Yarn Along Wednesday!

This Wednesday almost came and past me by without me actually realising it was Wednesday. 

We've had a busy day, cycling to school and then into town to revisit Lily's old  kindie and reacquaint Toby with it. The last time he visited he had just turned two. It's hard to believe that he will be attending there next year as a four year old!

It's such a fabulous inspiring kindergarten! You know it's the right place when the teachers are excited to see the kids' visiting and they say to them, "You're welcome to come back and visit and play any time this year!" How special is that!

We've been into the city to buy paint and a new bicycle helmet and lunched in the beautiful Barwon Heads. A wee bit of knitting was accomplished in the car on the way in and out of Geelong, and while waiting outside the bicycle store for what seemed like an eternity, but apparently was only about 30 minutes!!!! 

I have no photos of what I am knitting at the moment, which is not really part of the game, is it? Perhaps I shall be good and add one in the morning. BUT I have just finished knitting my kiddies some fabulous mittens, so I'll share some pics of those instead.

A bit of photo overload but these are fabulous and so fun!

These fabulous little mittens are knit from Sheryl Greenfield's new Leaf Mitten pattern. 

Can you tell I enjoyed this pattern?

Unfortunately for you, it is not available to the general public until January 2013 as it was part of a Yarn and Pattern Club run by Red Riding Hood Yarns.  

But Sheryl has plenty of other fabulous patterns you could try! 

You can find her patterns in her Ravelry pattern store over here

My little mitten knittin' spree helped us brave the cold climate of our mountain country while we spent a few days in the Dandenong Ranges and the kids saw snow for the first time.  My mittens are still on the needles, well one is anyway.

And what am I reading?

I'm reading Gillian Slovo's 'Every Secret Thing'. Gillian is the daughter of anti-apartheid activists Ruth First and Joe Slovo. It's a great read; it's described by one reviewer as a brave book, and I'd agree.  I'm really enjoying it, even though it deals with events and people that were the generation before mine, so not ones that I am completely familiar with. 

Pop on over and join the Yarn Along. (link at the top there)

mittens ravelled here and here

keeping up the pace

I bet you thought I'd slipped away into non-blogging land again, didn't you?
Well, I don't blame you! It nearly happened.

We've been enjoying the start of the Winter school holidays here. I say that quite ironically as yesterday morning the children greeted us with a 6:20 wake up! That's earlier than we normally get up for school!

The wonderful thing about Winter school holidays is that they coincide perfectly with the Tour de France, so there's been lots of knitting into the wee hours, while pretending that I'm watching the cycling. I wonder than my DK hasn't caught on to it. Sometimes he stays up late with me, but often he's in bed first. And then when I go to bed, he'll ask, "So what happened? Who won?" And I'm never really quite sure.

I'm also having a bit of a tidy up of my design schedule, which sounds quite fancy. The reality is that I have no schedule or organised approach what so ever. I tend to just knit what I feel like or what I'm inspired by. I'm quite fickle at times and will often toss aside a knit in favour of something that excites me much more. While this does generally keep the knitting mojo strong, it does mean there are quite a few designs/garments that are yet to see the light of day.  Quite a few. And it's not that they are flawed, just my approach is!

So I have a plan.

I'm going through all my half-knit garments and half written patterns and giving them an order to be tackled. I plan to tackle one here and one there, fairly sporadically so I don't get bogged down in some great catch up of UFOs. That would never work for me.

I also plan to make better use of my visual diary to record pattern ideas and notes, rather than always diving in head first or hoping that I remember. I used to be much better at this, but then the kids started getting into my journal and it all fell to pieces. I have the most beautiful journal that my sister made me for Christmas, I've been wanting to start using it, but to be honest, it seems to nice to write or draw in! Particularly as my drawing skills are pretty, well, let's call my style naive, shall we.

First up in my plan is to get this pattern out there:

I started knitting this in September 2009, when we were on holidays in Tasmania, but ended up ripping out the entire cardigan and shelving it for almost a year. I finished it September 2010. My aim is to have the pattern ready for release before September 2012.

I've looked it over and re-edited it and it's ready for the testers, which I just need to organise.
I'm going to re-knit it in a bigger size in WOOLganics Sangha, the most glorious orange.

Why orange?
Well, this is a leprechaun inspired knit. Leprechauns are one of my favourite small folk, I really adore them, and Toby is about as mischievous as a leprechaun, so it's perfect for him.

In the meantime, I'm frantically knitting away at a sleeve.. Frantically.

Hmm, perhaps I need a list of my designs in waiting to keep me honest.

Embracing the Bomb

For a long long long time I've wanted to do a wee bit of yarn bombing.

I so love a bit of yarn bombing and I think it is the perfect addition to our seaside town, which despite its location does need a bit of colouring up at times.

2012 is the year to embrace the bomb.

After a bit of a practice yarn bomb carried out with a fellow bomber on the tree on a friend's nature strip (doesn't everyone do a practice one first?) our bombing cherry was popped and we were ready for bigger and better things.

I have to admit I've had my big bomb planned for at least...ooh, a year. I think I came up with the idea sometime before last year's International Yarn Bombing Day (yes, there really is such a thing) but in my typical disorganised fashion, it didn't quite happen.

One rainy and dark night, myself and fellow bomber (who shall remain nameless for protection) with our 7 and 8 year olds in tow (it's a really good learning opportunity to experience stealth), descended on the local foreshore to bestow my piece of "art" on a local mermaid.

And doesn't she look happy with it, hey?

That beautiful crocheted bikini was quite a learning experience for me. I am one of the most uncoordinated crocheter in the world. Being a left hander who knits right handed doesn't help. Even my left handed crocheting is quite, um well, unique.  I've worked hard on my technique this year and while my crocheting is neat, seeing me crochet is not pretty and my technique does draw strange looks from real crocheters.  I akin my style to being a bit like a continental crocheter. It looks quite odd but it really really works for me.

So now after learning to read a crochet pattern, and a few other stitchy things to do with crochet; I can now crochet bikinis. Pretty handy really.

A month or two later, and the bikini is now gone. That's despite the fact that I did hand sew the ties together quite firmly.  That's a bit sad, but I guess that's the risk you take with bombing. 

I'm hoping that I'll see someone wearing it on the beach next summer. That way it will at least have gone to a good home.

I love the secrecy and just plain stupid fun of yarn bombing. This certainly won't be the last. We've planned a few other things, and have another friend who is desperate to pop her bombing cherry soon.

Wednesday ~ yarnalong

yoo hoo? is anyone out there?

Gosh, it has certainly been a long time since I blogged, and you know what? I really really miss it.

I really miss documenting the story of my creating, and I really miss the interaction with other bloggers. I'm still reading other blogs, but when you really aren't blogging the commenting bit sort of falls by the wayside too. They can't really come over to your blog to return the comment and say, "hey, get off your arse! You haven't updated for a month!" Well, they could. But most people are too polite to do that.

I promised myself numerous times that I would start regularly blogging again, then I get bogged down and stuck in trying to figure out where to start when trying to catch up! Do I do one big post? Or separate posts? What have I missed?  And then the cycle starts all over again.

I need a push or a time to regularly blog to help me on my way. And then I stumbled across yarnalong on a fellow yarnie's blog, and that I decided was going to be my impetus.

So the idea of yarnalong is that each Wednesday you blog about what you're crafting up with yarn and also reading. Visit the main blog and leave your linky and then you'll get lots of lovely encouragement to finish what you're working on. Cool, hey?  

So for me, my crafting this last week has been a bit of desperate knitting as I work on a couple of secret designs with a looming deadline.  Because they're secret, I can't show you them, but I can show you a  peep of a few other things I'm working on. 

I'm in one of those situations where I have five garments on my needles, which yes, can be a tad confusing at times....particularly when four of those garments are patterns in development. I'm really not sure where my mind is at at the moment but nevermind!

So my (main) yarny working basket is looking a wee bit overloaded and like this:

The red garment is the one that I am desperately wanting to be working on and going back to when I can. I took it to knitting knit this week as my secret ones can't be seen in public.

It's knit in Red Ridinghood Yarns 8ply Superwash, in the 'Ruby Slippers', colourway.

Lily has given it the name "Bollard".  The bollards in Geelong are her favourite place ever, so that's the link... tenuous but that's ok. It may change yet, very very possibly to be honest!

Close up it looks a bit like this:

And my reading matter this week, as you can see, has been Stephanie Pearl-Mcphee's 'All Wound Up'. 

A nice easy amusing read for the end of the day to send me off to sleep. 

Pop on over to the Small things blog to join in or see other what other yarnies are up to this week!

(psst, I'm a bit early at the moment as I'm in the Southern Hemisphere and blogging while I have some time rather than trying to squeeze it in tonight when it's Wednesday in the NH.

milo may 2012

It's May!
Which means it's Milo May again!!!

Time to crack out your needles and dive into your 8ply stash to whip up some cute adorable milos for all and sundry. Well, okay not all and sundry. I won't be knitting my husband a milo. Nor possibly, my elderly neighbour. Or even her cat. And probably not even that small boy at Lily's school who is terribly tiny and terribly cute. But hey, just about everyone else will possibly, maybe, with some good intentions, get one knitted for them.

So what's Milo May all about?

Milo was released in May three years ago. To celebrate, my Rav group decided to have a mass Knit-A-Long for the month of May. It was so much fun, and everyone went to town creating some very individual and stunning milos.  There were 126 milos knit in May 2011.  So much fun was had, we decided to make it an annual event.

Want to join in?
You do need to be a member of Ravelry. (well, sort of, if you want to see what others are knitting. You could just knit a long and be oblivious to all the other milos being knit. That would be ok too.)
Pop on over to my Rav group and join in the thread, post photos of your finished milo and tag it with MILOMAY2012 and you're in the running for a prize.

It could be a spot prize along the way.  Or it could be the final prize, winner randomly selected by my milo boy, of 200g of hand dyed 8ply wool.

So get those sticks clicking away!

I'm planning three this year; one for the milo boy, one for a yet to be born nephew and one for the sweetest little girl who is the most appreciative recipient of knits I know!

So who's in?

lazy sunday

I love a lazy Sunday afternoon.
An afternoon of quiet sunshine interspersed with some rolling thunder and autumn rains.
The kids settled into an afternoon of imaginative play, with sticks and capes and lots of co-operation.
A hot cup of chai.
Some yarn to play with and the last of the easter chocolate.





This afternoon I'm sharing my love between crochet and knitting.
Last night I started crocheting a cushion cover out of some glorious noro. Gosh, I do love noro.

This afternoon I wound some more skeins of WOOLganics Head, Heart and Hand into balls to keep working on Lily's log cabin blanket.







This afternoon my new favorite possession is this beautiful green wooden chair.
Scrounged from a neighbouring town's hard rubbish collection. shhh!

How are you spending your Sunday?
What are you working on?
Do you scrounge the hard rubbish collections too? What's your best find?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

new patterns

After a bit of a break from designing at the start of the year, I've finally gotten back into the swing of things with the release of two new patterns. woot! Two patterns that are both for grown up people, rather than wee little kiddies, which is a bit of a change.

The first of these was lavender which was released in March.

Lavender is a quick and fun little knit that is written up for two head sizes (20" and 22"). What I really like about this design is that it is all knit inside out. What the? Look closely at the hat and you'll see that reverse stocking stitch features heavily. If this was knit rightside out, that would be a heck of a lot of purling going on. But inside out means you just knit. Cool hey. 

It's a bit of a trust the pattern, because of the way you're knitting the cable inside out. The cable are very simple and intuitive though, and is easily worked without a cable needle. Little mock cables, got to love them! 

The idea for this hat was first conceived as a chemo cap for a loved family member. My aim was to create one that fitted all the requirements of a sensitive scalp; the softest organic yarn possible, a gentle rolled edge on the band, slouchiness to minimise contact but yet provide warmth, and in reverse stocking stitch, so the softest side of the knit fabric is on the inner. 

After knitting it I decided it was really perfect for anyone!

The mock cable stitch pattern I used reminds me of lavender drying upside down; hence the name of the hat. The first one I knit was actually in a lavender yarn.  Lavender for me, means calmness and serenity... which is just what every knitter wants!

It's been fabulous seeing some gorgeous lavenders popping up on Ravelry, I'm looking forward to seeing many more.

And just so you know, if you've ever purchased a pattern from me before, until the end of April 2012 you can get a copy of this pattern for free by simply using the code freebie at the check-out. Otherwise, it will set you back three measly dollars.

Get your copy here.