Note to self...

Must remember to tag posts!

It's raining

Well, I went away for a couple of days. The weather has been glorious - the tulips have all opened whilst I was away and the newly replanted pond stuff is all perking up nicely. Unfortunately it is now tipping it down! I've not had chance to do the tour and see what's coming up properly, nor take any pictures, and I'm away again tomorrow.

Hopefully when I get back it will have stopped raining. Everything will look fabulous and all that will need doing is the mowing! Oh, and plopping the lily back in the pond. It is still lurking by the wall waiting for a helping hand to lower it into the water. Aquatic compost is sooooo heavy..

What the heck

I decided not to knit just now. It's a bit late and I wanted to share what's lurking in my projects to do.

Newlook 6808. It says it's easy. Only I haven't actually made anything for myself since I was about thirteen. Oh, I tell a lie, I think I made a T-shirt during my A-levels.

Anyhow, I have seen a lovely blue and white cotton print in one of the local fabric shops, I am just a little scared of spending £10 on fabric to make a mess at my first attempt. I need a visit to the pound a yard shop to get fabric for a muslin, I think, particularly because I will probably need to alter the pattern. I am a little short in the body and full in the bust.

I thought I would try making my own tops as I find that bought blouses pull around my tummy as the waist is too low and then if they are this kind of shape they either pull up at the front or the girls are on show! Not terribly flattering. And shirts too as the buttons pull and gape.

I bought this pattern because it is like a blouse I own already which I love (and fits). So I think I will start with view B - the easy one - and maybe embellish it later if I think it needs a little something. What do you think?

WIP 2 - Baby Gifts

Well I did mention them earlier. Baby knits are always nice to do as they are so much dinkier than grown up sized sweaters. So I may in fact finish this before my green summer top. I don't think it will fit because he was somewhat larger than "first size" at birth and I refer to my earlier post re: tension....

But I had a single ball of yarn left and no other babies on the horizon so I stuck with it. There is only the buttonhole band to do and making up. It's kind of muddled up and modified from the pattern. I could only find one plain(ish) raglan sleeved cardigan pattern in my pattern mountain - I truly detest setting in sleeves - and it had a hood and a weird fairisle twisted stitch pattern across. Plus it was a reject pattern as my mum acquired a lot some years ago and it had no yarn quantities printed on it. So that, the second size, and the single ball of wool led me towards the contrast band. I really like it.

To add to the weirdness I picked up the stitches for the neckband before the buttonhole band was done. That's why it is on a needle in the photos. An overly complicated way of spreading out the loose ends. I hate sewng in loose ends and all the loose ends were on one side of the cardigan and there were oodles of them as you can see! Next time I put stripes in the ribbing it will be for a sweater - problem solved. One final photo with the loose ends hidden from view (well almost).

Well, I suppose I should actually do some knitting now....

WIP 1

So here is my most likely to finish WIP. Sirdar 9150. Love the colours of the printed pattern – not. All that yellow and orange… I didn’t use Juicy as I could only find it in orange (or is it mango?) in my local wool shops, so I used Calypso. Although the pattern states it as a suitable yarn the quantities are only given for Juicy (which is dead helpful) so I got my maths head out of secure storage, found out the yardage for the respective yarns and calculated that I needed 5 balls. We are nearing completion and I haven’t started the fifth ball yet so if anyone has any ideas for 50g cotton dk feel free to let me know! I have been too slow to return it to the shop. Also I knit pretty tight and I had to use bigger needles than the pattern stated so it will be a miracle if it turns out methinks. And if I manage to shift a couple of pounds it will be too big – that would be sad.

I know I should take the photos against a white background in perfect, perfect land but I like the contract with the blue rug and I vacuumed especially ;-) I like green. It is yet to be seen how excessive my use of green is when all put in one online space. Maybe it will make me control the green yarn freak in me. But it goes with the leaf motif in the yoke so well…..




The yoke there is actually the last piece and I think I only need to do a couple more patterns to finish it then I have the dreaded making up to do. I hate that bit. It’s also when you find that it doesn’t fit/is a bizarre shape/the neck hole is too small to fit your head through and all those other things that go wrong with knitting.

I would have finished it a while ago but had to wait to get decent light to do the photos because I’ve been wanting to blog it for ages. And I had to squeeze a holiday and a family visit in between. While I was waiting for some daylight I started another project too, but I’ll save that for later. That’s quite long enough for one post.

No blackbird

My blackbird made herself very scarce yesterday after all. Maybe the hacking and chopping of pond debris by two mad women had something to do with it!

I was too tired after that to do anything too energetic but I did manage to make a pie with the first rhubarb of the season from my garden. Much anticipated and almost a failure but nothing a good helping of custard can't cure. I'm just off to sneak another piece. The best thing about living on my own is I don't have to share the pie.

Today

OK. So I have a post all ready to go, but I thought I'd post this instead.

I spent today in the garden. I can't stay inside making things when it is so beautiful and sunny, so I have been busy dividing the pond plants. They were taking over and I also discovered that there were two orfe in the pond last week. I though the cats and herons had got them all except for the last goldish that I discovered frozen to the top of the pond this winter. (When I say frozen to the top it was literally on top of the ice, in the snow, frozen solid to the surface. Poor thing). So I have been very busy and now I feel pretty virtuous if I do say so myself. The excess plant stuff and stinky mud is abandoned all over the garden and I have to tidy up tomorrow, but we'll gloss over that.

Last year's photo obviously!

But what I wanted to say was that we had a blackbird busy building a nest. She was very bold and hopped all around us whilst we were working. She was taking the moss from the pond planter baskets, although only the really muddy bits, and kept flying into THE TREE with beak fulls and her beak had a big muddy stripe across. We watched her for ages whilst we ate our lunch and I did try to get pictures. I went in the house for my camera because she was so close that even my camera would have been adequate, but she decided that she had enough moss and went off to collect mud in the opposite corner of the garden instead. Grrr. Maybe she'll be back again tomorrow.

Where to start?

An entire blank page is pretty daunting!! See, I’ve been following a few blogs lately. Quietly. On the sidelines. I know its not the done thing, but I can’t think of anything to say that doesn’t sound banal or gushing – so I don’t. And with the stitches on the other needle, so to speak, I’m not sure I would be upset if people read my rambling and never let on. So I don’t feel guilty. So there!

Anyway, I got thinking that I read all these blogs for inspiration to make things. Except I don’t make anything. My head is full of things I could make but I can’t seem to start anything and when I do it never gets finished. I only manage to complete baby gifts and sometimes they don’t end up with the intended recipient!! So here is an incentive to finish and share…….

So what can I share? I took pictures of some WIP. My skills with the camera are somewhat lacking and the light has been bad non-existent ‘til the last couple of weeks. And as I say, I only have WIP so I will have to eek it out or you will have nothing to look forward to ;-)