U.F.O.'s

I thought I'd post pics of some UFO's I just unearthed, in the hope that it'll motivate me to finally finish them...

First, this is a lace cape in Brown Sheep Nature Spun sportsweight. It's finished (and has been for years), I've just never got around to lace blocking it! How sad is that... I plan on blocking it out on the bed when we go away.


Second, a pair of knee-high stockings in the same wool. First stocking is almost done (only the toe to knit). Only the fold-down cuff on the second stocking is done. This is almost like a kilt hose, soooo warm!

Third, a cabled aran sweater. Knit in Fisherman's Wool (worsted weight). Both sleeves are done and I'm halfway through the back.


All these projects are more than five years old!

Better pics (in natural light) is on it's way.

Matilda's huge night soaker

I was lucky enough to have Rach dye me up some Four Bags Full Merino in the superbright colours of pink, green and purple. I've been meaning to do a night soaker for M and thought I'd try being a happy hooker and crocheting one. From this pattern:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050204193539/http://www.angelfire.com/biz/mothershelpinghands/crochet.html

I made it extra large because I was planning on felting it to make it even more waterproof. Well, it didn't work! The wool is actually superwash (chemically treated to make it machine washable without shrinking). So now M is in bed with a huge VBSN bubble butt with a monster soaker on top (I don't think she'll ever outgrow this one LOL)... with a matching huge wool booster (which also didn't felt)!

Whatever works... :)

I LOVE this yarn!

Progress pic of the "Balloons Over Sunset" capris I'm working on. I love this yarn! It makes me want to knit more, and more and more... I only cast on late last night before trying (and failing miserably) to go to sleep. So today I've been knitting like crazy. At this point I'm thinking capris (as there was 120g in this lot and I want to get to the yellow). The other ball of 150g shown will be an instock yarn I think - enough for a pair of longies (depending on how you knit the legs).

For the legs, I knit about ten rounds at a time and then break the yarn and switch to the other leg for another ten rounds etc. Because of the gradualness of the colour change this works really well and you don't have to have two balls. When the yellow bit comes I might do five rounds or something.

The dye job turned out exactly as I'd hoped :) With my gradient dyeing technique it's possible to get reaaally gradual colour transitions which I think is the beauty of the yarn... also love the flecking in the colours. I plan on continuing the gradient from the red-orange on the waistband up to a deep red on the t-shirt shoulders (batik) in the set.

Oooh so excited!
I really should be concentrating on personal knitting like I'm supposed to, but I'm waiting for the yarn for Miss M's 1st Crumpets birthday dress to arrive. Have to have that finished by Jan 19th. And of course baby needs new crawling shorts! I was just watching her practice this morning and planning the next pair for her, in hardy Utiku Seaweed (which I won't be too precious about) with a colourful cartoon caterpillar going up the leg (coz at the moment she's exactly like a caterpillar inching along and munching on leaves etc hehee)

Matilda's great at commando crawling... at swimming this morning she had crawled across the mat and almost to the edge before I'd had a chance to get there myself! But in the past week or so she's been really practicing her "baby pushups" and rocking. She's about to rev off, we've pretty much taken care of all the low cupboards *fingers crossed*

Mother's group Chrissy breakfast tomorrow. The Rudolph Batik Baby rompers were for two of the boys Jerra and Sebi (secret santa). These didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped (I was crunched for time and didn't let the wax heat hot enough). I made two, each one has their name batik'ed onto the shoulder. I hope they like them!

D is for....

Dominic! (and here you thought D stood for Dolphin hehee)




Here's a special project I've been working on (on the sly...)
(one of my first embellishments redone on a LTK small original soaker with JJM in "Aquarius" colourway)

You know you're a yarn fiend...

... when you go into your yarn hoard to rummage around for some yarn and an hour later you still haven't found what you're looking for, but in the process you've "re-discovered" heaps of stuff you never knew you had!

Still haven't found what I was looking for but instead have loads of new projects in mind (join the queue!!!)

I don't like wearing gloves

... hmmm, I wonder if you can tell?!

A good day to dye

... the last two days have been good days to dye actually. Nice and hot, Miss M co-operating by taking long naps -- perfect! I usually do most of my dyeing at night but gradient dyeing with my screwy made-up method needs hot sunny days. Besides I can only do one batch a day and these were done on different days.

My latest gradient dyeing efforts: finally, a colourway I feel inspired to embellish. I think this one might be called "Balloons Over Sunset".




120g and 150g JJM with fiber-reactive dyes.

Mango Leaves

This one has had 500+ views and still not sold. I thought hey no problem I really like it I'll just keep it for Matilda! But I tried it on her last night and it's too small! My how my little princess has grown....

I don't know any little girls smaller than Matilda (all the other kids in MG are boys and bigger than her), so I think what I'll have to do is to do a clearance auction starting out at $25 and hopefully someone will be able to give the Mango Leaves a good home?

On the needles

• Small Improved Hybrid Rib (with internal drawstring) in "Christmas in Summer" (ETA: finished. Love it! Might do one up in Matilda's size)
  
• Large Christmas Shorts with loopy cuffs-- gender neutral (ETA: half finished. Really liking how the red wool is knitting up)
  
• Matilda's Dr Suess pants - self striping red/white yarn (ETA: I think I'll take this one to Rotto to finish, can't wait!)
  
• Small knitted wool wrap (custom) in "Virgo"
• Roy's birthday socks second side (was for his b'day back in June oops)
• Celtic Cables Picky Pants in super soft Lamb's Pride worsted Loden Leaf -- not sure whether to stop at shorts or go to pants for next season (ETA: have decided that it would look better as longies so won't be released til next autumn.)
  
• ETA: forgot to add a medium Flirty Skirty in Utiku Watermelon.
  

... and many UFO's!

My --fish-- yarn tank

Some results of the latest dye session. I hope the fish approve. If they keep going to fishy heaven at the rate they have been, I'm planning on putting my yarn on display inside the tank (it's part of the entertainment unit - sometimes often you get better entertainment from the fish than the TV)

Catch my disease!

I think I may be entering a manic phase... I have slight bipolar tendencies and I've just been up all night dyeing and knitting -- when I tried to go to bed thoughts of future projects got in the way of sleep!

I have a palpable need to create, it's almost a physical sensation. I can't bear to think about the day when I can no longer do this sort of work...

Crazy lady ;-P

Holly's Lace

Just finished the lace cuffs on the first pair of Christmas shorts I'm doing. The colour pooling was (uh) interesting! But the most fun was doing the lace cuff bit, can't wait to block it out. Oh and the holly leaves and berries made a nice change from straight knitting too.

Hmmm, must work out how to add pics to this blog thing. (A bit boring without piccies, n'est pas?)

Here's a sneaky peek (excuse the old dye stain on the table -- nothing to do with the pants)

Spring Swap

Gah. Another visit into NC has just reminded me that the Spring Swap is to be received next week sometime. I've hit a big bump in the road I'm afraid. One half is finished but the other half just isn't going very well.

When I signed up I was soooo looking forward to creating a special wooly item but alas it was not to be! Let's just say my swappee doesn't need any woolies! (there's a couple of reasons for this but I can't divulge these or I'll give the game away). So I had to think extra hard! I should have just bought something from another WAHM who could better fulfil this swappee's needs, but I didn't. And now it's too late to order something, so I hope she's not TOO disappointed with what I came up with.

Christmas stuff

I have some Christmas yarn ready to list whenever I can get a few spare minutes to do so. In the meantime I'm knitting with some; can't wait to get to the cuffs I'm looking forward to doing some lacey stuff this time around. Seed/moss stitch gets boring sometimes, and I'm in the mood to play around with knit stitches a bit.

Much happier with how this batch turned out compared with the last lot. I think for the next batch of Christmas yarn (maybe "Christmas Revisited"??) I'll do things a bit more differently too so there's no colour pooling.