Goody box whoops

A huge apology to Kaye and Judy as I left them out of the box swap. However, all is not completely lost as I have not had time to unpack it and so I am going to tape it up and send it back out on it's merry way, at the weekend.

On the diet front, we went to the Isle of Wight, weekend before last, and I didn't bother dieting to be honest, although I did do a huge amount of walking. The upshot of all this is that I stayed the same weight last week and put on 1/2 lb this week. Still not to worry - head down and keep on going.

We've decided to have another holiday third week in August, but we're not leaving home to do it. After a lot of searching the net for deals and places to go, and grumpy comments from the other half we suddenly realised that we live in a holiday spot here in Kent. So we're going to have a week of visiting attractions within acceptable driving distance of home. So the money that would have been spent on the hotel - just a glorified wardrobe really, will be spent on extra attractions. There's such a lot in this area that I'm having great trouble in reducing the list to a manageable size.

My shawl is coming along - slowly. I was worried that it looked messy and completely unlike the picture of the completed one - but my Mum told me not to worry as blocking it would sort the messiness. I hope she's right :o)

There's so much to do I don't know where to start. My house is a tip, we're running at full stretch at work and we've got Swine Flu there as well. My daughter's schools has three cases of swine flu so far but as it's end of term tomorrow they're not really worried. What really got me though, was that my daughter said all the pregnant girls had been sent home because of the flu !!! The implication was that there was a lot of them and nobody seemed worried about that !!!

Oh well, now I've unloaded everything here I can make a start on something, somewhere, sometime. Or perhaps just knit a few more rows before I do.

Catch you all soon I hope. Good luck on shawls and dieting and everything else you're currently doing.

Diet - and me too

Well my diet went slightly out of the window over the weekend as I packed the family into the car on Friday after work, and went to the Isle of Wight. A two and a half hour motorway trip turned out to be the best part of four hours due to several accidents and multiple roadworks along the way.

Is it just me, or does there never seem to be any actual work going on inside those cones? We've come to the conclusion that in actual fact they are being stored on the motorway as there is no room for them anywhere else. That would explain why there always seems to be miles and miles of perfectly good road surface coned off. Either that or some evil sod gets their kicks from watching people get frustrated in traffic jams.

Anyway, back to the diet - or lack of. Although I haven't made any attempts to diet over the weekend, I have done a fair bit of walking and my weigh in this morning revealed that I have stayed the same weight - let's hope it doesn't catch up with me next week.

There's a noisy great Chinook helicopter just gone over my house, sounded like it was going to land in the back garden - mind my pots !!!!

I keep looking at the Tilia shawls and then going back to my Mum's cardi. In my defence I need to get this done for her birthday in September and the 16 row pattern keeps catching me out. But I do have my other shawl (see previous post) on the needles so I think I'll take it to work with me tomorrow and get some rows in during lunch. That's the plan anyway. And there's the other mitten needs doing and the colour through gold embroidery in the hoop, then there's the Or Nue to get started, the beaded bracelets, the embroidered bags ...... I think I may have too many projects ongoing !!! Problem is I want to do everything now ..... and I work full time as well. Still it's a challenge.

Night, night everyone

Posh Yarn has arrived .....

Here they are, my very first poshyarns

Matelot



Nabob

I got some ...

I actually managed to get two skeins of poshyarns by 8.05pm. Went back to have another look and it's practically been wiped out. I can just imagine all these manic knitters frantically clicking the refresh waiting to get their yarn. Hope those of you who were also refreshing madly, got the yarns you went for. I missed my first one and I have to say I was hot on the mouse.

The swift that arrived swiftly .....

This swift is worth my weight in gold, I'm telling you. Last time I tried to wind laceweight yarn by hand I spent hours and ended up with an impenetrable birds nest which was unusable.

This time I bought myself a large skein of pure wool laceweight from Astrid's Dutch Obsessions



Then with the aid of my new swift and my trusty Ebay wool winder I proceeded to wind it off into 7 centre pull balls in about 20 minutes. All I had to do was wind the handle and hold the yarn clear of the arms of the swift - so much easier than doing it by hand. I really, really recommend buying this if you buy a lot of yarn in skein form.

Lace along anybody?

I've just very carefully read Sarah's post on lace knitting - many thanks for that Sarah I personally found it very useful and it's inspired me to get on with my second attempt which I am hoping will be successful this time.

My first attempt was last years lace shawl from Hip Knits which, for me, turned out to be a big disaster. My main problem is that I knit left handed which means lace patterns have to be reversed to work correctly. So I have to do SKPO where it calls for KTOG and vice versa. Any more complicated instructions need some serious consideration to make them work properly.

Anyway, I was looking at Astrid's Dutch Obsessions site, which I absolutely love, and she has some wonderful lace yarn on it, so I decided to bite the bullet and have another go.

Along with the yarn comes this lovely lace shawl pattern which, fingers crossed, I am going to have a go at.

If anybody else fancies having a go at this I have the pattern and will willingly share it with you.

The yarn I have is in shades of red and black which sounds tacky but looks quite sophisticated on the skein.

I'll keep you posted on how I'm getting on - wish me luck.

It's started

Well Clara in Maryland has the box and has posted the pictures of her chosen three on her blog. I find it strangely thrilling to see things I've made or donated on someone else's blog giving them so much pleasure.

I'm on the last bit of a white crocheted sun hat for me. I altered the pattern slightly to increase the brim size and I've crocheted the last round in pink for a bit of contrast. I'm currently making some flower brooches for it in the same pink. Once it's finished I'll post a picture of it here.

Also on the needles currently, a cardigan knitted in a dusty pink acrylic/wool mix which I originally bought to make a top from a pattern I'd bought from White Lies Designs. Beautiful top and they'd knitted it in cotton. Unfortunately the yarn I chose for substitution, whilst knitting up correctly to the right gauge, didn't have the right drapeability. Being a large person, I'd spent a fair bit on this yarn and was determined to make something for me rather than it disappearing into the depths of my stash.

I'm also making mittens !!! To be fair I'm starting on Christmas pressies because I work full time so making pressies needs lots of organising for me :o)

I'll be posting pictures of these as soon as they are finished. And starting lots of other projects which are sitting in zip lock bags behind the settee winking at me.