Bad Blogger

I have been one of those. I haven't really kept up to date, I have been super busy though. My job has been leaving me rather exhausted, but I am now reducing my volunteering time so i have more rest time, and rest time means more knitting!

I have also been to Dublin I will add, and there will be a couple of pics from that in a different post.

So, to the knitting content...

Mainly this will actually be a list of aquisitions, as I have had m first pay day and it was a big one so I have purchased some lovely stuff from it, have a little ogle!

Lots of pretty things! As you can see I have finally managed to get the second ball of Sublime I need to finish my Bella's Mittens, I will have warm hands when I walk to the bus in the morning!! Also I have some new notions (a chibi for my knitter needles, lots of point protectors because I seem to have lost my old ones) and lots of KnitPro. I am actually waiting for some more KnitPro to come in the post which i got in Dublin and which John is going to send to me when he remembers, I got some 7mm symphony tips and a 100cm 2.25mm symphony circ for magic looping socks. Here is a close up of the stuff pictured which I actually have now:

As you can see there is another fixed circ, this one is 2.75mm for magic looping socks, I am so glad I discovered the technique, I love it and will be using it a lot more then DPN's if I can help it!

Also there are some more interchangeable cables, in 80 and 100cm sizes, and also, and this one i found amazing and just had to have, a 10cm cable! I am not sure whether it will actually be useful or not, but it was cheap and I had to have it, I am sure I will find a use!

Now for the best things in those photos. Do you remember way back when i got my first pair of acrylic needles tips, the spectra tips in September? Well, those pink tips there are pink versions of the spectra tips called flair! they are fab! I got a 5.5 and 6mm pair for a couple of projects I have lined up and cannot wait to cast things on for them.

I am going to have a sort knitting interval now where I show you the two charity neck warmers I am working on, unfortunately I cant show the other things as they are christmas gifts and I know that my sister sometimes checks this, so charity will have to do.

I am now onto my third charity neck warmer as I mentioned before my trip to the land of the Irish, it currently looks something like this:

I am hoping for a nice waffle effect, It is my current traveling knitting for the bus, but as it takes a little more concentration it isn't going as fast as the rib one did, if I attempted this while half asleep I have a funny feeling I would make a few mistakes!

I also have a complete photo of the second neck warmer for you...

I cast on around 80 stitches and it does look really very small when it is sat on the desk but i have tried it on and the ribbing means it is super stretchy, I am thinking nice and snug against the cold wind.

A little Ravelry mention for a second, as I have mentioned before I am a member of the RAK group on there, and I am just popping a little progress picture up for a lovely lady who sent me lots of embroidery threads (as well as some milkybar buttons!)

As you can see I have wound a lot of the skeins, but there are still lots and lots more which are safely tucked into the drawer for when I run out of these ones, so hopefully there will be some occasional embroidery content on here! Though admittedly not until after christmas, I have far too much knitting to do.

Now back to acquisitions, this time of the fibrous kind.

When I was in Dublin me and John visited a lovely yarn shop called This Is Knit, the two little corner stores in the shopping center were lovely, filled with luxury and basic yarns, i got to touch some Tilli Thomas (around €30 a skein) and as well as some real Irish tweed. I spent my pennies (or rather cents) on something else though, the Dublin Dye Company's Merino Sock. This is yarn dyed by the owner of the store and it is incredibly soft, machine washable, and the most beautiful peach colour. I have decided to make the Hermione Everyday Socks from Ravelry with it when John has sent me my 2.25mm circ (I actually started and had to pull it out to leave)

My final bit of Yarn Porn (coined by Lime n Violet) is this:

This, is Malabrigo. I had heard of the amazing softness of Malabrigo and now I have experienced it first hand, it is unbelievably soft, perfect for John's sensitive chin and neck. I went for the worsted weight for the neck warmer so it is a bit chunky, it is really cold over there in Dublin so it should come in handy, and I went for an unusual colour called blue graphite, it looks black until the light shines on it and you see the deep blue shining in it, I am quite tempted to get a skein for myself. I wont be showing this knit up until it is finished because he checks this, but I cannot wait to start on it!

Apologies!!

No pictures today, my camera is safely tucked away but I wanted to do a quick update before I fly off to Ireland tomorrow as I haven't posted for over a week, that is a long time for me, I have been rather busy though.

I have been planning and packing for Dublin, the bag I slaved over is holding up well so far, and I have a nice little Berlitz guide to Dublin. I am getting really excited, but also incredibly nervous. I have never flown on my own before, and only once as an adult, and I am a bit funny about heights and confined spaces, so planes are not the best thing for me, and the whole getting there and not getting lost etc. is particularly daunting. I will be even worse tomorrow.

However my trip will make it all worth it, not just for seeing the Irish Boyfriend, I am hoping to do some knit pro and yarn shopping, (I have a couple of self addressed envelopes to send any needle tips I buy back to myself), as well as seeing some sights.

Other then packing and working I have done a bit of knitting and embroidering, a lovely lady on Ravelry sent me a huge amount of embroidery threads, which obviously required a special box to store them in :)

I finished my second charity neck warmer, it is only basic rib, and have started on my third one, which is slightly more interesting with some checker-boarding with rib cuffs. I was originally using this as a test run for John's neckwarmer christmas present, but I think I am going to do something a little bit more complicated for his, to make it special, so I shall be diving into my stitch dictionary.

Other then these I have mainly been doing some christmas knitting, which I can't show just yet for obvious reasons.

I hope to either edit this with pictures or just do a post with lots of pictures from Dublin and pre-Dublin knitting when I get back, I shall have to see what takes my fancy.

Have a nice weekend all :)

Finished :)

So, the charity scarf? It isn't a scarf any more. It is a neck warmer, a finished neck warmer! With buttons!

I just finished it today, knitting in the buttonholes and adding the buttons I picked up from Boyes (only 30p each for solid wood, I thought that was pretty good).

Here is a close up of buttons and button holes, this is the first time I had ever knit a buttonhole before and it was surprisingly easy, I did choose the easiest option in my book, a horizontal buttonhole over two rows, but it was really simple to negotiate and to understand the reasoning behind it, which is something important to my curious nature. I think the buttons are quite neutral, they were the most neutral wooden ones they had, all the others had carving of some sort on which I thought was a bit too gender specific. It is nice to have finished something knowing that it will benefit someone else who really really needs it!

I am about to cast on another one but this time vertical rib with no buttons, just knit in the round. I am going to make my commuting knitting so I can hopefully get a couple done, I have found another group that needs winter knitted items on Ravelry, it is called Knitting for the homeless and so I am hoping to knit up a lot of my acrylic and split the neck warmer's between the two groups, need to get a move on though as I am going away for a few days soon (the Dublin trip) and wont be able to take any knitting with me because of airports and things.

Speaking of the Dublin trip, I whipped this up last night

I have called him Whaley and he is a little toy for John's kitten Monty to play with, Monty is lacking some fun toys and so I am hoping this will make him like me :)

Here is Monty just for you to go "Awwwww" at, because he is such a cutie!!

(excuse the quality, it was taken on IB's phone)

Mr. Fawkes

5th November 2009

Dear Mr. Fawkes,

Thank you for attempting to blow up parliament, because I rather like the day we celebrate named in your honour, I really, really enjoy bonfire toffee and all the pretty fireworks. What a shame you didn't manage it, or that someone hasn't managed it today, maybe then we would get a better government put in place!!

Georgina (age 21)

Away from the digression, I really do love Bonfire night, this year I didn't manage to do anything because I get home from work exhausted and can barely spare the energy to knit, but today I got to watch out of the window at other people's celebrations and it was really nice.

Tonight I shall be all relaxed and do some more charity knitting, the scarf is growing, I really need to start the second one though so I can get them sent off asap!

I hope you are all enjoying your saturday night, whether partaking in some late bonfire celebrations or simply relaxing.

TA DAAAAAAA!!!

I am so proud!! This is my first ever turned heel!! :D :D

I had so much fun doing this, it took longer then it should have because I had to rip out the amount of sock I had already done because it was too big, so I did it a size down and it was too small! Then I did it on larger needles and it's perfecto.

I keep trying it on which i really shouldn't do, might damage the needles or something. I can't wait for it to be finished. I had to watch a few video's to try and understand how to do the strange pattern of which stitches to knit, and my heel seems to be very square when the video's I watched were more diamond shaped, i think that was because I was trying to do the pattern and the vid at the same time, it seems to work though!

The striping is really not very good, but I don't mind, I know that really once I have mastered the sock I would rather use a block colour anyways, I am very much a block colour person, most of my clothing is block coloured.

Tonight I shall be doing more charity knitting, christmas puds and my sister's scarf, the sock will have to wait until I have done a bit more for other peoples.