Thursday, April 30, 2009

Completion

The Rossetti/Cecilia combo cardie is completed; all I have to do now is wash and block the main parts and then piece them together. And another fusion knit cardie pattern has been re-written, a tension swatch knitted, washed and blocked and the Bank Holiday weekend is just around the corner...

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Making Progress

Well my knitting certainly seems to have moved forward these past few weeks! Maybe it's because I'm not spending so much time surfing the 'net! I dusted off and oiled my mid-gauge knitting machine at the weekend and managed to complete the second sleeve and both front on my Rossetti/Cecilia combination cardigan; it's been sitting half made for several months so it's about time it was finished. The reason it went into hibernation is that I wasn't happy with the very shallow neck shaping of Rossetti and I wasn't overjoyed with the shallow borders either. However, a flash of inspiration found me combining two of Louisa Harding's designs to come up with a deeper neckline and garter stitch edges, both of which seem to have worked well. (I only have another front band and the neckband to do before the dreaded sewing up - yuck!

Here's what the cardigan looked like before with just the back and one sleeve knitted:

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Hopefully I'll have more to report on its progress this weekend!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Spring is Finally Here!

I can tell when Spring has made an appearance, it's when the winter clothes are packed away in readiness for next Autumn, and the Spring and Summer clothes and shoes come out of hibernation. I've sorted out a large pile of clothes to recycle so there will be plenty of room in the wardrobe for any new ones that I buy!

Talking of new clothes, I've completed a fair few knitted things:

The first one is Liesl, that was my Easter knitting project. This was a really quick and easy knit, top down cardigan that took a bargainous three-and-a-half 100g balls of Sirdar Spree chunky to knit. I knitted it on a 7mm circular needle and used 7mm wooden DPNs for the sleeves. It only took about thirty minutes to sew the yarn ends in and stitch the buttons on to complete it once the knitting was done. I bought the Spree chunky from Kemps Woolshop a couple of years ago as it was being discontinued, so in total Liesl cost about £2.40 in yarn and I already had the buttons in stash. Bargain!!!

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Liesl cardigan

Another bargain is the Coffee Sorbet jacket that I finished sewing up this week too. I knitted this in the now discontinued Patons Sorbet chunky yarn that I bought again for the princely sum of 69p from Kemps Woolshop. I used 12 x 50g balls for this, making it £8.28 for the yarn and once again the wooden buttons were in my stash already.

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Coffee Sorbet jacket

Two cotton, handknitted cardigans for under £11? Completely bargainous, don't you think?

PS - if you're thinking of grabbing a bargain at Kemps Woolshop, here is the direct link: http://www.kempswoolshop.com/home.aspx
Save some yarn for me won't you?

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Happy Campers

Last weekend we picked up 'the big thing' that we've been thinking about for quite a while - a lovely new caravan! It's a Dethleffs Rally Nomad 640V. We parked in on our drive and we tentatively spent the last two nights sleeping in it. The boys were so excited on the first night that virtually no-one got any sleep - they went to sleep at 10.30pm and woke up with the birdsong at 5.30am! Consequently, everyone felt the effects yesterday and not surprisingly, we all had a good night's sleep last night.

This is the wonderful thing parked outside on the drive:

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and this is the view of the inside:
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the kitchen area
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the living area
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the boys have fixed beds
After just two nights, I can honestly say that it's warm, cosy and very comfortable and there's lots of space and light. There is also plenty of storage space, a big fridge and a lovey shiny cooker and hob.
All we have to do now is decide where we're going on our summer hols and I have to knit a few camping cardies and caravanning socks for the Melody Mob!