Lucy in the sky….with diamonds….

The pattern is actually called Lucy's Diamonds (design by Ela Torrente) and was a pleasure to knit. Nice and easy and the yummy squishiness of the yarn did not go astray either.

Here is my youngest girl showing off her new birthday sweater…

The yarn is Bendigo Woollen Mills Athena and in this size took only 2 balls. Very pretty and super soft too.  I am currently working on another of Ela's designs, this time for myself.

What are you knitting/crocheting right now? Xmas gifts are very much on my mind but I keep changing my mind about what to knit or crochet for who. Ahhh decisions decisions….have a wonderful week everyone.

Love and light to you xoxox

Hello my friends, its been a while again.  A rather busy year with plenty of extended family dramas to keep us busy. Sadly both my brother and sisters relationships broke down which meant lots of changes for both of them and their children. Lots of tears and hugs were shared and major moves and adjustments have now been made. Life was just down right sad despite my usual positive outlook on things. I did not feel much like blogging. I am trying to get my mojo back and thought I would start with some exciting news.

Last week I was privileged to attend the birth of my new nephew. My husbands brother and his wife are proud new parents of this gorgeous little guy. And my niece is super proud of her new little brother She cannot get enough of cuddling him.

Here he is wearing a little beanie whipped up by his Aunty K partly on the trip to the hospital and finished on the day after he was born…..

I hung around for the first week until he was settled in and then had to come home to catch up with my own life and chores. They live about 3 hours away from us so we can't just pop in for quick visits.

Today is my youngest girls birthday. She is 23. Wow the years have flown. I just finished a sweater for her yesterday. No time to block it but will hopefully share some pics and linky love once she tries it on later today. Here is a sneaky peek….

Peace and love to all. Have a beautiful day. xox

Dropping by….. May creations….

Hello World……from the slackest blogger on the planet. Remember me? She with great intentions to keep the blog updated who rarely ever shows up? Yes well. No excuses really, just lack of getting to it I guess. Good intentions aside, my internet time seems to get sucked up by Ravelry and Facebook and if I am lucky, checking out Ginny's Yarn Along once a fortnight or so, but honestly I don't get time to read all the posts as there are so many.

I have still been knitting and crocheting. Gifting, donating and even selling a few of my hats. That was a first for me. This past month I have been working on a couple of shawls and a bunch of baby knitting and hats. I will just post pictures without linking today lest I run out of time.

Here is some of what I have been making lately…..

Delphina….. in Cleckheaton Country…...

Crocheted hat also in Cleckheaton Country…they had a half price sale. :-)

Slouch in Motion (MyMyMy) in Cleckheaton Country again …….

I had news of a couple of babies expected in the family and with TiKKi's Milo May in full swing decided to whip up some little Milos…..

This one is made with Moda Vera Pure wool and Sean Sheep variegated. Size 6 months.

Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury for the size 6 and Moda Vera and Cozy Wool for the 3 month size.

The hat is a little tidbit by Pekapeka….

Do you like my doll? His name is Malachai, I picked him up from a flea market stall. He is so cute and the closest thing I have to a baby for modelling at the moment. I am in the habit of taking pictures of him when I am bored….

It almost stops me doing things like this….. almost….

Peace out my lovelies. Have a beautiful day. Love and hugs xoxoxoxoxoxox

Spring Crescent Shawl

Hello my friends,

It is getting into colder weather down here so hopefully I will be catching up a little more often. The needles and hooks are as usual busy but  the blogging time has suffered. I am aiming to update over the next few days with what I have been creating.

For today I thought I would show you the Spring Crescent Shawl I completed a couple of months ago. I only just managed to get some pictures of the finished result.

This was made for a crochet a-long and was an easy pattern to follow. I made some mods to make it longer in the middle section and to keep it lightweight.

I used Bendigo Woollen Mills 4ply Cotton which is soft enough to have a nice drape.

This is a free pattern by Julie Aakjaer and you can find it here on Ravelry.

Hope all is well in your world.  Hugs xox

WIP and a few FO's

Its been busy as usual down here the past few weeks. Good intentions to keep this blog updated aside, I have a house full at the moment and have been busy washing, cooking and visiting more than knitting. That said, I have been slowly working away at my Kallan Cape and its coming along nicely….

I only manage 2 or 3 rows a day but hopefully I will eventually finish. :-)

I also managed to whip up a few little baby things…..another stripy hat, some granny square pants and I finished that little Autumn Cardigan which just needs some buttons. Of course nothing in the stash appeals to me and I am considering pinching some off another Fo and switching them. Not sure yet…

And last but not least, I finished off the Spring Crescent Shawl. This was for a CAL on Ravelry, a bit of a practice run for the Crochet party coming up next month. I will share pattern details when I get some modelled shots.

Have a beautiful day all. Love and light to you. xox

Hmmm

In between my larger projects this past month I have been making little baby things for a friend. I picked up this book at the library the other day and could not wait to have a play with it. If the cover does not suck you in the cute overload inside will.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Autumn Leaves baby cardigan inside and could not wait to whip one up. It was coming along just nicely until row 18 when my instinct starts kicking in and saying no no thats not right. I probably should have listened but of course I went on knitting…...In all honesty, we were watching Twelve Monkeys with the kids, an oldy but a goody and I was paying more attention to the tv than looking at my knitting. A couple of rows were ripped back as punishment and then I finally stopped and hit ravelry for an explanation.

You can usually weed out an explanation somewhere if you look closely enough. Despite the fact that everyone is so damned nice and does not want to complain. sigh. Really I get it but its more helpful if you just pop something down in your notes to say what went wrong. I did find a couple that mentioned problems and then went over to the blog to compare notes.

This pattern is offered for free on the designers blog so I think its ok to spell it out. The instructions in the book are wrong. It has been rewritten on the blog to add the eyelets at the beginning of the row and also changes the use of skpsso to ssk. Much easier and neater too. That aside, the instructions on the blog are then missing the underarm cast ons  and the marker placements are different. So if you don't know how to work without a pattern by yourself this one is probably going to confuse you to no end.

Needless to say, I do love this design (Its very cute!) and am just continuing on from here in without the pattern. I have placed the markers directly in the middle of each underarm and will work increases either side if and when I feel like it. Thats my plan and I am sticking to it.

It must be the name I tell you. Do you remember a certain other Autumn Leaves cardigan in the adult size I was working on last year? The one that required pretty much rewriting the whole pattern to get the leaves placed right? This baby was a breeze compared to that one. LOL

I just realised I never did get around to finishing the bands. Whoops, my bad.  Must add that to my Feb, WIP pile.

Back to the book. "What to Knit when you are expecting". Its a beautiful book. Full of cute babies, gorgeous designs and the pictures are just lovely to look at. I am planning to buy a copy despite my little gripe here about this particular pattern because well the cute overload has totally sucked me in and I am going to have to give this one back to the library next week. :-)

Now I shall away and get back to it. Have a beautiful weekend all. Happy crafting!

Hugs xox

Its time for some crochet…..

Such a lot of my yarn time has been devoted to knitting this past year. Not that I have not enjoyed it but I do like a bit of variety and my fingers have been yearning to pick up the crochet hooks again. So many projects were put aside in favour of getting test knits  and gifts finished that I made a conscious decision that I would plan a crochet project and actually give it some attention. 

So with that in mind I actually said no when asked to take on new knits (other than those baby knits of course but hey I can crochet or knit those, that is up to me).  Anyway, when I noted that there was a warm up CAL coming up on Ravelry, I decided to join in despite the fact that the pattern was not revealed up front and I am generally not into the mystery CAL's, I  committed and we got started…. I chose some acrylic blend type yarn that I got really cheap in an op shop. Not going to lie, I was fearful of wasting good yarn. That said it was working out quite pretty, but not knowing where it was going was making me a little nervous….

So imagine my relief  when after starting, it was decided that we would be working on an actual pattern after all, and we put our projects aside and started again. Phew. After a vote was held, The Spring Crescent Shawl won out and we all started again. This time I chose some BWM Cotton in 4ply  for the project. 

The cotton is much more suited to the weather right now. I worked the first part whilst sitting on the cliff at the beach enjoying the fresh air. Pictured below is the yarn I did consider using but I am glad I went with the cotton now. 

So far so good. Provided I remember the increases which I keep forgetting on one side. 

 

This CAL is being held on the International Crochet Month group on Ravelry. If you are not familiar the group/party is active every year in March with lots of different activities to join in on. 

For now there is just this CAL going on to warm up before the Party Starts in March. If you would like to join in the thread is over here. 

Happy Friday Everyone! Have a great weekend! xox

 

WIP Wednesday….and yarn along.

Oh Look at me, blogging two days in a row! There is hope for me yet!! haha! How are we all today? Well I hope.

So what am I knitting this week?

I have been busy in between all my test knits and baby knitting working on this lovely pattern…

Pic borrowed from Tracey's pattern page on Rav

Kallan Cape by Tracey Lee.

I first saw this pattern when it was released and added it to my very long queue on Ravelry. Then when I saw this months KAL on the Budding Down Under Designers group was hosted by Tracey I saw it as a sign to get kicking with it.

I originally planned to make this in a forest green but then ended up choosing Mink in Bendigo Woollen Mills Luxury as the green would probably have not have gone with much. This is more neutral.  So here is my effort so far…..

I did not get started till last week as I had to await my yarn arrival. I am sure I will not finish this by the end of the KAL but thats ok. I plan to enjoy it and finish it by winter. Maybe I will even get to wear it a little before I run away north as is my usual fashion when it gets too cold. LOL More likely,  I will gift it, if I don't wear it. I know I will love it though. If you like a bit of cabling, this is the project for you.

The pattern is not charted but is very well written with the hood being a separate pdf. You can also choose to print the whole version or just the off rows. Separate documents are provided for both. I opted to knit the cape first and sew the hood on later. Alternatively, you can start with the hood and pick up your stitches for the cape if you prefer. I figured it would get a bit heavy and its rather hot here atm so I did not fancy sitting under all that wool at once. Hence starting with the cape. :-)



What am I reading? 

I took delivery of Woodland Knits this week. Its a beautiful book and I had been eyeing it off for a while. I was introduced to Stephanie's patterns a long time ago when my oldest daughter purchased a copy of her Woodland Hoodlet. It was way out of her knitting skill range and she opted to try and email it to me, somehow it got lost and deleted and despite planning to buy it again we never got around to it. I did promise to knit it for her though so hopefully this year I will finally get around to it.

There are lots of whimsical, magical and just down right cute patterns in this book. My only gripe with it is the almost consistent use of chunky or bulky yarn. Not very practical for those of us who live down under, especially on the coast. Just finding the yarn is a chore in itself. Great for people who prefer a quick knit  I guess.

Anyway, that is not really reading is it? What I have been reading this week is the Ancient Future Series by Traci Harding. Or I should say RE-Reading….I have read them all twice before at least. I am onto the 3rd book in the series and enjoying them just as much as the first time I read them.

If you are not familiar with this series……you can find out more about it here.

I also just finished reading The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, by Martin Sixsmith,  I read the whole book yesterday afternoon and have to say I was a bit disappointed.

The cover described it as "The heartbreaking story of a mother and the son she had to give away".  I was expecting to hear both sides of the story and what happened to them both in general. It started out with the mothers story but once he was taken from her (she did not choose to give him away) at 3 years old, it pretty much tells the story of Michael's life  and we don't really hear much more about the mother at all.

To me this book went into way too much detail about Mikes personal life. More than half the book is about his political career and his choice of sexuality. Way way too much information. In fact I became both bored, then disgusted (poor Mike is not telling this story, it is hearsay from other people in his life, a life I might add that he chose to keep private for reasons of his own). This book made me feel really really sad. So sad for his birth mother and even more sad for him.

As one who tends to read through the lines a bit, I feel like his adoptive family were more than likely not fairly portrayed in this book. I am assuming that they chose not to get too involved in the whole story themselves. The man had issues and of course there are two sides to every story.

I will leave it at that, just incase you choose to read it yourself. I won't give away the whole story. I would have liked to have read a little more about his birth mothers life and their search for each other rather than all the fluff which was really no-ones business but his own. Thats just my opinion anyway.

Now enough rambling from me today. You have a beautiful day.

Love and hugs xoox

Time flies…..

Hello friends, I hope 2015 is going well for you so far. I have been busy this past few weeks with a couple of test knits which I will share when I get some good pics.

I currently have two projects on the needles… a pair of Ribbon Curl Socks

which have been a little slow going due to having too many other things on the go at once and I have also cast on a Kallan Cape for a KAL in the Budding Down Under Designers group on Rav. Will share more on that one once I take some pictures. :-)

I am also making some baby hats for a friend and decided to just make a whole bunch and let him choose which ones he likes. So far I have these two…

The Hearts and Bows Baby Hat

and this little hat which was inspired by a pattern in Itty Bitty Hats by Susan B Anderson. I pretty much used her stripes idea but omitted the seed stitch band and added a row between each section and left off the pom pom. Its cute I think. And a great way to use up those odd balls and bits and pieces of nice squishy left overs.

Of course I am also working on some crochet projects which I will share another day. Its 5.30 am here atm and I have been up since 4.30am with my pets. One dog is scared of thunder so woke us up to come inside. It took me a good half hour to settle the other dog who is not scared but just wanted to play. I ended up putting her back out as she would not sit still. Now I have a dog and cat at my feet and the other one has only just settled back in her kennel. Seriously these pets are pushing it. I am not a morning person when I have not had enough sleep! On a lighter note, one of the birds decided that since the light was on so early it must be morning and starting whistling "If your happy and you know it clap your hands" as loud as he could. LOL Funny but not so much when everyone is asleep. Not me of course, I am here talking to you. :-)

I hoped you have faired better than I in that department. Have a beautiful day my friends.

Namaste xoxoxox