SP 11 package number 2

How exciting, my package arrived on Saturday, full of great things. The theme was miniatures and my pal sent me a mini hand cream, mini chocolates, which will be saved until I get weighed on Thursday, a little book of handbags and some soap. AND some great Noro silk garden lite, which has already been put to good use.
Here is what it has already become (or becoming)

It's the Argosy scarf from Knitty. Download the pattern free here. I love it, it's knitted on the diagonal, but is a straight scarf. Much to the confusion of my family.
I hope my secret pal approves. Of the scarf, not the confusion. A close up for you of the beautiful square pattern...

The colours in the Noro look beautiful on the scarf, I think!

I knitted it at bingo today. My mother in law is staying for the week. That's why I was at bingo.

Anyway, it's a quick knit, so FO pictures soon. A break from my caramel belle, but I may do a little of that tonight.

Quilting, I haven't forgotten You

I've been so busy knitting lately, I've lost any time and a bit of mojo for quilting. Every now and then, I go and lovingly stroke my (embarrasingly large) stash of fabrics. This week, as it's half term, me and a few teenage girls went shopping (no, I was the driver, not the old one pretending to be young), although I have to say I would not revisit the ages between 13 and 20 for all the tea in China, it was a miserable time for me.

Anyway, back to my story. On the way to shopping we passed Maggie's shop. Rude not to go in, I thought. Once you're in there, I defy anyone not to buy something. Here's my purchases
This..

and this..

oh, and these..

The way she puts them together just makes them look like something special. I am determined to make something before Christmas.

Talking of Christmas, and just when you thought it was ages away, look what I found...

Christmas SOON
Muwahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

PS Excuse my awful photos at the moment. It really is winter here now and the light is not at all conducive too taking good pictures.

Silver or Caramel Belle Cast on pics

As promised, well a bit later than, my cast on pictures of my silver belle. After writing out the pattern, I realised that, on the sleeve, anyway, it's on a 20 st loop. Easy, you'd think. Wrong, you'd be. For some reason, I have had to unpick a fair few times. Luckily, it's quite easy to pick up.

The cabling I've found ok. Apart from the fact that I talk like Popeye a lot of the time, with it gripped between my lips.. although I expect that Popeye didn't say stuff like "go and get your pjs on please" and "watch out the cat needs to go out". Maybe he did.

I'm knitting the sleeves on straights. Just because I thought it would be easier. I do grapple a bit with circs. The yarn, well I love the colour, but I'm not sure about the texture, it's a bit stiff, not cosy enough for me. I'll reassess at the end.

Here's a close up of the mistake I decided to leave in/behind. I call it individuality. Maybe some would call it laziness because I didn't see it until I was about 18 rows on from it. Whatever W

It's a one stitch mistake. Excuse the blurriness of the photo, it's to confuse you. Not really.

Tammy Beret

Just a couple of photos of the beret I knitted whilst selling my wares at the car boot sale the other weekend. It was so easy and quick to knit, I think everyone I know might get one for Christmas this year! Tammy Beret from RYC Weekend, book 8. Rowan Cashsoft aran yarn. About 2 balls in total.

My gorgeous daughter is modelling it. "DON'T get my face in"

Silver Belle news, I'm half way up the sleeve, and all is well and quite calm. I shall be posting some pictures of my progress later today. In between taking the elderly cat to the vet, doing the ironing and taking Lily to get her hair relaxed. You know how it is, I'll fit you lot into my glamorous life if it kills me!

Wish Me Luck.......

I'm starting my silver belle tonight. I had to write out the first 7 rows as there's 6 charts to read from and it's a bit complicated. Check out the sheet, looks like algebra, doesn't it? Even Rob was impressed (well dazzled) and he speaks computery languages. I'm revelling in the feeling of superior intelligence. I'm hoping it gets easier as the pattern emerges.

I'm starting on the sleeve. Mainly because casting on 480 stitches for the body filled me with more dread than I cared to contemplate. 70 for the sleeve seems more dooable.

Here I go....GULP

Ideas and Inspiration please

I bought this..


I have turned it into this

You can't appreciate how patient and talented I am to have done that. It's Malabrigo lace weight. It all sticks together.

I tried to turn it into this


I spent an enjoyable evening last night knitting 5 rows and then tearing it off my pretty new needles and chucking it on the floor in disgust. A few times. I've wasted about 2 meters of it. The pattern and the yarn were obviously never meant to meet each other.

I have scoured Ravelry, looking for a lacy scarf to knit and I can't find one. All my hopes are now pinned on you, my knitting friends, for some advice and a good pink knitting project for my one skein of sticky shocking pink malabrigo. Bear in mind I've never knitted lace before, so I need a kind pattern.

Knit pink for October.

Hello..My Name's Liz and I'm a Hoarder

I was going to call this post Vintage UFOs. But, after looking at the pictures, I decided the AA theme suited it better. You'll see what I mean as you read on.

My daughter is hoping to go on a horse riding holiday in Transylvania next Summer. We told her she needs to save up some money towards it. You know, responsible parenting and commitment and all that. Well, she's about as good at saving as I am at dieting. And that's really crap.

So, this weekend, 2 of my sisters were dong a car boot sale. I said to Lily, if she wanted to sell some old clutter (believe me there's a whole loft full of it) she could put the proceeds towards the trip.

Saturday afternoon, we spent in the loft. I was clearing out. You know the drill. 3 piles. KEEP. CHARITY SHOP. RUBBISH. I was quick. Lily was doing the thing you must never do. The "oh, look at this" thing. The thing that takes all of the time. And England were playing France in the rugby at 8pm. And it was 5pm.

We fell out a bit. Ate our curry in near silence.

A bright and sunny day the next day, not to early, me and Mrs Happy loaded up the car. Oh no, I actually loaded up the car and off we went. This is me and 2 sisters at the boot sale. I am knitting the Tammy Beret from RYC Weekend book 8. I did finish it and shall post those pictures tomorrow.



Now, this is the point of this post. Check out what I found in the loft. I'm almost (but not) embarrassed to tell you the there were 79 balls of yarn in my loft, and that they had been up there, above my very sleeping head, for the past 8 years without me knowing about them. Oooops. I'm going to call them my reserve stash. It's not nice yarn, just emergency stuff. You know what I mean.



A friend of mine's elderly mum knits blankets for Africa. She's just moved into sheltered housing, and now there's 20 elderly ladies knitting blankets for Africa. The local yarn shop who would give them end of lines, and the charity shops, can't keep up with them. So I thought I would donate this reserve stash, which, let's face it, I didn't even know I had, to them. My friend said they would be ecstatic and promised a photo of the blanket(s) when finished. I'll keep you posted.

Onto my vintage ufos.....

When I was pregnant, some 16 years ago, I started knitting a blanket. Here it is



Yes, unfinished. I could blame my daughter, who came 12 weeks early. I hardly had time to finish a pair of bootees, did I, never mind a blanket. But you'll lose all sympathy for me when you see the next lot.



Now, that's quite pretty, isn't it? Not sure why I didn't finish that one. I don't even actually know what it was going to be.

Take a look at these sleeves. They are belonging to different sweaters (I hope)




OK, now I'll show you why I never finished some stuff....



You can hardly blame me for running away from the at speed, can you? Imagine sewing all those freakin ends in......shiver

But look, I could do bobbles



And cables



And chunky



And.....what the hell was that going to be?????



Ok, left hand in the air, right hand on heart.

I, Liz, have nearly knitted some seriously God awful shit in my life. But thankfully I saw the light before anyone wore it.

Well, a couple of things got through the net........

The Great Knitting and Stitching Disappointment

Sigh.

I'm back.

It was not great.

I always do this. I have a doctorate in doing this, ask my family and friends.

I SOOOOOO look forward to something, and I build it up in my head, and then, when it finally comes around, it's SOOO big and fantastic in my head, it can be nothing but a bit shit in actuality.

I shouldn't have been surprised really. I must try to stop doing it. I blame my optimistic nature. See, if I just thought everything was shit, then it would always be great wouldn't it. Oh well. You can't change how you are.

First of all, it was PACKED. When I say packed, I mean, if you'd have fainted from the intense 90 degree heat that it was in there, no one would have noticed. You'd have just been carried around for hours in a slow moving crowd with your toes scraping the floor. Now, I'm not great in crowds, or at moving slowly, or in indoor heat. Imagine my great joy at being in all 3 at once. Oh yeah.

I do have to say, the work in the textiles exhibition from the colleges and universities was amazing. You know, the sort of stuff you just walk round staring at with your mouth by your knees wishing you'd thought of making something that beautiful. I'm not sure if I'm breaching copyright, but I took a couple of photos. There were a lot of places you weren't allowed to take pictures at all, but my ones were at least legal.








The big felted granny square blanket I loved, from a student at Birmingham University, and the bags from Buckingham and Chilterns University. Fantastic stuff.

At lunchtime, we decided to go to the bar for lunch and have the most expensive and least appetising jacket potato with 4 bits of grated cheese on it. Wow, that was lovely. We sat at a table completely by accident with Lyndsey and her mum.We didn't see any other Ravelers who "came out" to us. It turns out, from being on Ravelry last night, that there were 3 bars. So saying meet you in the bar wasn't the greatest of plans. Now that we know that we all want to meet up, though, I think we'll try to get together sometime else.

Here's us in the bar we thought it was! My friend, Dawn on the left, Lyndsey in the middle and me.



The great hall was full of stalls.

Which was great.

If you liked embroidering. Or sewing. Or beading. Or felting.

Yeah, I know, I've done some of that stuff. But remember. I had a shopping list for stuff I NEEDED for knitting projects. URGENT stuff, people. There was nothing much to buy. And believe me, I looked. As much as the intense heat and the slow moving crowd would allow. That was the other thing. You'd get to a stall you liked the look of, and then have to gaze lovingly at the needles/beads/books from 3 meters away because the hot and sweaty slow moving crowd had also decided to stop there.

Appreciate my frustration please reader(s)

I had withdrawn good money to spend here. Wanna see what I got. Don't bother getting yourself ready, it won't take long.



Yes, that's IT!!!!!!!!! Nice needles, some cashmere and a book. Wow.

While I'm here, I want to moan. I would like to know this. How come I pay £12 to get in and then the prices of the stuff I bought is the same as the normal price. No show discount, no thank you for driving 75 minutes to get here, no so sorry we didn't bring much for you to buy, NO NOTHING. I may as well have gone internet shopping.

Which is precisely what I did when I got home. I bought online, all the things on my shopping list I went to get at the show.

Oh well, it was a good day out. We stopped on the way home to spend some money that the exhibitors missed out on, and Rob likes the look of the cashmere for a scarf.

In the meantime, Basil likes it more!



By the way, if you're heading there today or tomorrow, have a great time. Smirk. Don't bother taking more than a few pounds. Smirk.

I'm not bitter.

I'm writing a list (or ten)

Tomorrow I am visiting the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace. I, and my friend who I am going with are VERY EXCITED!!!!!!!!! First off, we both like to shop. Second off, we both like stuff just because it's beautiful. It doesn't have to have a purpose or a use.

Also, there is a strand on Ravelry at the moment for people wanting to meet up tomorrow lunchtime, and so far there seems to be about 14 of us!!! Email me if you want to know the time and place and what colour carnation we'll be carrying if you want to meet us! Or go to the UK knitters group on Ravelry. The post is, funnily enough, "Let's Meet Up"!

Soon I shall be posting lots of photos of the day, and the meet up, and also of my wonderful haul.

Soon I shall be broke.

Colour Decision Made...finally

Ok, I have ordered the yarn for my Silver Belle. You know it was between 3. Well, earlier on today, I had a little wander over to the Silver Belle KAL and zebraknits is knitting it in 1 of my top 3 colours. It's beautiful. Straight away, I went over to Cucumber Patch and ordered 20 balls of Jaeger Extra Fine Merino Aran in coffee, number 558. (Let's face it, any left overs aren't necessarily a bad thing, are they?)

This is the colour..


Go on over to the KAL and have a look at what mine will (hopefully) look like. One day...

Thank you for all your help with my colour choice.

Chevron "Modelled"

It's the best I could do. I cut my nose out of the photo because it looked big. You can get the general idea of the fit. Mine is a bit longer than the model in the LMKG book. My daughter said I should put my hair in a beehive to look like the book more. But I thought that was going too far. Rob took the photos in the garden. My next door neighbour (not the wierdo loony one), rang while we were doing it and my daughter answered the phone and said we were taking photos. She straight away looked out of her upstairs window to see if we were doing anything illegal, I think. Not then we weren't, lol!

Here's some close ups of my darling..

This is my favourite photo..

October is Pink Month

Breast cancer is a big deal in my family, we lost our mum to it. So I am asking you guys to check your breasts especially this month. Or ask someone you think deserves it to check them for you. And don't stop, do it every month!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Think Pink!

Chevroff

Thank you all for your advice on my chevron scarf. Just a quick post to let you know-it's over. We have ended our long term relationship amicably. After casting off, I lovingly bathed it in delicates and silk wash and then pinned it out in my work room upon 2 jazzercise towels. That was nice of me, hey? I'll post some pics of me in the obligatory chevron scarf pose tomorrow when it's dry.

My daughter wants me to knit her one in pinks, so we spent a while last night having a trawl through Ravelry, where, would you guess, there are 522 chevron projects currently on the go. Amazing. I love that place. Anyway, she picked the colourscheme she likes, from this knitter and I've put it on my (growing) shopping list for next Friday.

Thank you Green for your comment especially. I read them just after I cast off. 9 feet long is impressive though!!!!

By the way, this is my 100th post. Here's to the next 100!

Chevron...and on...and on...and on...

I have loved making the LMKG chevron scarf. Even though I had a small nervous breakdown winding the Koigu into balls, it has been worth it. Look how beautiful it is...


But look how long it is...


I have discovered something psychological about myself whilst I have been knitting this. I can't let things go. I don't know when to stop.

Help me please. It's already 10" longer than the pattern says. I love it so much, and it's such easy watching tv knitting that I don't want our love affair to ever end.

Will someone please tell me it's over.

End of.

Cast off.

My Etsy Shop is Open For Business...Come On In!!

Hooray, I know you were wondering where I was!!!

Well, I was tangling myself up in knots, (makes a change from doing it with Koigu), getting my shop together. It's not easy when you're technically challenged like me!!

But I'm finally open.

Come on in and have a look round. I won't mind if you want to buy something either. You know it'll be sent to you with a little bit of love. Aaaaaah!

Let There Be Light!

Today I decided to make a light box. I found a great tutorial on the web here, and I thought, it can't be that hard, can it??

A small nervous breakdown, a lot of mess on the floor and some small stanley knife cuts on my hands (oh, and a really lot of fuckin swearing), and ta da.......

Hmmm, mine doesn't look that like theirs, does it? Do you especially like the 100 watt bulb in the 40 watt max lamp, balancing precariously on the top of the overlarge and spindly box? Crap.

I took these for you. I'm knitting this


for my second to smallest niece. It's a Debbie Bliss pattern. A bit boring to knit, lots of stocking stitch. I have to intermingle it with the chevron scarf for a bit of sanity.

If you want to see why I'm disappointed with my light box, go to Vanessa's blog, Coloursknits or Black Dog Knits. Now they're pictures I'd like to be able to take.

Instead, look at my effort.


No, don't feel sorry for me.

I'm blaming the camera I use.

It's obviously shit.