Off now!

A brief note to say bye-bye - as I am off for 2 weeks to Mauritius and La Reunion for my sister's wedding, my birthday, the husband's birthday and a well deserved holiday.

The Leaf and Trellis Rectangle that I have knitted for my sister is finished and looks lovely. She hasn't seen it yet but I am hoping she'll love it.

There is other knitting on the needles and even some crochet (so so good at stash busting) so I shall be back to blogging regularly soon, I promise. I've been missing it but the lace stole ate my spare time. One day I shall learn and leave myself more time!

x

Off now!

A brief note to say bye-bye - as I am off for 2 weeks to Mauritius and La Reunion for my sister's wedding, my birthday, the husband's birthday and a well deserved holiday.

The Leaf and Trellis Rectangle that I have knitted for my sister is finished and looks lovely. She hasn't seen it yet but I am hoping she'll love it.

There is other knitting on the needles and even some crochet (so so good at stash busting) so I shall be back to blogging regularly soon, I promise. I've been missing it but the lace stole ate my spare time. One day I shall learn and leave myself more time!

x

A winner and my garden

First of all my congratulations go to Susie over at Extreme Knitting Redhead as she has won my blogaversary (how do you spell that?) lucky draw and won the skein of yarn. I am going to be sending her a skein of Sundara sock yarn, I won't give away the colour so that she has a nice surprise when she opens the package.

In other news, there hasn't been all that much knitting here over the last week or so. Last week we went to Wales to the Knitting Retreat but there was this to contend with.

There's a rumour that there could be an undiscovered tribe of Amazonian Rainforest Indians in there somewhere.

The garden really was in a terrible state and so we spent most of the weekend pulling ivy out of the flower bed and using a strimmer to get the grass down to a reasonable level. On the plus side, there were lots of lovely flowers to keep us smiling.

And I was particularly pleased to find some yellow poppies growing in a corner of the garden, pretty as you please.

Now how far did I get on that wedding shawl border?

More baby knits

I had a quick look through the last few months of my blog today and it's rather apparent that a lot of my friends seem to be having babies at the moment. And there are at least another 3 to come this year. I am starting to lack inspiration as to what to knit for these new arrivals. After a while nothing feels more like one baby cardigan than another.

This is the latest in the series.

It's the makings of the Debbie Bliss Striped Sweater from Simply Baby. There's nothing particularly special about it but I do think that a stripey sweater is very effective and it holds a little more interest than doing a plain stocking stitch sweater or cardigan everytime.

I originally wanted to make it in a different colour to the one in the book. I have this habit of always thinking that the colour it's photographed in is the best colour that it could be in which is patently untrue and this semes to stop me from testing out new combinations. But I have a thing about that colour of olive green and so I gave in and stuck to the pattern as it was.

I did manage to make at least one mistake, there are little flaps at the bottom of the sweater on the front and the back and so you continue the garter stitch up the side of these flaps. I, of course, didn't do the same number of garter stitch rows on each side.

I know that the recipient will never notice and neither will his parents but it just annoys me that I never seem to be able to knit something that simple without fluffing at least a little bit of it up. It doesn't matter, you won't be able to see it on the back of a galloping horse, but why can't I pay more attention?

PS: I shall announce the winner of the yarn later this week, I was away this weekend so have yet to do the draw. I have not forgotten!