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.