with my picking up of stitches around the bottom, but I'll do a bit of fudging at some point and it'll be fine.

Bags of fun

I always have a pair of socks OTN. At the moment I have 2 pairs. As I am now using a ball winder to make centre pull balls, they do not roll around like they used to, but I thought it would be nice to have the yarn, needles, row counter and pattern all in one place.

I had a mooch around on etsy.com and found this seller. Aren't they cute? What is amazing is that they only cost $10 each (about £5.50?). Scrolling down I noticed that it said shipping was free, but I couldn't believe she would send from the USA to the UK for nothing so I emailed her. Sure enough, she said it was free so I ordered more than one, seemed a waste of free shipping to just order one! (Becca - do not order any, I've got you covered!)

Yesterday I wasn't needed in work so I decided to tidy up my knitting stuff because it was basically scattered everywhere. I piled everything onto the spare bed and this is what it looked like.



And you can't see the 4 bags on the floor or the books and magazines! Anyway, I have now succeeded in getting all the yarn into 4 large tubs, all the straight needles in a bag, and all the circs in a binder of clear pockets. The patterns that aren't in books are also in a binder and I went through about 30 magazines and tore out anything I wanted to keep and binned the rest. (I kept all my Interweaves intact though!)

So now I can put my hand to anything I need, but curiously I never found the 2 stitch holders I know I have and which I had to replace at the weekend because I couldn't find them. I think they went down the black hole where things go in my house sometimes. Unfortunately I don't know where it leads so I can't get things back.

Now I can carry on with my Tweedy waistcoat and try to finish it before knitting group next Tuesday as I want to start an Ice Queen and need help with a provisional cast on.

Stash enhancement (again!)

(Warning - Spoiler Alert - Do not scroll down this post if you are making the Socktoberfest Mystery Through the Loops socks and don't want to see what the first clue looks like)

Last weekend Andy at Bluefaced.com had an open day. It wasn't very big but Natural Dye Studio and Fyberspates had brought along some of their wares. Laughing Hens were there because they are under new ownership and have just moved here from down south. I only found two skeins of yarn that I fancied......

Natural Dye Studio Alpaca Merino sock yarn in Kumquat


and some wool/alpaca blend yarn that I think is Andy's. It wasn't labelled but it is about an Aran weight and hopefully long enough for a cowl of some kind.


On Friday I popped into Stash to pick up an extra ball of yarn for my waistcoat and Karen from knitting group was in there. She was buying a few bits including a ball of Kidsilk Haze to make an Ice Queen. When she said it only took one ball to make it I was tempted and bought a ball in this colour.


While I was there I bought a 100cm long 2.5mm Addi lace needle so I can have a go at Magic loop. I haven't done it yet but I have transferred one of my Mystery Socks onto it ready for the next clue. So I have one sock on two circs and one on magic loop. I wonder which method I will like best in the end. This is the progress so far, the next clue is released on Wednesday.


Oh, and I now have 10 shiny nails!!

Ireland, to be sure.

Seeing as we have been back from our hols for 10 days now, I thought I ought to post a few pics which aren't Booshy!

The first place we stopped when we got there was Gorey, Co. Wexford. Some friends of ours moved back here from North Wales about a year ago so we stayed with them for 2 nights. These are their children. Do not ask me to spell their names, there are too many bs and hs in there to get my head around but phonetically they are Niall(l), Cweeva(r) and Derval(middle). Unfortunately Cweeva had her eyes closed in every one of the photos I have.
(Edit: the names are Niall, Caoimhe and Dearbhail)



From there we headed over to the west coast to Lahinch in Co. Clare where we had an apartment for 5 nights. This is one of the two streets there, the other is a main street with several pubs and shops.


The weather was pretty dismal for the first few days but we drove around looking at the beaches from under our rainhoods and through the car windows. One evening in Lahinch there was a surfing competition and between the rounds there was a husband and wife who went out on one surfboard and performed acrobatic feats for our entertainment.




On the Tuesday the weather cleared up and we were able to go to The Cliffs of Moher which is apparently the most popular tourist attraction in Ireland.


I thought this one was rather attractive too. She was called Bessie


and this was her owner busking at the Cliffs


Gratuitous shots of me and Colin at The Cliffs




On our last night in Lahinch there was a lovely sunset out of the window of the restaurant we were eating at




Oh I do have a couple more Booshy photos. Here you can see how high up we were from the stage


And this is a rather blurry shot of Noel. The pictures had to be taken without the theatre staff seeing as you weren't supposed to take photos.


I finally finished reading The Cure Of Souls by Phil Rickman last night. I can't believe it took me nearly two months to read this. That's the knitting habit for you! I do like this series of books but I felt it got a bit higgledy piggledy at the end. Maybe it was because I took so long to read it and lost the thread of the story. The next book I am gong to read is Storm Front by Jim Butcher.

In knitting news The Tweedy Waistcoat is coming along nicely, no pics yet! I have the back and one and a half fronts done. I didn't realise before I started that it was knit in so many pieces. I do like the two colours that I (and Anne at the LYS) picked for this, they do go well together and it will be quite understated but smart enough for work.

In the words of Eric Morcambe.........

.............you can't see the join!!

Looky, looky what I got today,


KnitPicks Harmony interchangeable needles


Very nice indeed - the joins are smooth, the cables are very flexible and the needles are very pointy and light. I LIKE!! I have used the 4mm to cast on for the Tweedy Waistcoat, which makes for quite dark knitting because of the colour of the yarn and the colour of the needle tips.


This a scarf I finished off last night on Addis. I started this in November 2006, as a first foray into lace knitting, but after completing two repeats of the pattern I was unsure if it was me. While I was waiting for the sock yarn to come last week I picked it up as an in-between project and as it grew quite quickly I decided to carry on and finish it. It isn't blocked yet, but when it is, it will be put away for a Christmas present.


And here is himself on the front cover of the local newspaper, we did laugh. Couldn't have been much happening in the news last week, hee hee. (If you click on the picture it blows up big enough to read the article)

A necessary trip to the LYS

So I was looking for patterns for the Wild Fire Fibres sock yarn. I have been wanting to do something else with cables since finishing the Gathered Pullover. So I have decided to take on a bit of a challenge and make the Bayerische socks by Eunny Jang. I had wound the yarn into a ball and printed out the pattern and then I noticed that it calls for 2mm needles. I usually do socks on 2.5mm so I don't have any 2s. So that necessitated a trip to Stash! I had already been in on Tuesday with Becca after we had been out for lunch, and mentioned we might go back on Thursday as it was late opening. Becca couldn't come though so I went by myself from work.

Anne was there by herself and welcomed me in with a cup of tea, so I sat down and made myself comfortable. I got two 2mm circs and then turned my attention to the Rowan Scottish Tweed DK needed for the Tweedy Waistcoat from the Fall Interweave Knits. I looked at the peat and oatmeal colours that the magazine had used but I'm not really a 'brown person', so after putting together several combinations of colours we came up with these 2 greens, Apple and Celtic Mix.

Here they are together. It will be a change for me from purples and greys. Now I just need to think about which size is going to be best because I'm a bit in-between. Probably the larger one just to be on the safe side. Apparently the model is wearing the smallest size and she looks really slim.

Stash have also just received a shipment of something rather exciting. I'm not going to say what in case you go and snap it up and there is none left for me. It had only just arrived yesterday and hadn't been unpacked or priced so I couldn't buy it, but I will be back in next week and then its mine all mine, mwahaha!!

Oh yeah, just remembered - they want me to do a workshop on sock knitting!! One of my worst nightmares is talking in front of people but I do quite fancy the idea as long as the group wasn't too big. I know I would be a bag of nerves though. I'm going to put a few ideas down on paper on how it could be done and have a good think about it. What do you think? Should I do it?

Tonight is the final night of Big Brother 9. As usual I got hooked on it from the start, but to be honest there is no-one left that I would even imagine winning. I do have a feeling it may be Rex even though the bookie's favourite is Mikey. I know it is marvelous how he has coped in there being blind but I don't really think he is that nice of a person. Not that Rex is either, the way he treated people especially Nicole, his own girlfriend! And Darnell just gets on my nerves with his negativity all the time. Rachel? Hmm, I think her obsession with grapes is a bit worrying. Maybe Sara? Who wins.........you decide!