one good apple

Thank you so much dollface!

This time tomorrow I’ll have finished my first day back at school.  That Sunday feeling just doesn’t go away.  You know the one, where you think about getting up and getting ready and that bit of homework you were meant to do on the first day of the holidays but put off and put off and put off…  At least tomorrow the kids won’t be there so we’re sort of eased back into the whole thing.

The stupid thing is that the year goes by ridiculously quickly.  One moment it’s September, dark and cold and dreary, and the next you’re saying year 11 kids, ‘Only six more weeks till your exams start so let get busy!’ *yeah right*  Time goes too quickly and you don’t even notice it’s happening.  Oh, for a time machine…

Blustery is finished up and blocking at the moment, with it’s mismatched buttons.  It wasn’t meant to have mismatched buttons, the one I was going to use were too small for the button holes I made so I had to resort to my stash,

The lack of sleeves in a waistcoat are an obvious bonus when you’re desperate to finish a piece before the evening is out.  I also made these slippers with a pattern from Burdastyle,

Tha Wizard of Oz, Japanese style.  These were incredibly easy to make although I did make two left feet by accident, hence the reason one inside is red and the other patterned.  More a testament to my stupidity than anything else.

I’m going to combat those back to school blues now with a little embroidery and some telly.  Oh, and some rabbit snuggling x

Oh I’ve been busy.  Well, crafty busy.  In terms of real life, clean the cobwebs from the ceiling and make sure you’ve done the hoovering, I’ve not been busy at all.  Slovenly, in fact.  But I’m on holidy so who cares?  And like the prodigal daughter I have returned to my knitting these last few days and made a lace ribbon scarf,

for the Miss Marple swap.  I was meant to post this today but it is currently blocking on the radiator but will, tomorrow, be winging it’s way to Finland.  This is the first ever lace project that I’ve not messed up in some way, shape or form and I’m unfeasibly happy with it.  I will be sorry to see it go but I have plans in mind for one of my own soon.

I also got into the spirit of the eighties this week and cast on two pairs of leg warmers.  Our flat gets very cold during the day - we have landlord controlled heating - so these will come in very handy.  It’s strange how even when it’s warm outside and old, high ceiling-ed flat is quite chilly.  The pair I have finished are from One Skein and made using some yarn gifted to me by Mandy during Secret Pal 11,

The other pair are from Last Minute Knitted Gifts and are a lot more basic in that you cast on, K1 P1 to infinity and beyond and cast off.  I’ll post when they are finished but I’m only half way through the first one at the moment so…  I am magic looping them though.  I used this great tutorial and as far as I am concerned now, this is the only way to knit in the round.

I’m off to eat chips and gravy and read some Agatha Christie x

A whole separate post for this beauty - my UK Swap parcel arrived yesterday!

There was also a bar of After Eight dark chocolate there but it didn’t;t last long once it was out of the parcel.  Some gorgeous purple yarn as well as some undyed to dye as I see fit, a lovely crochet hook case, Body Shop bath goodies, including Coconut Body Butter which is just divine, some adorable buttons and some cards for my Gocco.  Thank you secret pal, you’ve made my Saturday!  Now I just need to figure out who you are so I can thank you in *blog* person!

I remember ages ago writing about a Rainbow Brite jumper my mum knitted me when I was a kid.  Out of the many amazing things she did knit for me this was by far my favourite.  So the other day I was lolloping around on eBay and found this,

heaven to betsy I’m a happy bunny.  Off back to Yorkshire in two weeks to see my mum during half term and shall be availing myself of the joys that are Boyes acrylic yarns in all the colours of the rainbow and knitting this bad boy.  There were some other really sweet patterns in there too - Danger Mouse, Victoria Plum and Postman Pat - that amounted to an eighties childhood flashback.  Love it.

Part of the UK Swap that I’m involved in is to answer an optional question each week about knitting.  This week’s is,

What is your process when planning a project? Do you shop for yarn and then find a suitable pattern? Do you find your pattern and then go out to buy the yarn? Or are you stash-busting? If your stash is out of control, how did it get that way?

Well, I look for patterns first of all.  It’s all about the pattern mainly because I’m not all that fussy in terms of the yarns I use.  I have nothing against acrylic because when I started knitting acrylic was all I could afford and it doesn’t matter if you throw it in the wash with everything else because you can say a lot about the stuff but fussy it ain’t.  I’ve never bought a sweater’s worth of yarn without having a definite pattern in mind.  At the moment I’m meant to be stash-busting because I have a ton of 4-ply that I was given but 4-ply is a long term commitment and if I’m honest, I’m too flighty for the stuff - I want pretty obvious results fast.

So, that’s that for this week…  I finished another embroidered pillow case,

I’m loving the embroidery at the moment and spending more time on it than the knitting.  I bought some material today to make some handkerchief/serviette things with so will be spending the rest of the evening fiddling around with that.

Oh, one last thing.  Last night I went to see this,

and loved it.  The first time Johnny Depp sang the whole cinema began giggling but his cockney accent was mercifully better than in From Hell and Helena Bonham Carter was just ace.  I know some people think Tim Burton is just a one trick pony but if the trick is that good then who cares?  John didn’t want to see it so I went with my best friend from uni who was up visiting.  She’d had a rough night the night before and fell asleep halfway through.  Which wasn’t too bad until she started snoring and I had to wake her up.  Nothing to do with the quality of the film, she assured me…

For now, toodle-pip x

Presenting the lovely Juliet,

and the sweet buttons I found in my stash on her,

I might add another three going the other way, they’re quite small so I don’t think they would overpower the cardigan or anything.  In other breaking news, the best friend cardigan is finished *fanfare please*

It needs buttons.  I am ignoring the fact that it needs buttons.  I am so ridiculously happy that this is finished that I can’t describe it properly.  I have about five balls of yarn left over from it but couldn’t bear to look at again for a while.  Best put them in the cupboard and cultivate some happy memories to do with this jacket.  So in contrast to two projects with bigger yarn I have cast on a new Thermal.  The old one was frogged months ago to make way for Muir and the new one is with Sirdar Cotton 4-ply in a kind of denim blue.  I’m in this one for the long haul, I think.

I have turned into some kind of knitting vampire.  All day at work I was itching to get home to finish off the gorgeous Juliet that I started on Saturday and want to get finished so I can wear it as soon as possible.  I love knitting but it’s been a long time since something called to me like that.  I really only have a few more lace repeats to do so it should be pretty easy to finish off in front of the telly tonight.

 As I type Donald is inspecting Enid and she is protesting mildly.  Every so often I will hear a scuffle as she scutters off and he takes chase.  As if to prove that animals make even less sense than humans, as soon as he stops chasing her she goes and bugs him until he starts again.  I got this fantastic package

in a BLU swap on flickr on Saturday and they have managed to drag themselves away from each other for long enough to sample the many treats.  Enid is a gannet, she’ll eat anything.  Donald is more discerning (Flumps aside) but he is particularly taken with the Cloverleaf Cookies . Not to mention the yarn as a treat for me along with a sweet scented candle and wind chime - thank you Jill!

Oh, Charlie Wilson’s War was ace.  I wish he’d make more films like that.  Maybe I should write to him, I’m sure he’d listen…  I can imagine that I’d begin with this one letter and soon end up like Patricia Routledge in A Lady of Letters by Alan Bennett, obsessively sending off letters to all and sundry mindless of the consequences. 

My mum is quite a proficient letter writer and quite often drops the Prime Minister a line to let him know how he is doing.  I will never, for as long as I live, forget the time she wrote to Andi Peters in the Broom Cupboard (one for the eighties and nineties kids only I suspect…) complaining that he has said ’sugar’ on air, in her mind a substitution for ‘bugger’.  I couldn’t even look at the telly for days, I felt like he knew what she’d done and was watching me.  Mad as a bag of cut snakes.  And the scary thing is that sometimes I say something and catch myself and think, ‘god it’s her!’  There are worst people I could turn into though but I think I should keep the complaint and advice letter writing to a minimum just to be on the safe side.

I haven’t talked much about knitting today so I shall go and do something that I can legitimately talk about on a knitting blog.  Like the fact that my Best Friend Cardigan has been frogged, re-knit in the smaller size, has a body, an arm, and is not so patiently awaiting the rest of the yarn which was sent out Saturday to finish it off x

Remember when Tom Hanks was funny?   I mean, stupid laugh, weird faces funny?  The Money Pit is one of my all time favourite films, along with other classics *hmm* like The ‘Burbs and Joe Versus the Volcano and Bachelor Party and the list is pretty much endless.  Not that I hate the new Tom Hanks stuff, it’s just that after Forrest Gump everything got a little serious and then he went so far down the serious road that it looked like he couldn’t find the way back.  I mention this because we’re going to see Charlie Wilson’s War this evening and I’ve heard very good things about it.  Funny good things, not serious, ‘Tom Hanks makes you believe the character’  good things.  All my fingers and toes are crossed and my hopes are raised to a dizzyingly high level.

I’ve signed myself up to a load of different swaps lately and can’t wait to get going with them.  First of all is the UK Swap, then a bunny swap for the BLUgroup on flickr.  On top of that I’m doing a  Lost In Translation one for a Ravelry group I’m in - I’m scouring etsy for some light blue yarn so I can make a scarf like the one made by Charlotte in the film - and finally a Miss Marple swap and read -along. 

I love Miss Marple.  In fact I love Agatha Christie full-stop, every single weird and wonderful detective she’s created.  And I love the fact that even though I’ve read most of her books at least once, I can’t for the life of me remember who the murderer was in any of them apart from The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd.  When I was a kid and we were visiting my aunt and uncle in London, my mum went to see The Mousetrap in the West End.  My sister and I were taken to the cinema instead and afterwards we met in this little Italian cafe drinking cappuccino (which were very cosmopolitan back then), looking through the steam filled window at the car lights whizzing past and begging to be told who the murderer was.  And my mum flat out refused to tell us.  Although I suppose that’s the success of such a long-running play - no one knows the ending till they see it.

Knitting-wise I’ve been working on my stripey jumper using some yarn my mum gave me for Christmas

I have a horrible feeling that I’ve made it far too big but I don’t have the energy to frog it and start again so if it’s a little on the large side I’ll just have to go with it.  I’m also making progress on my Best Friend Cardigan.  I still haven’t received my second packet of yarn that I ordered, thanks to Royal Mail, but a fellow Raveller Mooncalfhas very kindly sent some spare from her stash so I’m nearly there.  That’s one of the great things about places like Ravelry - how generous other knitters are.  I don’t have the time *excuse alert* to go to my local knitting group but Ravelry makes me feel like part of a knitting community as well as giving me heaps of ideas and inspiration.

I set up an etsy shop this weekend!  Ooooh look at me!  Pride of place are these fingerless glove/hand warmer type things,

in a couple of different yarns.  I’m actually really nervous about whether anything’ll sell but I figure if I don’t try I’ll never know.  There are some of my bunny softies in there too, hopping along waiting to be adopted.

Other than that I’ve been plodding along quietly and making the most of my last few days of holidays.  I finished off my lino prints and I’m quite pleased with how they’ve turned out

I like the idea that you could write something in the speech bubble, like the owl is hooting some kind of message to you.  I also made my first sock monkey,

although he has no facial features yet.  That was meant to be a job for this weekend but I got caught up in the vintage vertical stripe afghan knitalongweekend challenge on ravelry and the poor faceless thing got pushed to one side.  That’s not to say that I’ve achieved anything remotely near what I was supposed to with the afghan.  I’m going to slope off in a minute to try and do a few more rows before bed time.  Sock monkeys are great though aren’t they?  I mean, he looked rubbish before I sewed his little snout on - like, well, a pair of socks -  and then a few stitches and woosh! instant personality.  And that’s before he even has a mouth or eyes and stuff (see how he’s a ‘he’ already?).

Okay, I can hear my afghan calling, might as well make the most of my freedom before tomorrow starts again x

In honour of Fagin himself I made some fingerless gloves today from my own pattern

Quick Fingerless Gloves

Yarn - Debbie Bliss Merino Superchunky

Needles - 7.5mm (to give a gauge of 17 rows x 12 sts = 10 cm)

Left Glove

• Using a provisional cast on , cast on 20 stitches.  Work the following Four row repeat,

Row 1- knit

Row 2 - knit

Row 3 - purl

Row 4 - purl (this probably has a technical name but I’m not sure what it is…)

• At the same time,

Row 5 - K6, BO 4 sts, K remaining 10 sts

Row 6 - K10, cast on 4 sts (using magic loop method), K remaining 6 sts

• Continue working pattern until you have completed seven sets in total
• Kitchener live stitches together.  Weave in ends.

Right Glove

• Work as left glove except,

Row 5 - K10, Bo 4 sts, K remaining 6 sts

Row 6 - K6, cast on 4 sts (using magic loop method), K remaining 6 sts (this ensures that the ’seam’ sits in the palm of each hand rather than on the top of the glove when worn)

 And that’s that.  Feel free to use the pattern although I’m not sure how much sense it makes.   I added some little buttons that my sister got me for Christmas.  Think I might make a batch of these with various embellishments and see if they sell anywhere.  Time to be a little brave I think.

Any hoo… off to do some lino prints I think.. x