Slow Coach

Ach! I did it again!

This post was supposed to have been a few days ago, but I went and got distracted, time flies when you have nothing to do it seems.

SO!

Remember the snow from my last post? And how cute my red wellies looked in it? Well check out how they looked a few days after that!

The snow got quite a bit deeper for a few days there, I had to wear 3 pairs of walking socks when I went out, and my feet were still cold! I am really not used to this kind of weather.

On the plus side look how pretty the garden looked, it's Narnia!

(Note, that light is actually only about to my knee, not a full blown Narnia lamp in the middle of nowhere, but that is still thick for this country)

Now, what else kept me from posting, aahhh yes, Ms. Charlaine Harris and her wonderful Sookie Stackhouse books.

This picture of books 3-6, but I now have all of them, because when I went out the other day I had to get 7, 8 and 9, I just had to. After reading books 1 and 2 I decided to wait to get the others, well I waited long enough for the postie to bring them, but I couldn't wait for the next ones I really couldn't, they are just great. I only feature books that I really really like on this blog so that gives you an idea of how much I like them, they completely gripped me, I literally put down one after finishing it and had to pick up the next one, I stayed awake until 4am to finish one of the books and had to stop myself from staying up any later then that to start the next. They have just the right balance of humour, grit, and make believe that they go down nice and easy like a glass of cold milk. Perfecto!

Now I just have to wait until May for the next one, though I do keep reading the snippets of the first chapter that are available on Ms. Harris' website.

Obviously the Sookie books have a TV series to go with them and I may have come across series 2 of that show online somewhere *ahem* and sat and watched all 12 episodes one after the other twice now, including repeating episode 9 at 26 minutes into the episode just to fully take in how pretty Mr. Skarsgard, aka Eric, is in the buff, which allowed for some knitting time :D (knitting while reading only leads to dropped stitches, read on for an example of this)

The main thing I have been knitting is these:

I have only finished one as you can see, but do not fear! This is not a case of the One Mitten Syndrome!! I have actually cast on the second one and it is about one third complete, I am only taking a break from it to update this actually.

These are the Hurricane Mittens pattern which was written to compliment that hat I featured a couple of posts ago. I have done them in an opposite colour scheme to add a bit of interest and so far I am not sure about them, the second mitt I have actually started in the smaller size, as the first one doesn't fit very well, it is a bit loose, so if I prefer the smaller size I will be frogging this one and redoing it. I have also added a full thumb which isn't in the pattern and I am intending to add a flip top to make the mitts changeable between fingerless and full mitts.

I have also... wait for it...

FINISHED my Bella's Cable Scarf in purple for my sister!! This scarf has been on the needles since the beginning of september so it is a huge relief to have it cast off and wrapped up in some nice paper waiting for January the 23rd.

Here is a little shot just before I wrapped it, note, no needles anywhere! So happy about that! Especially as this is where the dropped stitches when reading occurred, I made a mistake in the cable and frogged back 8 rows to fix it and in doing so managed to drop 6 stitches back a couple more rows, it was very frustrating, but now it is all done.

I was going to do a FO report on this one, but I have knitted the pattern before, so I will just remind you of what I used, I knit my own pattern on 10mm needles with Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino yarn in shade 13. I used about 3 and a half balls of the stuff and it took forever, but it is a really nice open scarf and is really long and should wrap around little sister's neck plenty to keep her snug. If I could change anything I would probably slip the last stitch on each row to make it a little neater.

Right my last crafty persuit of the past could of days is one I am rather chuffed with. It came about when I got these through the post:

I had completed my Knit Pro needle set, and they needed a home, the tin I was keeping all my knitting stuff in wasn't very organised at all. So I whipped up this new nice safe home for them.

I think it looks a little like a clutch handbag, but it rolls out like this:

As you can see there are spaces for everything. I made it from that lovely red striped fabric I have used before (all my stuff matches) and some plain cream cotton for the lining and some dense sew in interfacting for rigidity, and I basically had a look at the ones available to buy and whipped up the perfect combination of all the ones out there already.

Here we have my needles from 3mm through to 6mm tips, and a pocket for my fixed circular needles which are sizes 2mm to 2.75mm. As you can see if you look closely I had to make the pockets for up to the 5mm size shorter to accommodate the smaller needle tips that I have in those sizes.

And on the other size I have pockets for the needles up to 10mm in diameter and then I have little pockets for my cables (the idea for this I borrowed from the Della Q interchangeable needle cases) and they lay nicely over the larger needle pockets so that it all fits. in the folded out picture you can also see I made a zipped pocket to fit into the middle seam to hold bits and bobs like stitch markers and point protectors and crochet hooks. A simple velcro fastening holds everything together.

I think it looks quite smart, it used things I already had around the house so has saved me the £25 it would have cost to buy one and it has already had plenty of use. Good all round I think!