Ripple blanket: Finished!

Who'd have thought so many of you had already tried Rumchocolate?! I'm really loving this :-) If you haven't then give it a go.

I've had another busy weekend down in London visiting J. I'm not sure if I ever said that he's been living there since January, if not then now you know! It means seeing a lot more of my family and 'home friends' and that is no bad thing.

It also gives me plenty of time on the train to knit and crochet although admittedly I get quite travel sick so I can't always manage it. When I do, I ignore the funny looks, stick my headphones on and away I go!

Something I have enjoyed finishing on the train is this...

I'm so sad to have finished but also so pleased with the result! I really hope little EP will be cosy in it!

Not the most amazing photo in the world but here goes for my 'ta-dah'!

:-D

The yarn I've used is Stylecraft Special DK, the same as my forgotten about Hexagon Blanket and finished Granny Stripe.

I'll list the colours from bottom to top as some are in the "Lucy Pack" and some aren't!

Lipstick 1246
Pomegranate 1083
Shrimp 1132
Sunshine 1114
Saffron 1081
Lemon 1020
Spring Green 1316
Aspen 1422
Turquoise 1068
Cloud Blue 1019
Lavender 1188
Wisteria 1432
Magenta 1084
Plum 1061
Cream 1005

The cream stripes have really made a difference to this blanket compared to the Granny Stripe which was solid blocks and I love it! It's a single row of trebles instead of two. I get my Stylecraft from Deramores and quite often they have a sale on so keep your eyes peeled...

I've been busy with new projects since completing my Bubble Gum Ripple (no this isn't another ripple)

And I finally got out onto the balcony to do some planting. I'll leave you with the fruits of my labour! Good night x

Going to try not to kill my herbs quite so quickly this year

x x x x

Why is the rum gone?

There is nothing quite like a hot chocolate to send you off to sleep but even better - try hot rumchocolate! I'm quite partial to a bit of Captain Morgans....

Last week J's sister had her baby, all 9lb 8 of him! I can't wait to meet him but in the meantime I've been furiously crocheting... On the train... At work... At my mums.... And here's where I was upto on Sunday!

I've done a lot more since then but as usual I haven't taken any photos since! I can't wait to show you the finished thing soon :-D

x x x x

I finally finished that scarf

Hello folks :-)  It's very much the end of the weekend now (3 minutes to midnight!) - where does the time go?  I've been spending a lot of time down at my parents in London so there's not been so much time for blogging, but *lots* of train time for knitting and hooking!

Time for a ta-dah post!

 

Yesssss!  I've finally finished my moss stitch scarf, what a relief I can tell you!  I've been knitting this on and off for longer than I care to remember (Ravelry says since August 11') but I tell you it feels a lot longer!

The yarn is king Cole Big Value Chunky - colourway Heather, which I bought last year in Ramsbottom and for roughly £2 for 100g it's brilliant stuff!

I've been wearing it this week (now that the colds settled back in again...) and I can happily report it's not a horrid itchy scarf.  A.w.e.s.o.m.e!

I'll tell you what else is awesome!  This fabric :D

 
I decided to treat myself in Hobbycraft (a trip I was easily able to convince my mum to take me on!) to some new shades of pink (all half price!) and this lovely flowery pattern (not half price but sooo worth it!)

 

 Truth be told this fabric will have a very specific purpose.  My friend CJ and I decided that what her kitchen needs most is bunting.  CJ isn't a particularly vintage or chintzy person so I might leave out the flowers but she's a  very pink person and my fabric stash was pretty lacking in pink...  What a poor excuse :-)

My mum barely let me leave the house with it so I think I'll have to sew something for her too.  I hope there will be enough left for me!

Right, I was just going to say it's 10 past midnight when I realised it's actually only 10 past 11.  Excellent!  It's still time for bed though.

Hippywitch!! - I haven't forgotten your cactus, I just haven't been near a post office yet :-o

x x x x

Thank you :-)

Hello! Give away time is over (whoops is it Wednesday already?) and I had a lot of fun reading all your comments. I hadn't anticipated how drained I'd feel coming back from climbing and I am SO glad I asked for something to make me laugh - it really cheered me up so thank you :-)

Climbing incidentally went very well - I did my first outdoor climb & multi-pitch (where you do several climbs in succession to get to the top!) and some terrific walks for hours up hill - not so fun!

That right there I climbed.

But I digress! To the giveaway at hand :-) I popped everyones names into a hat (actually it was a bowl!) and I can reveal that the winner of my little cactus is...



Hippywitch!

Congratulations :-D  Thank you again to all who entered x

Bye bye little cactus!

x x x x

One Hundred Giveaway

It is FINALLY time - horray! It took me a while to get time to make a giveaway prize and to find decent enough light to photograph it but here we are. I'd like to thank everyone who's encouraged me to blog and especially everyone who said I wasn't a rubbish blogger haha! I do need to organise myself better though to get time to a) read my favourite blogs and b) do the decent thing and leave a comment!

So Teresa Kasner... - finally time to put an end to the mystery! Do you remember back here where I posted about a miniature cactii garden I crocheted for my mum for Christmas? Teresa suggested this would make an excellent giveaway prize and she was so right!

I hooked up this little fella on Monday night and I'm very happy to say he/she/it will belong to a lucky winner :-)


It might have a flower but it can still be a he


Cactii have male and female parts apparantly!



Having never had a giveaway before I'm going with the flow - I've entered enough to know how it works :-)

Rules!

Nice and easy. You need to:

a) Be a follower or a new follower - I don't even mind if you only follow because you want a cactus

b) Leave a comment confirming the above rule has been adhered to and...

c) Tell me something that will make me laugh or smile! This bit's important!!

It can be a joke, something silly, something nice that happened to you or that you did - I don't mind one bit but when I come back from my climbing trip I imagine I'm going to be a broken individual and this sounds like a great way to cheer me up!

Closing date:

Sunday 25th March!

It's not a very long time but long enough I imagine. You can post all day Sunday, I might even let you off in the early hours of Monday morning but on Monday when I awake I want to be pulling a name out of a magicians hat!

I um'd and ah'd about who could enter but as I love all my followers near and far, you can enter wherever you live, unless it's on the International Space Station ok?

Awesome! What are you waiting for?

x x x x

Red, Yellow, Pink, Green, Orange, Purple, Blue

Thank you all so much for your encouraging comments on my last post :-) I've finally made my giveaway prize!! Unfortunately I haven't taken any nice photos so you'll just have to wait until I do :-)

In the meantime how about a ripple update?


It's going well! I'm actually back on the red now so I've come full circle and I just need to keep going until it's big enough for baby bump!

I've got a busy week coming up, on Friday I'll be off to the Lake District for a 5 day climbing trip - eeek! We're going to be camping (in MARCH!) and I've never done an outdoor climb before so it should be interesting. I'm going to have to put a LOT of faith in my friends.

If I don't blog before then... Wish me luck!!!

x x x x

One hundred lovelies

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!

That's the noise you make when you realise you've got 100 followers :-)

I honestly don't know how or why - especially as lately I've been a pretty bad blogger - but I'm thrilled all the same and even more motivated to do my part and erm, write stuff!

So I would like to say "thanks very much!" indeed to all you followers, and all you readers who might not be followers - I love you too! I will be posting a giveaway as soon as I make something and thanks to Teresa Kasner I have just the idea!

Well part of the reason I've not been blogging much is I've been finishing off things and I think there's only so many photos I can show you of this scarf:

But there it is! Half a ball of yarn to go - I think it's going to be long!

I made another baby hat too for my friend - now very proud father - at work who had a little boy two weeks ago.

My only reservation was the colour because he asked for "United Red" - I could barely bring myself to do it!!

Moving on.

Since my granddad died my family have been on "Nan watch" which essentially means making sure she's got lots of visitors and things to do. I should take this moment to say that my Nan is super strong and copes with most things remarkably and has taken everything so well - she is no quivering mess - so last weekend we took her out to Dunelm Mill to buy cushions. As you do. She'd not really been able to leave the house without someone to look after my graddad so this new found freedom is all a bit, well new!

While we were there I found this amazing mug for £2.99! "NO MORE MUGS!" said J. Haha said I - this one is coming home with me and you'll just have to put up with it and ALL the other mugs we have. So here we are :-)



Even better is my Dad paid so technically I didn't even buy the mug we didn't need. WIN! The last time my Mum & Dad did this they paid for wool I was after as a Christmas present. We've never seen it since.

x x x x

Snood ta-dah!

Well I did promise that this year I'd start finishing projects instead of starting them and since I've made two hats and started another ripple I thought I'd ought to complete at least one thing! Then I finished two :-)

Right after making my Russian Dolls skirt I immediately set out to make another )now that I knew what I was doing!) I bought some polka dot fabric straight away and cut out the pattern. And then it sat in a bag until last Sunday :-)




It's navy blue and I added some white ric-rac (I love it!!) to the top. All the details of the pattern can be found on the link above :-) I went down a size and it's a much better fit. I have to admit though after wearing it once I noticed some of my stitching needs tying off a bit better!!!

The pattern is only £3 from Burda Style here.

Anway I digress.

Snood time :-) You'll remember this started as a straight garter stitch scarf and then a diagonal garter stitch scarf but I wasn't happy with either!  Before I go on I just wanted to say that the yarn (which I love!) is Lang Mille Colori, I chose colour 053 Green/pink/purple:-)







So then out came the 4mm circulars!






It kept growing!


And then last week I finally finished casting off :-)



This is the stocking stitch side



And this is the garter stitch side. I love both! I'd only intended to have it as garter stitch but being on circular needles even though I purled every stitch the "back" came out as stocking. I'm glad it did though!



I wore it all last week with pride and finally got round to "killing" it today. It was very very curly at the ends so I decided... To iron it! It was well worth doing, it's a lot floppier now and easier to wear.

I made up the pattern, cast on 200 sts onto 4mm 80cm needles. At least I think they're 80cm! Before ironing I thought I could have used more stitches but now it's stretched out a little I'm really please :-)

Horray one down only a million to go!

x x x x

Baby hat ta-dah!

I was all ready to give you an update on the baby hat I've been making but I realised I never even showed you the progress! I don't even think I mentioned it :o

So there will be no referring back to previous posts, just a good old ta-dah :-)



I've dabbled in cables ones before and they're very easy to do. The lovely Joanna Donaldson who I met on Ravelry sent me some hat patterns and the cable one stuck out the most. I-have-to-make-this!

Luckily two of my friends and Js sister are all having babies in the next two months so there's lots of opportunities for hat making!


This is number two already half finished :D

x x x x

What we do when we aren't blogging

Hello people :-) I'm sorry for being a bit absent lately but I haven't been in the right place for blogging. I caught up with reading some of my favourite blogs this week and one post from Little Tin Bird really struck me and made me realise that it's okay to share life stuff with you guys (because you are all awesome!)


My granddad who's had dementia for a few years died 2 weeks ago tomorrow and I guess things have just been a bit weird. Since I moved up to Manchester I've made an effort to see both my grandparents when I go home and I'm happy to say I don't have any regrets there. The last time I saw my granddad (on my birthday :-) we had a little chat I I'm glad I have that nice last memory.

I don't want this to be a sad post though because my granddad was awesome! So I have some happier things to share with you - I just wanted you to know :-)


So what wouldn't cheer a girl up more than red shoes?!


And I made an orange & lemon cake for my lovely peeps at work.

I'll see you very soon for a bit of a ta-dah post - I can't wait! I just need some good lighting and maybe some help on the camera front :-)

Much Love!

Nic

x x x x