A diet perhaps?
Remember this?
Well the doggy coat was for Baby, who has perhaps doubled in size since the last time I saw her?!
She wasn't too impressed I think!
My friend loved it.
Her other dog Eskie was also having a private snigger
Tee hee
Labels: Friends, Knitting, Weird and Wonderful
Happy Valentines Day
Belated Happy Valentines to everyone. I was too busy being loved up yesterday to blog.
Sorry, but you understand!
Leaving you here with a photo of some of the flowers being delivered at my work. the lady in reception said I should have come down earlier, there were a lot more there earlier. Meanwhile, she was busy ringing up people saying there was a delivery in reception for them to come and collect...
Labels: Weird and Wonderful
Dublin Woolen Mills
Proof that
Dublin Woolen Mills are stocking alternatives to acrylic!
Do you think there's any chance that they'll expand further?
Check out the colours of the kidsilk haze on top!!!! Yummmmy indeed.
Labels: Stash Enhancement??, Weird and Wonderful
The adventure in Kittyland
You know how cats love cardboard boxes, in fact boxes of any shape and size?
Well Reggie especially likes boxes.
This is his adventures in his new box.....until Ronnie decided to come along and sit on his head....
Oh and I found this link on
Krafty1's blog, thought it would be a useful excercise, if only to try and keep it all in order in ma little head!
Labels: Cat antics, Weird and Wonderful
Coincidently.....
Remember
these?
I bought the pattern for them along with the wool at the knitting and stitching show in Birmingham last September.
I got them from
UK Alpaca, and thought that the pattern was their own one, loved them!
I knit them up and again loved the end result.
I ended up giving them to my friend Jenny, who admired them. She had just had baby
No.2 and I had gone visiting. Jenny thought they were lovely and would be great to wear when driving, in the cold mornings (they were!).
Is it because these items get praised that I end up giving them away to the person prasing them?
It was the same with my first pair of fetchings that I made,
Isabelle tried them on, and then declared that they would be great to wear when she goes running, which she does daily, in the cold air of Switzerland.
I gave both of these wristwarmers away gladly, as I know that they will be worn and loved.
So, I still had over 50g of the alpaca yarn that I bought in Birmingham left, and decided to make myself another pair of the wristwarmers.
Could I find the pattern?
No.
Not to be seen anywhere.
I thought I had the pattern living with the yarn, but it was nowhere to be seen.
So I decided to put it aside and wait until I came across it. I rarely lose anything.
So a couple of days later, I got one of my regular emails from Lion Brand, with their stitch pattern of the month, and decided to go into their site to find a nice stitch pattern to make a dishcloth from (forgetting that I have a fantastic book of stitch patterns that I was reminded about when I saw
Isobel's treasure trove last Saturday at
SnB)
What did I come across?
The same
Stitch Pattern that was used in my wristlets.
I wondered then did my UK Alpaca suppliers take the same stitch pattern to make their wristlets, or did they make it up?
Imagine my surprise then when I got my Simply Knitting magazine through the door (which I subscribed to last year and not going to subscribe to again as I don't usually knit from it).
I sat down with a cup of tea to have a flick through it...........and .......what?
Where did they come from?! There were my wristlets, staring up at me.
For this issue, the designer was apparently set a challenge to make a pair of practical fingerless gloves with 100g of UK Alpaca and this is what she came up with....is this a coincidence or is it a copy cat case....hmmm....wish I could find my pattern to compare notes!
Oh, and I know that she would be able to make not one but 2 pairs of fingerless gloves from that ball of alpaca!
Labels: General Ramblings, Weird and Wonderful
One Year today!
It is a milestone.
It is a marking of the passage of time.
It was a year ago today that I stumbled into the blog world, taking ever decreasing faltering steps, and finding new ways to express myself, through my knitting, photo's and the web.
During that year I have had 356 comments, and since I started counting my traffic, I have had 7,928 visitors.
I started looking back to see how many items of knitting I had blogged about (there have been several unblogged items), and when I got to 7 Hats, 1 cafetiere cozy, 2 curly wurleys, 2 bags, 2 tea-cozy's, 1 winter muff, 4 scarves, 1 wrist warmers, 1 pair gloves, 2 facecloths, 1 pair socks, 1 pair fuzzy feet, 1 pair bootees, 2 pairs of baby socks, and 1 shackle cuff...... .......I stopped.
I had only reached April 06 at this stage, from January 06.
That's 29 items in 4 months.
Wow.
I must take some time to really go through and see what Ive done in the full year.
This year, I'm going to be a bit more selective in what I knit.
I'm going to knit for ME, that's my goal this year.
There are several patterns in the offing that I'm just dying to cast on for.
Some of them are larger items, like the Bridie cardigan from
Anna Bell that I have
swatched for and have sitting waiting for me to start with.
I probably should swatch for that again to make sure my tension is still the same.
(The pattern is not available at the moment on her site, but I have heard that it will be added at some stage soon.)
Some of them are smaller items, from books like Mason Dixon Knitting, Knit 2 Together, and many magazines that I have earmarked patterns as to do's.
Of course, there are always the baby knits, which I will be doing this year again....2 more coming up...and there are items also that I've wanted to knit for people that I will be doing, but I will be focusing on challenging myself a bit more.
If you look at the items I've listed above, they are almost all fast knits, almost instant gratification. I need to start something that I know I'm not going to get finished in a week, or less, that I know that I'll be a bit more challenged to commit myself to.
Of course, this will lead to more boring posts...like- look here's the start of a sleeve...a week later- look here's another part of a sleeve, or if I'm getting it- here's a complete sleeve!
I'm sure that I won't fall back on just having one item on the needles at the one time though, I probably will have that quick knit(s) ongoing at the same time.
Can't see one item only on the needles now, can you?!
Oh, can't forget that I've also learned to spin in that year, bought my spinning wheel and have sold some of my homespun on ebay!
Woohoo!
To celebrate, I'm now going to have a cup of rooibus cirtus tea, from
Suki Tea and then tonight I'm going to join
Holly at her knitting group. See a bit of the world!
Labels: General Ramblings, Knitting, Spinning, Weird and Wonderful
OOmpa Loompa
Another Elf cap!
I knit this for my sister Ruth, not as a revenge thing (honest Ruth, I thought you'd like it!)-because she likes hat as much as I do.
We were all in the pub just before Christmas and when we were leaving I took out my elf hat and put it on (it was cold outside!!) and Ruth started laughing and started singing oompa loompa from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I turned to my other sister and said, little does she know but she'll be an oompa loompa soon too!
I used size 10mm circular needles using the magic loop method, and you can see the difference in both the size of it and the way the colours fall. The picture on the left is a bit brighter as I used a flash, but it shows the colouring better than the others. The last picture is my first hat on top of the second one, to show the differences. the one on top is also washed and the one below isn't so Im wondering if this is the cause of the colour difference as they are from the same batch.
I left the cast off yarn at the top as I wasn't sure if Ruth would like a pom pom on it or not, she hasnt gotten bak to me yet....
Labels: Christmas knitting, Weird and Wonderful
Weird or what?
I've been tagged along with The Other 4.
Hmm interesting. 6 weird things about me.
This should be good.
How honest should I be??
Well, like
Holly and
Isobel, I don't really like tagging people or passing on those emails that say you have to pass on to 5 million people or else your feet will fall off. As my friend Christina knows, i never do it, yet bless her heart, she still passes them on to me.
My feet haven't fallen off yet.
In saying that,I think I did do a meme before and tagged a few people.
Sorry.
I've only managed to do this a couple of days after being tagged, and have only had the chance to catch up on some of my bloglines reading also, and noticed that
chocolate trudi not only has the same weird thing about her as her number one, but she went and used it as her number one. What the hell, I'll go with it, just in case you guys are too lazy to go and check out what her number one is.
Ahem
1. I can move my eyebrows independantly of each other. Very Spock-like, or 007-like. Used to cause hours of fun. It still helps with entertaining occasionally.
2. When I type, no matter how much I concentrate on it, I always leave the I in lower letters. This means I usually have to go back and correct it before I finish documents/send emails or post to my blog etc.
3. My brother and I were born in Zambia and Zimbabwe, respectively, of Irish parents, and we lived in Zambia until I was 3.
4. My banana bread tastes exactly like the avoca banana bread (which it should because its from the avoca cookbook no.1). I know, because i finally bought some from avoca yesterday.
5. Dyslexia runs in my family, I have a number of cousins who have various degrees of it. I think I have a form of it when it comes to typing because I regularly type words backwards, or all mixed up, but with all the correct letters in it. I usually know I have typed it incorrectly 'cos it doesn't feel right when im typing, but its only when I see it on the screen that I realise. As I have never been taught how to type, I usually only check the screen after every few words.Is this even possible??
6. I love to dance. I have had both salsa and tango lessons and danced salsa for about 3 years. I was never a whizz kid salsa dancer, I danced because I loved it. There were a lot of people where I danced that took it so seriously that you would wonder if they got any fun out of it at all. Not me, I laughed if I tripped over myself and felt like a child then when my dance partner frowned at me for laughing and giggling.
An additional no.7 from my boyfriend: I love to buy teapots. I have a bit of a fetish for them. I use them all, I choose whichever one I'm in the mood for using at that time! I have 5 at the moment, all rotated, (and 3 coffee pts)and would have a whole lot more if I had room for them! Micheal thinks this is very weird when one teapot would do...however, he brought me home a teapot from Holland so he's only fueling my fetish...if thats an appropriate word to use for a teapot from Amsterdam....
There you go, thats it. You are tagged if you're reading this!
Note: While every attempt has been made to correct the "i"'s in this posting, I cannot guarantee that this is 100% completed
Labels: Weird and Wonderful
Imperialism at its best
Oh I just had to watch this over and over again!
Stolen from
Cheryl's blog, have a look at this, and I dare ya not to like it!!
Baa Baa Imperial SheepLabels: Weird and Wonderful
Shocking post, please look away now if you are of a sensitive nature
Can you believe it, I've made a sale!!
Labels: Weird and Wonderful
Etsy
Well. I discovered this fantastic site a while back and have since grown to love it. I've bought a couple of items only recently from it for Christmas presents, and today took the massive leap of creating my own shop!
2 hour it took me to list some items on it but here we go....here's the link and I'll be adding to it as I can...wish me luck!
Ok, blogger is behaving strangely tonight, but here is the actual link which will get you to my shop...-->
http://www.sweensie.etsy.com
Tangelled Angel
Labels: General Ramblings, Inspiration, Weird and Wonderful
The Elegance of Swans
I drafted this post a few days ago, and its perfect for dropping in here now.
I've started a new job this week so have other things on my mind.
Normal blogging will resume shortly!
Driving along the canal on Friday, saw these swans preening themselves. I was trying to get a picture of a couple of swans who were in the water that looked like they were peering over the side of the bank at passers by, all you could see were their heads and necks, but the traffic was moving at that stage and I didnt want to be the cause of an accident!
When the traffic stopped at lights I quickly whipped out the camera and took these shots.
Bit blurry, but you get the picture!
There are always a lot of swans along the Grand Canal in Dublin, they are a nice sight to see. The canal itself is a lovely walk, I used to go walking there when I lived in Rathmines many years ago, a place that is one of the hubs of student-land, great places to go out and eat and drink and make merry.
Of course, now it is also home to
Holly's knitting group, who meet every Tuesday.
Labels: Weird and Wonderful
Stolen moments
This is what happens when you are out with 4 other knitting bloggers for a meal and you go to the ladies and leave your camera behind you on the table.
Mysterious artistic pictures appear in your camera.....
Wonder who was the instigator this time.......
Labels: Weird and Wonderful
Well the doggy coat was for Baby, who has perhaps doubled in size since the last time I saw her?!
Tee hee
Proof that Dublin Woolen Mills are stocking alternatives to acrylic!
Driving along the canal on Friday, saw these swans preening themselves. I was trying to get a picture of a couple of swans who were in the water that looked like they were peering over the side of the bank at passers by, all you could see were their heads and necks, but the traffic was moving at that stage and I didnt want to be the cause of an accident!
This is what happens when you are out with 4 other knitting bloggers for a meal and you go to the ladies and leave your camera behind you on the table.
