A Passion for Knitting Re-Discovered...

Not enough knitting being done :-(

Sitting at work in my lunch hour, downloading knitting podcasts. I haven't listened to any before and am intrigued to hear what sort of format they take. This is as close as I'm getting to knitting at the moment! As I said yesterday we are decorating our front room and have sold the three piece suite in anticpation of our new one being delivered, so at the moment we are sitting on bean bags on bare boards surrounded by tools, ladders and packs of laminate flooring waiting to be layed, it's not very conduscive (is that how you spell it?) to relaxing with your favourite knitting stuff piled around you :-(.

The only knitting I am getting to do currently is at Knitting Group which is at the Two Rivers Pub in Staines, I absolutley love going there and look forward to it all week! We originally were meeting two Tuesdays a month but because we enjoyed it so much we changed to every Tuesday. It's funny we have such a lovely group of ladies and we all get on so well together and yet I'd say we were all very different. If we didn't have our love of knitting in common our paths would probably never have crossed! What a horrible thought! We talk about all sorts, knitting, husbands, kids, work other hobbies and the odd naughty story (mostly from me) we have such a laugh. We were saying we should start our own podcast, it would be hilarious!

Anyway it's knitting group tonight, HOORAY, I'll see all my lovely 'girls' and Marlon the pub dog who has taking a liking to the knitting group, probably because we have lots of lovely goodies in our bags :-) Lets hope he doesn't knock over our drinks this week as it did get a bit messy last week :-/

Friday Night from Hell!

I have been rubbish with this blog! It seemed like a really good idea at the time, but as with most things with me it seems to have been a five minute addiction! Saying that after reading my friends blog, Sarah and being very entertained by what she had to say I thought I would try again to 'blog'.

Friday evening was very eventful, we are currently decorating the front room and the house is a mess, half the furniture from the front room is in the kitchen/diner, we have no where to sit, apart from one armchair and a couple of bean bags. Anyway friday evening about 8pm I was in the kitchen and noticed the wooden floor was wet at the joins and the join was slightly raised, I assumed one of my sons had spilt something and not wiped it up but I decided to take of the fascia board off under the sink and have a look. Good job I did the floorboards were soaking, I could also see water pouring from the mains pipe. Hubbie checked it out and we had a leak in a joint below the stop cock so we couldn't turn off the water! So I did the first thing I always do in a crisis and that is RING DAD, Dad was a plumber by trade and is very good at DIY, he said switch on the taps to releive the pressure which was a good tip as this slowed down the water flow immediatley.

Dad said go outside and switch off the water from your external stop cock which should be just on the boundary of the property. Unfortunatley we couldn't do this because it was broken *PANIC* so I rang the waterboard, they said someone would come within the hour, so we sat and waited still with the taps running and rotating towells from the floor to the tumble dryer. The engineer came about an hour later but he couldn't turn the water off either! He said they needed to get a team of men out to dig up the road!! 10.30pm another team arrived and started digging up the road outside our house with pneumatic drills! By midnight they had managed to replace the external stop cock and the water finally could be turned off! PHEW! Thank goodness we weren't on a water meter. Saturday morning hubbie repaired the leak and the water was turned back on.

That just left me to clean all the saucepans and crap that was in the cupboard and put it all back again :-(

Sunday Roast.... yum yum

Just waiting for my Sunday roast to finish cooking.

Today we have roast Chicken, roast pots, aunt bessies stuffing balls, yorkshire pudding (I know it doesn't go with chciken but my boys insist on it for all roast dinners) roast parsnips, cauliflower, peas, asparagus, leeks and runner beans, don't you just love Sundays :-)

Bathed Charlie today with the intention of giving him his first haircut but he wasn't very impressed with the clippers to say the least! My labrador Honey however kept wanting me to do her so I had to pretend to clip her hair so she didn't feel left out, I was hoping this might also persuade Charlie but he wasn't having any of it! I managed to do a few strips down his back but that is as far as we got, I used a long comb attachment as I want him to stay 'shaggy'. I cut some of the hair off the top of his head with scissors. Now he is all uneven :-(. I think I may have to take him to the poodle parlour so that he gets used to the clippers there.

Just need to check my yorkshire puddings..... Yep they are looking lovely...

Went out for a lovely meal last night with some good friends, it was a turkish restaurant called The Plaza in Chertsey, I highly recommend it. Hubby has been playing golf today, so I have had a lazy day knitting my ice queen and watching disaster movies on movies24 whilst cuddling my doggies.

I am toying with the idea of doing a journal quilt, you knit a square a week over a year and the square has to reflect a memory from that week. It's a lovely idea I thought.

Right time to dish up...

Ice Queen No: 4 coming up......

Well I've started my fourth ice queen it really is a lovely pattern, if you haven't tried knitting with beads this is a good pattern to have a go at. The current one I'm knitting is in black which does make it a little more tricky to see any mistakes!

I am still itching to try Liquid Silver Shawl which coincidentally is also by Rosemary Hill, I might just have to order the wool this afternoon and some beads. I'm thinking of doing it in Rowan Kidsilk Haze 'Ghost' shade as you can't get Elann wool in this country as far as I can see.

Got to take my puppy to the vet this afternoon to have his last injection before he is let loose on the world! He is a little cuty but VERY feisty, my poor labrador Honey is being very patient with him. He is adorable though, just like a little teddy bear.

This my little Charlie after our emergency trip to the vet last week after my labrador trod on his toe! You should have heard the fuss he made. We got home after shelling out £170 to the vets, £30 of it was for the bandage can you believe and by Monday he was fine!

OK just ordered my wool and beads online  for my Liquid Silver Shawl which I will have to rename as liqid violetta shawl as that is the colour it is destined to be.

The beads are iridescent I just hope I chose the right colour to match with the wool. It's so difficult to tell when you are shopping on line!

Wow, I thought my account had expired....

Just testing to see if I can still blog, as I haven't done it for SOOOOO long. Wow now I am excited, I have an urge to blog again, now all I need is something interesting to say. Hmmmmmmm?

Just watching Loose Women, did you know that knitting is the new yoga apparently. It is now recognised as agreat stress buster, rather like owning a fish according to Sheree Hewson. Can't quite see the similarity myself but each to their own. Carol McGiffin however thinks knitting is a complete waste of time when you can go to Primark and get a jumper for a fiver! Poor love, she doesn't know what she is missing ;-)

I did loose my knitting 'mojo' for a few months and haven't been on Ravelry for so long, glad to say that I have got it back now and I have just started my 4th ice queen! I have also seen a beautiful beaded shawl which I am itching to try. The thing is the garments I usually really want to knit, I wouldn't necessarily like to wear.

Oh well lunch break over, back to the joys of working as and IT Support Officer, I'd so much rather be knitting......

Two new projects (sorry Dad...)

I've been having a bit of a nightmare with Dad's jumper, I have finished the back and first sleeve and started on the front only to realise .......

Sally stops writing blog as there is a big crash coming from upstairs, on investigation she discovers her little shit of a 19 year old son had left his bedroom window open, probably because he had a stinking hangover this morning!!! The wind has blown a couple of weeks worth of half filled glasses of coke and water over which was luckily mostly soaked up by the clothes strewn all over his bedroom floor!!! Sally makes a mental note to give him a bollocking when he gets in and start eviction proceedings!! Kids! who's ave em!

As I was saying before I was rudley interrupted! Only to realise that I have cocked up the cable! The pattern consists of three sections of pattern one being 40 rows, the second being 20 and the cable being 8. Well I was religiously counting the first two and I rather cockily thought I could tell when the cable was due. WRONG! When I look closely the cable gets bigger the higher up the jumper you go and as for the sleeve they are all big! I don't know how I didn't notice! So that means I either have to work the front and other sleeve the same or unpick most of what I have done already. You know what it's like though, it's going to bug me beacause now I've noticed it it's all that I can see.... I think Dad will have to wait longer than expected for this jumper, mind you I was thinking it's kinda short so maybe that happened for a reason. Anyway, I have started another 2 projects, both quick little diversions which I need at the moment!

The first is a DPN case I found the pattern on my newly found love 'Ravelry'

Ravelry...WOW... I love it!

I have just discovered the most amazing knitting & crochet community called Ravelry, it has thousands of patterns, photos of other knitters projects, forums, databases to store your favourite patterns, wool stash, needles and much more. I'm totally addicted to it and what's more it is absolutely free to join!

Here is the URL http://www.ravelry.com/ be prepared to be amazed!

Helping Paws (NOT!)

Knitting was somewhat difficult yesterday evening. I had Honey Bunny Poo, my 2 year old labrador sprawled next to me on the sofa to my left. Every stitch knitted resulted with an elbow bash to her head, the silly thing still stayed there then I put my knitting down for 2 seconds and Samson my 2 year old tabbly jumped up and settled himself down for the night on top of my knitting!... sigh...

One cable jumper coming up

I've been a bit quiet on my blog because I stupidly gave my Dad the link to it so he could see what I was working on and then I decided to make him a 'surprise' jumper! Doh!

So I have been biting my tongue and holding off posting but I can't resist any longer. I am knitting a lovely cable jumper details of which I will post up when I get home from work (shhhh.... don't tell my boss I'm blogging in his time!) for my Dad he will be 70 on the 8th March and although we have got him a family present I thought I'd knit him a jumper. He always reminds me of the cable jumper that I knitted him years ago when I used to knit and he still has it so I thought it was time I made him a new one...

I have just finished the back but now I am wondering if it will be long enough! Dad is 6ft 2 but if I have to make it longer it means unpicking it back to before the armholes :-( I think I'll risk leaving it. I really love knitting Aran patterns and watching the pattern unfold before your eyes. I particularly liked the cabled rib on this pattern which also will feature round the neck. Now I'm itching to finish it because I have just ordered some beads and I'm going to try my hand knitting with them which will be my first attempt! The pattern I'm going to try is Knitty's Ice Queen Pattern http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter07/PATTicequeen.html isn't it beautiful! I don't know if I'll wear it but I know I'll enjoy knitting it. Anyway if you see my Dad, don't tell him about the jumper!

My lovely New Bamboo Needles

I should have told you about my lovely needles that I bought from Ebay!

I had inherited my Mum's Aero Needles in the red plastic case, but they are still up in the loft somewhere from when I gave up knitting. I had read that bamboo needles were the 'must haves' they were quieter and better for your achy wrists and fingers (I don't know how that works?) so I thought I'd get some. I did buy a pair when I made my bolero cardi but they were quite expensive for one pair!

So.... I went on ebay and bought a set of 15 pairs for about £18 which I thought was great! They even came in a beautiful zip up suede case with pink lining and a silver motif on the outside. Very trendy! You may think they look a bit squashed in that case, and you would be right, that is because I also bought a full set of DPN's for a further tenner and squashed them into the case also.

   

I don't know why but I feel I almost need to apologise for taking up knitting again, like I need to try and make it sound more trendy? Maybe that's just my vanity being a 43 year old woman who feels like she is only 18.!!

My colleague at work asked me if I was going to get a blue rinse when I told her I was knitting again. She also told me her son would never put any of his kids in hand knits, he really had a big thing against it. It's funny because when you go into the likes of Next, they are full of beautiful hand knit kiddie clothes.

Maybe it's just up to us knitters to change peoples opinions...