Where does the time go?

I. can. not. believe. it. Half way thru June today !@#$% And the red camellia is in bloom again.

I've had a frantic five or so weeks busy completing orders and also rushing to replace stock for the Queens Birthday market - which was great by the way, thanks again Sarah and Sarah.

One of my friends ordered a couple of beanie and mitten sets and because she is the proud owner of 4 of my beanies already, I did a sample board for her to choose wool and textures from - and it worked really well.








I failed to take a photo of the finished pink set but take it from me, it looked great - I had trouble with the contrast colour she choose as it's 12ply and I discovered last year that to keep the form and shape of this pattern, you need at least 2/3rd's of the wool to be 8ply. Plus the 12ply didn't really stand out so in the end I used it every 8 rows as a purl row on the right side and the finished pattern was so good I'll use it again.

That main cerise colour is so gorgeous - it's a Touch wool - pure merino. And speaking of their wool, has anyone noticed their 4ply is nothing like their 8ply? The DK is just so beautiful and soft and a joy to knit with whereas to me the 4ply is nowhere near as soft and doesn't knit up as nicely. Fran at Wild and Woolly here in Devonport mentioned that they advise customers that it knits up like a 3ply. Very disappointing.

Did you know I love interior decorating almost as much as I love knitting? Although if you asked Eddie he'd say I loved it more considering the number of house programmes on the Living channel that he has to put up with!
I love the look of this bedroom - so simple and fresh.



And the last word as usual is from Issie, the amazing mohair blanket cat ...

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Beanies, mittens, beanies, mittens ...

Between beanie and fingerless mitten orders, not to mention restocking for Sunday's Devonport Craft Market, I can't remember having such a busy week! When I get to the stage that I resent having to cook or getting stuck in traffic because my knitting time is being encroached, I become horrid to live with - the husband and the cat begin to tiptoe around me!

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Hearts and butterflies ...

Just look at this potato!!





I know I have a heart wall ... but a heart potato? And I just can't bring myself to cook it!

Last year we planted some swan plants to help the monarch butterflies but the whole experience was distressing as the paper wasps ate the caterpillars and sometimes left a half of one on the plant etc... so this year we decided not to plant any. So what happens? Of course we then got little seedlings pop up all over the place and ended up with a couple of fat caterpillars which I only noticed last week. They then cocooned at the weekend and although we're having a really mild autumn, I suspect the outcome of such a late chryalis stage will not be good. Watch this space!




I had another funky beanie order this week and the brief was to include favourite colours such as black, white, pink, silver and purple which was great as I just love these colours. It's always hard for me to work with colours I don't like much - like beige ...




Madam Issie has recovered from her roof experience and has spent this week doing what she does best.

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Scarves, beanies & pussy cats ....

Look what greeted me when I got home yesterday ...



Once she'd established where she was compared to where I was - and it's higher than it looks as the section slopes - she proceeded to miaow piteously for me to come and get her down. H. e. l. l. o. I've always had the philosophy with our cats that what goes up must come down - eventually!

Right, here's my knitted up scarf using that new yarn. Looks really good but was a pain to knit. As you unwound the yarn you had to "pull" each segment down to expand it and then find the top most single strand to knit with. Not quick, not something you can do while reading or watching TV and not something I'll be doing again in the foreseeable future! Though I am pleased with how it looks and feels ....





Bit of a shock to the system this week as I had an order for one of my multi coloured adult beanies - it's been a while since I made one of these !! They wanted it to look funky rather than stipey so I made little squares with some of the novelty yarns and tried to "unmatch" each side. You can't go too crazy with the novelty stuff because you need a certain amount of DK wool in there to keep the integral shape of the beanie.






Once again, I'm really happy with the result. Now back to the teeny weeny baby knitting please ....

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New yarn ...

I'm about to knit a scarf using a new yarn called Triana. It will knit up to look like this - yes I did buy the red, rather than the blue! Just looking at the yarn and reading the band, it looks like you pull it downwards, find the skinniest looped strands at the top and use those to knit with - should be interesting!



In the meantime I've re-knitted the "spaghetti sauce ruined" back of my little gray yoke/surplice newborn cardy and finished that and made a little pink one as well...
They're designed to pop over the top of a skivvy and they look really good!




And the last word is of course from Issie, who cares nothing about ruined knitting, unruined knitting, new yarn or anything like that - she only cares about strategic placement inside mohair blankies ...

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A lesson to be learnt ....

When you're knitting and once again(will you never learn?) you decide to ignore what the pattern says and keep all your stitches on holders so when it comes to knitting the surplice yoke, you have bits of wool hanging everywhere and slightly alarming gaps between the back, two fronts and the sleeves of the little cardy, so then you decide to lay it all down on a hard surface so you can at least sew a couple of the raglan edges together to make it easier to work the yoke, and when the dining table is full of magazines, papers, laptops etc. and you then make the rather (in hindsight) stupid decision on lay it out on the kitchen bench, DO NOT do so when you're also in the middle of cooking spaghetti sauce, or you'll end up with something like this .....



And of course you can't get the stains out because your sauce has tomato paste, red wine and goodness knows what else in it and you dap gently at the stains with cold water, make them worse (naturally) and then finally give up and decide to knit the back again only to realise that you'll then have a major problem as everything is gathered together on the needle at the most important yoke stage so it's not just a simple "replace one piece" scenario.

So then you make the drastic decision to cut the offending piece off - you thought about unravelling it but decided it was easier just to attack it with the scissors which sort of worked, once you'd picked off all the tiny little bits of wool, picked up the stitches and worked out which row you ended up on, then started to knit from the armholes back down til you reached the ribbing which needed to be done on the smaller needles, of which you only have one pair and one of the pair is holding all the yoke stitches - which is how I ended up with this delightful mess !@#$%

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Two sizes up Part 2 .....

So here's the two x two year old girls's cardy and vest. I decided to make one a little waistcoat/vest ...




Just loving these buttons!



And then the other one a little capped sleeve cardy. The brief was no long sleeves on any of these so they could wear skivvies under them and it makes sense when you consider a. they're toddlers and rush around a lot and b. the mild winter we had last year and are abviously heading towards this year.

I thought I was being smart and rather than casting off the raglan sleeves and back, I kept the stitches on holders but then ended up with real mess when it came to knitting the yoke !!! Next time - and there will be a next time as I think this will look divine in a 0-3 month size - I will at least sew up the raglan edges ...

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