Miaou

WIP being Works In Progress! I seem to have a lot of things on the go but nothing much finished at the moment.

First up is a lovely wrap cardigan, designed by Stephanie Japel. I was given the yarn as a gift and it is coming together nicely; I just have the final tie to do. However, that final tie is about 12″ wide and 45″ long! The ties go right around the body and tie at the front. It is going to need some serious blocking I think but I am pleased with how it is going.

Second up is a fab little toy elephant. The yarn was another gift in fabulous rainbow colours - I can’t wait to see how he turns out! And he is miiiiiiiine, all mine - my kids can keep their hands off! In this pic I have only made one and a half legs (!); it’s a bit further on now but I’m still only about half way through.

Next is something I am toying with; it may or may not become something I follow through! But I would like a blanket for my very own and found a lovely simple but effective crochet pattern:

And yes, I know I said I wouldn’t do any more crochet projects for a while … but I’m a sucker for punishment And just in case you are wondering how they will tesselate, I need to add a border to each one to make them into hexagons!

And finally, since starting this post and coming back to it, I have an FP (finished project) to show you! A little knitted kimono as a gift for a work colleague of my husband’s.  The colours are a bit wishy-washy but it’s all I had to hand in girl shades! It was fun to make and I hope she likes it.

I had two balls of slightly differing peach coloured yarn, and not enough of either to make the kimono, so I alternated the two shades, which gives the pale colour a little depth:

The crocheted bows were in the pattern but I used a contrasting colour and added a crocheted edging to tie it all in.

Hopefully my next post will contain some more finished items!

At last! My rainbow fish blanket is complete. I started it at the beginning of January and finished it a few days ago, so not bad going really. Here it is in all its glory:

I knitted an equal number of fish in each colour, half in a dark shade and half in lighter colours. I knew how I wanted to lay them out and spent quite a bit of time laying them out on the floor until I was happy with the arrangement. I then labelled them all (and didn’t have any sticky labels so this entailed 196 little bits of paper and 196 little bits of sellotape!!) with a column and row number, then bundled them in rows. It took me about an hour to sew a row of fish together and attach it to the row below, and there are 25 rows, so that’s quite a bit of time! However I was so excited about the finished project that I was very motivated to finish.

I then set to with a 6mm crochet hook (yes, I know what I said about crochet in my last post, but this kind of crochet I can handle!) and created a wavy edging with some turquoise yarn to suggest the sea. Four rounds of crochet later I was satisfied and handed over the finished blanket to my delighted daughter Eilish. (I have hopes that her bed might look as neat as this a little more more often, but they are not high )!

I think I am done with fish for now (there was a LOT of sewing up to do!) but it was a really enjoyable project and I can see myself making another one in the future.

I won’t reveal her age (har har) but suffice to say it was a significant birthday and therefore deserving of a significant present:

This is a crochet lapghan, and although I have dabbled in crochet before, this is the first time I have created a whole garment by this method. I shan’t be doing it again - argh!!! I have discovered that as I cannot crochet and do anything else, multitasking is out - I can’t read, watch tv, or even chat much, as I have to concentrate too hard. Shame, but there you are.

I shall stick to the odd small make, a few squares and amigurumi things, shan’t do a big project for a while! But my mum was thrilled with it and says it will come in very useful for cooler evenings when she wants to sit out in the garden.

Also, I want to say a big thankyou to Scarletti at Laughing Mouse, who nominated me for this award:

The rules are to pick 7 blogs that make me happy, nominate them in turn by posting on their blogs. Finally, list at least 10 honest things about myself.

1. I am a perfectionist. I only see the mistakes and faults with what I make, which for a long time prevented me from making anything at all. I try and let go a bit more now and enjoy the process of making as well as the final result.

2. I am not Scottish. In fact I have only lived in Scotland for eight years. People who only know me online, then speak to me on the phone, are often surprised by my English accent! I love it up here though and will never move back to England.

3. When I was a young adult I thought I was not the maternal type at all, and would only have a couple of children. Fast forward a few years and I love being a mother and now have four! I would never have predicted that.

4. I suffer from depression. I make a point of being honest about it with people and get a variety of reactions, varying from acceptance to pity to avoidance. However along the way my honesty has enabled a lot of people to be honest with me, and they talk to me about their own, or their partner’s, depression and how it affects them. I take the attitude that if it was a physical illness I wouldn’t feel any stigma about talking about it, so why should I about depression? The more honesty there is about it, the more acceptance there will be.

See? Rubbish!

5. Although I love lots of different crafts, I cannot make cards. I have tried, and I am rubbish at it. I leave it to the experts!

6. I love lolcats. Everyone needs their daily chuckle fix and this is mine!

7. I love rainbows - the colours inspire me and lift my spirits. Conversely, I do not like black. I do not own any black clothes or shoes, and have no black in my home decor. It’s a colour I avoid at all costs!

8. I hate travelling. I would love to travel - I love the idea of being in new places - but the getting there stresses me out so much that I don’t do it! I haven’t been abroad since I was first married nearly fifteen years ago but will hopefully be going to America in a couple of years, so I have time to psyche myself up for it.

9. I used to love reading but haven’t read a book now in almost eight months. It makes me sad but I’m hoping I will get over it and pick it up again. I love books and used to love reading the classics.

10. I lack confidence and constantly need reassurance that I am doing OK. That’s why blogging is so great - lots of lovely feedback from people who like what I make!

And now my nominations:

Meridian Ariel - who makes the most beautiful jewellery and cakes, and the sweetest little pictures.

Sal’s Snippets - for her infectious enthusiasm and her wonderful finds.

Gina at Fan My Flame - for her beautiful photography, wonderful makes and inspiring designs

Pipany - for her fab pictures of her children on the beach and the beautiful bags she makes

Hmm Designs - for her lovely little makes and descriptions of her life in Belgium

I’m a Ginger Monkey - for her wonderful quilts and enthusiam and all round loveliness

And finally, EthelandEdnasTearoom - for making me laugh!

The knitting has ended - 196 fish later …

Let the sewing up begin!!

Whilst I have been under the weather these last couple of months, I haven’t really felt much like doing anything. However occasionally I felt like doing a bit of simple knitting, so I picked the Fish Afghan as a project. Each fish takes about 30-40 minutes to make and the pattern was easy to memorise, so it was easy to do in little bitesize chunks. I find knitting is a great way to “zone out” and relax, so it seemed like the ideal pastime. I decided to make it in cheerful rainbow colours to lift my spirits. Here’s my first few:

Apologies for the blurry photo!

I soon discovered that, although quick and easy to make, these fish were actually quite small. Therefore I would need quite a lot in order to make a blanket big enough to cover a bed (Eilish having begged for the finished blanket). 198 of them in fact. Here’s me about two-thirds of the way through:

I have still got about 40 to make, and am just starting to get a little tired of making fish. Then of course I have to sew them all together. Argh. What have I started?? I think the end result will be worth it though.

OK, so remember the huge pile of squares I have been tantalising you with? Here is what they became:

A group of knitters got together to make this blanket for our good friend Jo, whose lovely husband died from cancer this summer. As we are all spread around the country we felt that a blanket was a good way to give her a “hug”, as we can’t deliver one in person!

Many of the squares have significance to Jo and her husband and family - favourite places, foods, hobbies and so on. We had great fun creating the blanket. All the squares were sent to me and I sewed them all together, then added a crocheted border to finish it off.

The hardest bit for me has been keeping it a secret! But Jo was presented with the blanket yesterday so I can now show off our hard work. I can honestly say it’s one of the most fulfilling projects I have ever worked on - from a practical point of view I love working with knitting (and had great fun creating some of the intarsia squares), and from a personal point of view I knew it was going to someone who truly deserved a bit of knitted love

A rather prolonged absence from blogging with the odd sporadic post, but I’m determined to get back to it now! I’ve had several rather long-term projects on the go and I’m often a little shy about sharing WIPs. So to start with I will share an almost finished one:

(no, not the boy. He’s nowhere near finished )

Euan needed a new hat. I had two thirds of a ball of yarn that my mum gave me, left over from a cardigan she had knitted. I thought it was probably just enough for a hat. So I knitted him a hat. The gauge was wrong, and it was too small. So I frogged it and started again (let me tell you, it’s pretty yarn, but it didn’t frog well - however I think that’s down to my odd knitting technique rather than the yarn!). So I tried again, with a different style hat, using a “toddler” pattern. Euan is 16 months old and is small, so I thought this would be ok. But no - still too small! So I ripped back to the increases, put another couple of increase rows in, and knitted until I ran out of yarn (amazingly I managed to keep back exactly the right amount to cast off - I had about 8 inches left!). Perfect. Except when I put it on his head, it doesn’t cover his ears. Sigh. I will add a brim later I think.

And just because I’m sure you are dying to know what else I’ve been up to, here’s a couple of glimpses into two big projects which are nearing completion:

This one is a green stole, the second of a series of three I am embellishing for a newly-ordained minister. I have used several different colours of green silk here and am adding appliqued oak leaves. It’s almost done so you should see the finished product in a few days.

Now this one is (literally) a labour of love:

Ninety one squares altogether! Please note, I did not knit all these squares! I think I did about a dozen in the end. This is a collaborative effort of a group of knitters which I organised and co-ordinated. As a punishment reward for doing this I get to do the sewing up and add a border. Actually, I love sewing up, though it’s a bit of a challenge with this one as the squares are all knitted by different people, so there are a few size discrepancies! Anyhoo, this is all you get to see until the blanket is finished and presented to the recipient, so you will have to wait patiently to find out what it’s all about!

Leftovers are great. If they are leftover food, then Nick will probably turn them into soup (and great soup at that!). If the leftovers are yarn, then they will get turned into another project.

My biggest leftover project so far was, of course, my oddment blanket , and it gave me a taste for using up stuff! These projects, though, are a little more conventional.

First up, I made this hat last night from wool left over from making my scarf. I used a pattern called “Rollin’ Beret” by Woolly Wormhead I wore it this morning at a jaunty angle and was quite pleased with the effect. You will have to take my word for it though as it is currently being modelled by my sofa.

And here it is from the side so you can appreciate the colours in the yarn (which is, by the way, Wendy Fusion in Fenugreek):

This was what you might call a One Skein Project. It’s a good job I didn’t make it a size bigger - look how much yarn I had left once I had finished!

I had considerably more yarn left over from my pinwheel cardigan I knitted in January.

Bit difficult to get a sense of scale I guess, but take my word for it - that is one huuuuuge ball of wool! So I am knitting a poncho for Eilish (her request) - a WIP photo here:

I’m a little unsure of the colour balance - I should have started with the palest part of the ball first - I think as things stand I might end up with a big light bit at the bottom. However I am not going to frog it just yet.

See the little pink bead on that picture? Here it is a little closer (please excuse the crap photography):

It’s a beautiful stitch marker made for me by the lovely Whizzz - isn’t she great? I’ve got five, all different colours, which is very handy because I need a few stitch markers on this poncho and all I have to remind myself is “new round starts on pink” - easy! And guess what - she made me the markers from beads she had leftover from other projects …

I had such fun making this blanket for my eldest daughter Caitlin. I had a huge bag of wool (a binbag, in fact!), most of it in the form of odds and ends that I couldn’t bear to part with. Nick was in a declutter mode and rather than dramatically throwing my arms around my stash whilst wailing “nooooooo you can’t throw it out!”, I agreed that I would Make Something. And this is what I made.

And here are some of my favourite squares: