Slow progress again!

                                                   Last week I started on this

The big one

The pattern I chose was a chunky extra long rib scarf, because I thought by the size of the ball of yarn the scarf would end up a bit longer than extra long. So off I went knitting away, I got a bit bored at times, but carried on with plenty of breaks.

Finished at last

Not bad !

 Finally I reached the end, well nearly the end just enough to cast off, then I was disappointed as I laid it out on the floor and measured it, the pattern I used said the measurements for the extra long scarf should be 200 cm, well mine measures 138 cm! A bit short, but not to worry I've decided to sew the ends together and turn it into a cowl or infinite loop scarf, so it's not a failure it's a success, but for now it has joined the to finish off pile! Along with the purple gloves and the blanket scarf.

                                                           So what next then?

The pom pom yarn 

Ok I have never knitted with this sort of yarn before so it was going to be a challenge. Normally I would just look at it imagine what exciting things I could create with it and then decide its a definite no and send all of it off to the blackhole under the stairs (my yarn stash box) never to be seen again!

My first thought was how on earth do you cast on with this, let alone knit with it?

So I decided the only place could find information on how to cast on and knit with this is You tube,  I typed in "how to knit with pom pom yarn" and quite a few videos came up, I found a Demores tutorial video which was pretty easy to follow, showed two methods of casting on I chose the second one because the first one involved using a coordinating yarn to cast on with.

A little row of cast on stitches

            Managed to cast on a row of twenty stitches, next challenge was to knit

Row one down

Managed one row and it looked ok, and now to keep on knitting without throwing it at the wall

Looking good!

And this what it what it looks like this morning. I found that the Demores tutorial video was the easiest video to follow and the instructions were clear, I didn't have to watch it hundreds of times before it sank in, I only watched twice, second time just to reassure myself. If I need any more tutorials in the future I will certainly be using their tutorial videos again. Now it's time for me to keep knitting.

purple haze!!

Well after a week of doing granny squares I decided it was time for a change.

Enough for now!

So it away with the crochet hooks and out with the knitting needles for a change. Which is a change as I haven't done any serious knitting for a while, well not since last summer and that was a scarf which is huge, it's more like a blanket than a scarf!

One and a half

So I deleved deep into the yarn donation bag from last week and pulled these two out and set about knitting a new pair of gloves for myself, as my others are starting to look at bit scruffy not only that I decided that I fancied a pair of purple gloves. These are only the second pair of gloves that I have attempted to knit, the other pair are the ones that I'm currently wearing at the moment.

 finished sort of

They didn't take long to knit, but weaving in the ends and sewing up will take longer as that is not one of my favourite jobs to do. So while the gloves sit on my craft table waiting for me to get in the finishing mood, I decided while I was in knitting mode, to start knitting another scarf, not as big as the other one.

still on the purple theme

It may be small at the moment but (hopefully) it will be soon become big, if not the girls will claim it as a blanket for their toys!!!

One ball down!!!!!!

OK it's one ball down (hooray hooray!) But I'm off the yarn diet! (Oh no!) Because yesterday on the way home on the school run our dear crossing patrol (lollipop) lady gave me large bag of yarn, yes MORE YARN!!!!

Another twenty one balls! And I've got no room under the stairs, I'm really have to seriously do something with this lot pretty quick.  But let's have a look at what there is in the bag then.

OK first there is, this four I've never knitted this type of yarn before and I might never want to see this type of yarn ever again after attempting to try and knit with.

Secondly there is four balls of pom pom yarn, I've a feeling of a scarf for one of the girls with these. But first I will have to find out how to cast on with this!

          A purple sparkly one, I can already see a yarn pairing with this one.

                                                   
                                                       No comment on these

Some usual suspects, some of which have been earmarked to become granny squares and other small projects.

And finally a big one, no idea what I'm going to do with this one. So there the yarn diet has gone out of the window again.

A feeling of going nowhere at the moment

OK it's the second week of January and I already feel like I have hit a big rut, the house de-clutter is slowly grinding to a halt because the recycling bin is full and it isn't emptied until Friday!

 So to conquer the January blues I decided to pull a basket of granny squares out, which is one of my on going little projects, one that I go to whenever I need some inspiration and it is a way to get rid of some of the small balls of yarn in my stash. I don't know how many are in the basket, all I can tell you there is a lot all different colours and sizes. So I've no idea what they will eventually become,  but it's something to do.

So off we go!! This was last Friday looking optimistic for the weekend, I was looking forward to getting a lot done and rid of a few small balls of yarn.

And this is Monday morning, not as many done as I wanted to have done. Oh well that's my weekend summed up in two granny squares and I've still not used up those five small balls of yarn,  they don't look any smaller now than what they were on Friday!

New year resolutions? it's that time of the year again!

It has been a long time since I last posted anything on this blog, I had almost forgotten about it! It was on my to do list, but other things got in the way and didn't seem to go away. So as last year drew to a close I sat down and wrote my list of new years resolutions. Ok I know that most of  those resolutions will be well and truly broken before the end of January, but I'm going to try my hardest not to break any of them. So here they are;

1. De-clutter and clean the house properly!

2. Post at least one photo a day on Flickr.

3. Try and make one item of clothing a month.

4. Read more!

5. Try a new craft.

6. Finish off the lurking UFO'S.

7. Do more baking.

8. Get the garden looking like a garden.

9. Try and grow some fruit and vegetables this year.

10. Start blogging again.

Here we go then, a lot has happened since I last posted anything on here and because of last year I don't really want to talk about that at the moment.
But what I will say is I still have quite a few lurking UFO's, not as many because I had a big frogging session about two years ago, I needed something to do while recovering from a trapped nerve and not only that they were starting to really annoy me. So that was great therapy and it also kept my mind off the pain in my back! I think at the moment I have about 5 or maybe 6? UFO's lurking, which I  don't think is that bad, it has been a lot worse!
I have still got an yarn and fabric stashes which are slowly taking over. I put my self on a yarn diet last year,  I'm sorry to say it hasn't worked very well I go into anywhere that sells yarn and temptation takes over, yarn to me is like chocolate you see it you want it  even if you are not hungry you still want to eat it! Or in my case if it's yarn I want to buy it because I can see a new project starting. So that is a on going resolution from last year which as I want to get the yarn stash down as I think that is more of a problem than the fabric stash,  I have actually given some of the yarn to the charity shops only the yarn I know that I will never use because it is novelty yarn, I'm not a fan of that sort of yarn. And one of my resolutions for this year is to make one item of clothing a month and at the moment I have enough fabric to keep me going for a few  months plus some of my knitting and crochet projects are lined with fabric  (the small ones) so the fabric stash is not a big problem. 
  But before I start I need to tidy my craft table, hence the need to de-clutter .

OK it's been a while since I last posted anything, but I have my reasons and the excuses are :-

1. We all have had colds, some us worse than than others.

2. Husband has been on holiday for two weeks and he takes the computer over, he has a game and eBay addiction.

3. Eldest daughter has been on half term break.

4. Youngest daughter has been as destructive as usual!

5. And to top it all husband had food poisoning last weekend.

But I have been busy, I have finally (yes finally) finished a cross stitch at last and it feels good! To finish one completely I'm not going to put it behind glass I'm going to stretch it round a wooden frame, I found in a charity shop when I get the time and I'm not been pestered.

 

On the knitting front, on my last visit under the stairs I found 2 balls of Sirdar crofter DK yarn so I decided to start knitting a scarf as a side project (I have a lot of  those on the go, hence the UFO pile).

Which was going well until I realised I hadn't got  enough yarn, always the same mistake I make every time. Back to square one, at least this time it wasn't destroyed for me. So I went and got some more yarn, black yarn! Don't know why, but I always seem to go for black, I must be a closet goth!!! So I started knitting again, but soon realised I was going to have to visit square one again! This time the pattern wasn't working out, it just didn't look right.

So instead of sending all the yarn off  to the black hole under the stairs I put the knitting needles away and got a crochet hook out instead. Right let me get this straight now I am not the worlds best crocheter, for a start I'm left handed and it has taken me years to learn how not to end up with a giant knot, but some thing you can actually call crochet. But with my crochet skills, scarfs and baby blankets are my limit. So there ain't going to be anything fancy there.  I started to crochet the scarf, which is looking ok but I'm not sure, so I've put it away until I have a flash of inspiration.

 

 Instead I decided to crochet a baby blanket, just to use up some pale green baby yarn that had been residing under the stairs for quite a while. It is going quite well, it is actually working out how I want it to look and I might finsh it so it will be one less thing under the stairs.

On wednesday evening I decided to do a quick project to cure a problem which has been bugging me for a while. I decided to make a draught excluder (or cat excluder which my eldest daughter calls them) from a skirt I bought from a charity shop months ago which I was going to recycle into something else but changed my mind.

So it now has become a flowery draught excluder and because the door is a inward opening (it's the downstairs bathroom door) I have attached it to the door by using stick and sew velcro so no one is going to break their neck on it, also it can't be taken for a walk by youngest daughter very easily.

I was feeling very proud of my quick creation which I managed to do in under 24 hrs, until my dear husband told me it looked like a giant flowery tampon attached to the door, but I don't care what he thinks because it has cured the draught problem.

 

 

 

 

 

Not a very successful week, I decided on Monday night that I was going to take a break from my cross stitch for a few days why? I had got a busy week of other things to do and its the start of the birthday party season! From now til March there is at least one party a month, there's two this month!

I wasn't going to break my UFO clearing promise I decided to pick up on the sock knitting front. But by Friday I was back to square one, it had been destroyed by my youngest daughter again! I don't know why she likes destroying my knitting, but she has been in a funny mood this week. I think it might be the weather, it has been a bit on the wet side because we have had the toilet tissue around the house incident, dancing in the nappy sacks and a trip to A&E after eating tip-ex along with putting it in her eye as well, I'm sure she is trying to send me mad.

So Friday afternoon I decided after the sock destroying session I'm going to stick to no more than two needles for a while. But my fingers are twitchy! I don't want to go back to the poppy cross stitch yet because there is still a lot of work to be done on that one and I want something I can finish to make me feel like I'm getting somewhere. So I got brave and decided to venture under the stairs! which proved to be to be quite a success, I found a cross stitch which needs finishing.

This one is a DMC kit which is over 15 years old called Vera's cottage, I think it was either a birthday or a Christmas present because I don't remember buying this one. All that needs finishing on it is all the back stitch and five stitches. I know it hasn't been touched for a long time because the needle which has been left in it has started to go rusty and mark the Aida. But I know why it ended up becoming a UFO, the chart is very hard to follow and when it comes to the back stitch its almost impossible to see where the back stitch is on the chart. No wonder I gave up on this one, it was most probably giving me a headache.

 



"ouch" rusty needle!

 

 

only five stitches and all the back stitch!