Friday, 28 March 2008

Can I get a woo-yeah? OK, how about a boll-ocks?

I finished the lovely lace style cardi. Only thing is it just isn't that lovely. It's too fricking big!!!
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At first look it might look ok. But let's take a closer one.
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First hint of truoble. Look at how that shoulder is all puckered and not looking too good. Close up you can see the shoulder is hanging more than an inch below my actual shoulder.
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It's not like I'm underendowed in the shoulder dept. It's just too damn big. Such a shame because I really like it.
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Work it girlfriend...

The only thing keeping me going is that my crosswalkers (links straight to pdf) are looking rather nice.
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Much more subtle than jaywalkers but still interesting and they adapt very well to the magic loop method.

I scored an amazing book on ebay this week called 'The Tap Dancing Lizard'. I came across it by chance and it is full of charts for hand and machine knitting. How can anyone not fancy this on a jumper:
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And, um, elephants...
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OK, maybe not the actual elephants, but it does have some amazing designs and I can see them appearing in knit-form in my near future.

Now lastly I met up with my little sis on monday for dinner. She really is an impressive specimin. Brain the size of a planet and about to jet off to America for a year as part of her degree. She was in london, all expenses paid, to do a course with her prospective employer and happened to have the boyfriend along.
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This is a rather rare photo since she's normally a tad camera shy. Think the young man must be doing her good.

Monday, 24 March 2008

Hot water hotty

A happy ending to a sorry tale. The never ending aran jumper I was making years and years ago has finally become something useful. It occurred to me as I was dropping off to sleep one night that Pooch wanted a hot water bottle cover and I had this large piece of lovingly knitted pure wool with no purpose. So I took this:

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and felted it. And made it into this:

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Pooch wanted the buttons to be red "for hot" so I delved into my button stash.

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Pooch and I have had a rather nice long weekend. We went off to this kind of craft collective in Colliers Wood called Merton Abbey Mills. Of course we managed to go there on possibly the weirdest weather day of the year. It was quite sunny at one point but then bitter winds were followed by a full on blizzard/hail storm. The snow/hail was blowing so fast it hurt when it got my face and we both ended up soaked and freezing. Haven't felt like that since I was little having snowball fights in the front garden.

This is Pooch in happier times being happy about the working water mill that still powers the potters wheel.
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And then this is him being blasted by snow and ice. He's from the north, you know.
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Meanwhile I have been slogging away on my Lace Style cardi and have almost finished the last bit - the back. I know you're supposed to do that first but I prefer to tackle a smaller piece first just to make sure it looks ok before going big. Should have done that with the never ending aran but it's obviously a lesson learnt since then. I hope to have it sewn up and done this week.

Lastly I have been catching up on jobs this weekend and one of them was to list this on etsy (Note: shameless self-advertising).
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It's a one-off that I made for myself and have never worn. Perfect condition - just a bit chunky for me really. If anyone fancies it just pop over here and snap it up!