Sneaky Peek

Just a picture or two of the scarf that I am making involving the adaptation of the Bella's Mittens pattern. I have only done the rib at the moment because I started the actual pattern and had somehow managed to gain two stitches so i frogged it and have redone the rib, hopefully I shall have more to show tomorrow as I shall be knitting this while watching the new episode of Miss Marple on ITV this evening (I am a massive Agatha Christie fan, I have all her books).

The pink one is mine, I'm making it on my new 5.5mm Swallow Casein needles from Loop. The purple is my sisters, I managed to convince her to do a little knitting the other day and as she wants a pair of the mittens I thought she should make herself the scarf to go with it :)

One more picture, this time of the rice crispy cakes i made a couple of days ago and haven't had chance to blog about them. They are nice and scrummy, much better then the ones ready made on the new advert!

Yum.

So another thing to blog about :)

It is official, I am a domestic goddess...or rather Rachel Allen is.

One of my many loves is afternoon tea, I love going to tea rooms and having scones and little sandwiches with a posh tea service, so much so as a teenager I reallllly wanted my own tea service and managed to get one for my birthday when I was 17. However, I have been plagued by an affliction which has always hampered my plans for this at home.

You see, although I can bake lots of lovely things, I have never been very good at scones, they always come out only about 1.5cm tall, no matter how little I handle the dough and how fat I roll it out. Always dense and like overgrown pancakes.

Until now...

Look!! HOW amazing are those! They're really fat, and they aren't small in diameter either, they are real scones, really fluffy inside, perfecto!

They were so pretty i had to take a picture with cream and jam, just beautiful. I am so so proud of them. So here is the recipe I used, it is from Rachel Allen's Bake book but I got it from here. I also added a few handfuls of sultanas to the mix as hers didn't call for any.

Obviously such lovely scones called for cream tea, with my china tea cup, but not with the plates and tea pot etc as thats too much hassle when it is just me :)

Yum.

Books

So this is supposed to be a blog which is not just about knitting, i think it is time to write a book post. I haven't actually been able to get much reading done lately because I've been away and because I've been feverishly knitting my left mitten. I have managed to finish one book though, 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman.

I have only ever read one other Gaiman book, 'Stardust', which i read following watching the film and really liked. This is another great story, and should also be turned into a film in my opinion, as that might make more people read it, and also some of the visual descriptions in the novel could be wonderful on screen.

It is the sort of story that really grabs my attention because it has parts of it which can be researched, I am terrible when I read and watch film and television, IMDb is one of my most used bookmarks because I always have to know the trivia!

So the novel is about a group of Gods, ones from old myth and legend such Odin and Loki, who have been forced to live normal lives amongst us because people don't believe in them any more, and it is belief which sustains them. The story follows Shadow, who following being released from prison only to find that everything he was looking forward to is gone (his wife is in a car accident the day before his release among other things), is hired by one of the Gods to work for him as his bodyguard, as there is a war coming. The new Gods, such as the internet and cars are killing the old Gods. The book follows this line with Shadow and his boss recruiting old Gods to help the cause traveling across America. I wont say too much more because i will spoil it if i do.

It is a long book, and i have the authors preferred version so mine is an extra few thousand words long, but its worth putting in the time. In typical me fashion i did a few wikipedia searches on the characters after reading too so it was especially rewarding.

The original version of the novel has won several awards, and I'm quite tempted to try and get hold of the original version as well to compare what Gaiman felt was lacking and see what kinds of impact the new parts have on the novel. Can you tell i was an English student :)

Anyways, if i try and talk about it too much more i will end up giving more things away, and i would prefer for people to read it for themselves as it really is worth the time, and carrying the nearly 700 page book around with you, because you will want to once you have started reading!

Mittens :)

Here is the other project I have on the go:

They are called Bella's Mittens, as they are a pattern based on the mittens Bella Swan wears in Twilight. The originals are £47 a pair!! I got the pattern from SubliminalRabbit, though I have changed it for my own pair to make them match the original more closely. So this is the left mitten, the right one is currently on hold until I can get some more yarn. I used Sublime Baby Cashmere Merino Silk dk in Rosy for these, I love the pink shade and the yarn is really soft, Iused 6mm DPN's and they have come out quite loose which I like as I am not a fan of gloves that are too chunky to allow you to do anything.

These are the first thing I have knitted in the round from a pattern. I started a sock with the same yarn and then frogged it to make these so I haven't had much experience of working with 4 needles at a time, I began to find it quite easy though and I can understand why people like it so much.

In this picture you can see the length of the sleeve as it is coming along, I love the cable pattern, its so simple but it looks really nice, and is unlike most other cables which makes it stand out, Imight attempt to make a pair of socks with it on.

Here you can see where I have altered the pattern. The original mitts had a moss stitch palm and the pattern I was using called for stockinette so I changed it back to moss. I had never done moss before let alone in the round so I had to do some snooping on the net to see how to achieve it, I think it has worked really well though. You can see my scribblings for the changes to the pattern in the background, there are pages of these!

Here we are almost done :) I was trying to be artistic with my sisters new DSLR camera here, and I think it shows both the rib and moss in action quite well.

I finished the first mitten last night at around 3 am. At this stage I had to add a couple of rows because I'd messed up and couldn't be bothered to undo the rows I'd just done, but that turned out to be a good thing, as the mitten would have been too short for my fingers if I hadn't. I also had to do some stitching to repair the sides where my knitting had been a bit loose and there were quite large holes.

All in all though I really enjoyed this one, despite the annoying complicated bits at the end, and can't wait to get some more yarn to finish the right one.

Playing with the pattern has lead me to think I will attempt a scarf pattern that will match too, I have already found a hat that someone else has written so then I would have a nice set. For now though I will have to wait.

Already I have been asked to make some for my sister, so it looks like christmas is sorted!!

Catching up

Right so time to catch up with the knitting projects i have going at the moment, nothing has happened to John's scarf lately as i have spent so much time with him, my other projects are going well though!

First is my cable weave scarf:

The pattern for this one is Susan Crowe's Spangle Scarf. I am a massive fan of her blog and I thought this would be a great pattern for my first ever more complicated project. It was my first project to rib and cable and so far it's going well, I got a bit worried because it looked like the last cable on the left wasn't doing anything for a while but I think it has sorted itself out. If it hasn't i should be able to fix where I've gone wrong now because since starting this I've started something more complicated and figured out how the intricacies of these things work now.

As usual i have lots of step by step pictures :)

I'm using some King Cole Aran, its a lovely oatmeal colour with different coloured flecks all through it which looks great when I'm knitting it as I wonder where they will show up.

My first ever rib pattern, I was very proud when i did this, though I became more proud after the next photo, as I had gotten it into my head that I wouldn't be able to cable, it sounded complicated the way people were describing it to me.

These are my first cable twists, and I think i did them well! The pattern I think was perfect for learning as it had so many cables twisting at the same time, on each cable row I had to do about 6 or something so i got used to it pretty quickly :)

I haven't worked on the scarf for a bit as I've been busy, but I will hopefully get it done soon as one of my other projects is about to be put on hold.

More updates after some more knitting!

Late Submission of Homework!

I am officially SO behind on this blog, much has been happening, J came to visit, and so I didn't get much knitting done as time was spent on day trips and things, including going to York where he was dragged to Betty's for dinner :)

I did make him a special present of lots of cupcakes:

Actually this one picture doesn't really show the true extent of my gift, this one does:

When I say lots, I mean lots!

Obviously the blue ones were for J and the pink for me :) There are lots left because we didn't manage to finish them.

Then after this I went back with him to Surrey to stay with his parents where the most amazing thing happened. It was like christmas, a huge pile of yarn plonked on top of the bed! Fab! So now I have several new yarns to play with, all nice merino stuff, in random colours, and i have been allowed to borrow some of his Mum's knitting needles, so now I have a couple of circular ones to play with and some DPN's that have already been put to use. I have matched a couple of the yarns to some Debbie Bliss and some Sublime cashmerino and am using some for one of my projects which I will put up in a sec.

While in the lovely south of the country I paid a visit to Bath, which considering I LOVE georgian houses and sash windows, is like my heaven :)

This is the Royal Crescent, which is like, amazing! So pretty, I would love to

live there, or in the circus, which I also have pics of but I don't want to bore with too many townhouse pictures.

I do have a funny one of a man in regency clothes though which just has to be shown!

He is wearing pink and purple, i laughed at this quite a lot.

So after my lovely bank holiday weekend i had to come back on tuesday, but before i did i managed to pay visits to two yarn shops whose websites i have been browsing every day, Loop in Islington, and iKnit near Waterloo. Both are lovely, i purchased some swallow casein needles from Loop along with some point protectors and my Sublime and Debbie Bliss yarns, and from iKnit i got some Knit Pro DPN's for making some socks :)

Here is a picture of the weekends haul, next to my pretty Cath Kidston knitting bag that i got a few weeks ago (also there is my new tape measure that matches :)

First REAL post

So this is a bit late, as i have actually already started my first projects, but i shall try and keep up to date.

So this is my current project, the stripy scarf :)

Rather proud of this one, it's the first thing i have ever knitted and i have knitted at least a few stitches every day since i started it. I have had a little trouble finding the correct yarn for the cream stripes (I'm running out of my first lot) but i did buy some today from a great little shop called Tricot in my local town center. I also got to stroke some nice posh yarns that i would love to have, maybe when i get some more moneys i will treat myself :)

So here is the scarf so far:

As of about half an hour ago. It is for my lovely manfriend, John, who likes green, (the dark bit IS green, it looks darker on here though) not sure he will like the cream, as it does resemble a football scarf, and he isn't really into football, I'm sure he will tell me when he sees it in person for the first time tomorrow :D

This one was the first day i started the scarf, not the first time i had done knit stitch, but the first time i had done purling, there are a few mistakes, but i decided that they add to the character, after all its important it looks hand made :)

This was after i had learnt to put in the second colour, was rather proud, was really just showing the future owner how it was going, i think it was about 22 cm long at this point, had a long way to go!!

Even longer here, thats me poking round the work, looking awful as this was at about 1 am when knitting addiction had really struck, i couldn't put it down, shortly after taking this picture i think i leant on my needles and disaster struck! One of them had snapped! My nice Cath Kidston ones!! Super glue came to the rescue though thankfully and knitting could continue.

Here it is a few days ago, before i went to Windemere, it was about 60cm long then, I'm not sure how long I'm actually going to make it, i might just keep knitting until christmas, if i get bored of just doing this one i have started another project to keep me busy (more in the next post). John is quite tall, so although i know most mens scarf patterns say that it should be quite short for a man i quite like the idea of it being reallllly long, able to wrap around lots of times, and as its quite wide it would be super warm, perfect for after he's been a complete maniac and jumped in the irish sea.

I shall update as soon as it gets a bit longer :)

New Blog :)

Whoo a nice new fresh blog!!

Its so nice to start again, my old one got a bit tired. This one has a definite purpose, not just for moaning about things that im not happy with, though im sure some of that will sneak in.

The main purpose of this blog will really be about my two favorite hobbies at the moment, knitting and reading, though im sure some baking will appear, as that is a favorite too.

Happy reading :)