Thursday, February 14, 2008

Stash on Ravelry

I made a start today and took photos of some of my stash that I have on my shelf in my craft room. I only took simple straightforward photos and didn't go looking for interesting backdrops or anything as putting my yarn stash onto Ravelry is supposed to be for my benefit isn't it? Or is it? I have an Excel inventory speadsheet for my yarns, invented by me for me that tells me the information that I want to know. Do I really need to, or indeed have the time to, upload photos onto the World Wide Web to have complete strangers gawping at my stash? As it was it took nearly half an hour to upload six photos and describe six lots of stash... err, no thanks, I don't have the time for that!

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Reduce, Re-use, Recycle and Repair

One of my many 'hobbies' is recycling and as a family we do try to recycle or re-use as much as we possibly can; I've been repairing Big Little Melody's school trousers off and on for what seems weeks now as the hems seem to be continually undone - what is that lad doing to his school trousers??!! Another pair found its way onto my 'repair' pile this morning *rolls eyes*

As items of clothing become too small or too scruffy I put them into a large drawer and every so often go through it and sort the clothing into piles. This morning I sorted out a large black sack of clothes to recycle in the textile recycling bin, another bagful for a door-to-door charity collection (that still has to collect said clothes bag from the doorstep) and yet another pile of too-good-clothes-to-chuck-out-but-are-too-small-for-Little-Little-Melody; I shall donate those to a friend with a young son who is much younger and smaller than Dan.

On the whole I was very pleased with the four cushion covers that I made from a piece of inherited furnishing fabric and I went on to make another two in pale cream self-patterned fabric to match the first four. The six cushions only cost me the price of the cushion innards which weren't all that expensive really.

I was really excited yesterday as I received my Round Robin Bag from Jacquie - Jacquie co-administers the Crafty Threads 'n' Yarns forum with me - and she sent me a superb selection in her gift bag which I'm sure had the internal dimensions of a Tardis! Here's what I received from across The Pond. First, the bag stuffed with goodies:




And all the wonderful contents!

Jacquie sent me a ball of rainbow coloured Sugar 'n' Cream cotton which I intend to knit into a washcloth from for me, a dinky, pink highlighter pen, a small bag of Quaker Oats breakfast cereal and two herbal teabags (perfect for a February morning!), two sheets of the cutest penguin stickers, a sweet little decorate-it-yourself heart shaped box which opened to reveal the most adorable, delicate silver and turquoise stitch markers inside. I am truly overwhelmed with what Jacquie sent to me.

Thank you so much Jacquie! I love everything to bits!!

Saturday, February 09, 2008

It's Actually Sunday Today


Knitting from Stash? Isn't it strange that as soon as the words Stashalong or Knitting from Stash are mentioned my brain goes into hunter-gatherer mode and starts to collect yarns as if they are going out of fashion. I must have squirrel genes somewhere in my lineage! I noticed that RKM yarns have a fabulous deal on a couple of RYC yarns at the moment and I immediately wondered what I could knit in Soft Lux. I came up with Ariann from Chicknits and surprise, surprise I already have the pattern. Of course I bought some.....

It's half term holiday here and since I worked like a woman possessed to get my assignment finished over the Christmas holiday and then passed all three skills tests to boot, I'm having a bit of rest this week. It's not officially a vacation for us PGCE students, more like a Professional Study week, but since I passed both assignment and skills tests I think I deserve a few days off. So I got out my long-neglected sewing machine this afternoon and made four cushion covers - two with borders and two without as you can see here:



I've only had them lurking around since September last year before I started my Uni course, so it's great to actually have them done and sewn up. They make the living room look so much prettier and homely :)

Sunday, February 03, 2008

I've Succumbed

and ordered a shedload of books from Get Knitted. I also ordered some of the RYC Alpaca that GK have on offer at the moment in the Lichen shade. I don't know whether or not they will have it in stock tomorrow when they receive my order 'in person' but I do know that I've wanted to knit this jacket for ages. Now that the yarn is on special offer, I bought the yarn to knit it.

Sprite has knitted Foxtail from the Rowan Tapestry booklet and now I'm wishing that I'd ordered the book along with the other books so that I can knit it too. I may just pop that book into my basket along with the others :-) as I can see this knitted in plain cotton double knit for the summer!


My head has been feeling fuzzy all day today and I think I have a cold starting. I've managed to avoid viruses all winter too. But Look! This cheered me up no end...I have another award on my sidebar! Sandrab from Sandra's Place gave me this award over the weekend, and I'm very grateful to have received it. I'll let you pop over to Sandra's place to find out why she gave it to me though. Now I have to choose other blogging peeps to give this award to.... I nominate Jo028 for this award as her taste in knitting is exactly the same as mine; except I'm not nearly as productive as Jo *wink*
Congratulations Jo!

Saturday, February 02, 2008

Weekly News

My first week in my second teaching placement is complete - what a wonderful week I've had. Fab children and fantastic support from the school and my teacher mentor. What more could I ask?

We all had our first assignment back yesterday and I'm pleased to say that I passed at masters level so I can now go on to complete my second assignment at masters level as well to try to earn another 30 credits. This first assignment gives me 30 credits towards a masters degree which I am very pleased to have achieved. It was a hard slog over Christmas to get this assignment written and out of the way and I didn't have a very restful festive period at all. I'm very proud to have achieved what I have so far with two children and a home in addition to the constant hard work of a PGCE course.

I would normally celebrate by rushing off to buy yarn but as I promised to knit from stash this year I won't be doing that. I'll be buying knitting patterns instead!