Happy Birthday, Little Melody!

Six years ago the Littlest Little Melody was three and a half hours old and we were exceptionally pleased and very relieved that he'd turned up in one piece. Today he has demanded baked beans on toast for his lunch, ripped open his birthday cards with a vengeance and made an array of unique robots with Lego. Oh how the times change!

The Postman Came Again
Yes, he did! Lookie:










Three lots of Garnstudio Safran cotton in superb, citrus-y, spring colours to knit two ribbed tops and a fitted jacket, two lots of RYC Cashcotton DK (in the pool and geranium colourway) from Celticove as it was on sale and at a bargainous price *wink* and ten skeins of Colinette wigwam from Aknita on the Crafty Threads forum cos I want to knit Sam from the now discontinued Portmanteau booklet.


But now the talk on the Crafty Threads forum has turned to New Lanark Mill yarns and I'm STILL tempted by Kim Hargreaves kits. It never ends does it?

A Week of Deliveries

This week the postman has worked hard to deliver lots of goodies Chez Melody and here is what he brought:

A lovely selection of goodies from Hanne in the Round Robin Bag Exchange - the sheep tape measure is just too cute for words!







Some glorious lime green Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk double knitting yarn which I was going to whizz up into a classroom cardi but I think it's just too special to use in the classroom







And a whole bagful of cottons from Get Knitted - two lots of 4 ply cotton in pink and blue and one lot of it in the DK weight in grape. All for summer stuff for me :-)















And the postman will be working hard this week too let me tell you *wink*

I did get Mr Melody's Rigger Boot socks finished and the ends darned in this month - knitted in King Cole Merino DK in shade graphite, they are lovely, thick and cosy for wearing inside his safety boots when he's out on site. He seemed pleased when I handed them over anyway....

Paris Jacket Finished


Hooray! I sewed on the buttons and finished my Paris jacket this morning:

I'm really quite pleased with this jacket considering that I had trouble with decreasing 2sts at the neck edge for the neck shaping and that it was knitted in one piece to the armholes which made it knitting it seem like an eternity. The sewing up was quicker though!

I made a couple of modifications - the sleeves are shorter and I used snap fastener at the top of the buttonband to ensure that the neck stays closed rather than gaping. There's a distinct lack of buttonole at the neckband in the pattern and it looked a bit odd with the neckband flapping open.

The jacket is knitted in Garnstudio Paris cotton aran, in shade 07 Heather which is real life in dark cerise colour, and it took just 9 balls to knit on a 5mm circular needle. I knitted the sleeves back and forth on Brittany birch needles and used little silver shank buttons that I had in my button stash. The ribbing at the waist gives the jacket a little shaping which I like. The yarn is deliciously chunky and cottony and I'll certainly be using it again in the future - even Matthew likes the feel of it against his senstivie skin!

My next project is yet another cotton cardigan for the warmer months (hopefully) ahead - I cast on the stitches to knit Seaton from RYC's Classic Coast last night, but I'm using the bargain Colorado cotton aran weight yarn that I got for a bargain price from Lidl last year. I'm going to knit it all in one colour though, without the striping and possibly without the ribbon tie at the waist:

Poor Neglected blog?

Well not really, I've been very busy doing other things and not much time to post anything that you might want to read.

The fifth week of TE2 is completed and it's my final week at my placement school next week. I can't begin to tell you just how much fun this placement has been and I know that I shall be full of sadness when I leave next Friday. I've already threatened to go back in on my days off!!

And I've just been a very naughty Melody and ordered some scrummy 4 ply and double knitting cottons from Get Knitted.... well, a girl needs her yarn fix occasionally!

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!

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!!

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 :)

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!

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!

Round Robin Bag Exchange

We're having a Round Robin Mini Bag Exchange over on the Crafty Threads 'n' Yarns forum. The idea originated from Natalie of the Yarn Yard and the idea is that we each make a small bag and fill it with goodies to send on to a person on the list every month. I decided to sew mine as I have no spare time to knit a little bag unfortunately and with the wonderful Franney's help and advice, this is what I came up with. My bag is a little on the generous side as I didn't want it to be too small! Overall I'm really pleased with this mini - project and it was far quicker and easier to sew than to knit. The bag was made from remnant pieces from curtain fabric, so it didn't cost a penny. Not only quick but cheap too!

Confessing Stashalonging

Melody reports that she did indeed make a dent in her stash in 2007, with a net reduction of.....



3.5kg!!!


I would take a group photo of all the yarn I destashed and all the yarn I managed to restash, but I don't have a wide angle lens on my camera :?

Resurrected and Refashioned

With Spring around the corner, I decided to resurrect the jacket in Garnstudio Paris cotton and I've made good progress this last week by knitting up to the armhole and dividing into two fronts and a back. Now that I'm knitting the parts of the jacket individually the jacket seems to making quicker progress! It's still on a circular needle although I have already finished one front already and I've almost finished the other so it will be finished for the warmer months after all.

Mr Melody's office has been selling off virtually brand new desks this week in an office move about, so Mr Melody secured three desks and three pedestals (medium sized three drawer cabinets) for the Melody family at a cost of £75 for the lot. The two Little Melodies have a desk and pedestal each up in the playroom/den to put their PCs and all their paraphernalia on and I managed to snaffle another for my craft room. It's much much bigger than the old table thing I used to pile all my crafting junk onto, but the pile of half-forgotten things I found under the desk was an eye-opener! Not wardrobe refashioning in the true sense, but an excellent bargain. I'm using the desk to put my sewing machine and overlocker on and the drawers will replace the tatty drawer unit in my craft room. A good thing really, as the handles fell off the fronts of the drawers recently and it's almost impossible to get the drawers open!! I can even sit at my new desk upstairs and use my new lappie on the internet, thanks to the power of WiFi. Utter Bliss.

Scarf Done!

Hooray Dad's scarf is finished!!



And I want to knit another scarf - FOR ME!! - in Tess Dawson Merino 4 ply in black, using a feather and fan pattern as I don't have a scarf to my name... wahhhh!! I thought that black would look fab with my new camel coat.

I've been rootling through stash this afternoon to locate yarns for the sweaters for the lads as I want to join the Bloke sweater knitalong on the Crafty Threads forum. Starting with small bloke sweaters seemed to be the thing to do I thought, to build myself up to knitting one for Mr Melody. He asked for a vest to play golf in, baggy to hide his tum but gathering somewhat into a rib, with deeper armholes for the arm/shoulder movement of the golf swing.... I did mention that I didn't have a magic wand!! *LOL* I'm knitting him socks to go inside his rigger boots when he's on site, so that'll shut him up for a bit *wink*

A decision has been made today and probably one that I'll regret for the next 12 months - I'm joining Terri and Piglottie to name but a few, knitting from stash for 2008. That made you sit up and take notice, didn't it??!!

The Season is Upon Us

Today is Christmas Day despite what the date says at the top of the post :? - Happy Christmas to Everyone!

Traditionally, I'm not keen on Christmas :( All the shopping for presents and food drives me to distraction. I'm hopeless at writing Christmas cards, never get them posted on time and run out of enthusiasm half way through my list :( This year, I shall do what I did with the boys last summer for teacher's leaving/thank you presents and donate my Christmas card money to a worthwhile charity. I chose Oxfam last summer, but have to think carefully about which charity to choose this year. We always donate a sum to charity for Lucy's birthday in January anyway, so may combine it with that for this year. We had a tremedously emotionally charged workshop/lecture from two counsellors from The Laura Centre in our last week of term, and I may decide to donate money to them this year.

Anyway - onwards ------

There is progress my friends! Only 90 rows on Dad's scarf until it's completed. We're visiting my parents for the day tomorrow so it needs to be done by then - do you think I'll manage to knit the extra 90 rows on this tedious scarf?! LOL!! Mum and Dad are coming to stay for a few days over New Year to look after the boys when I go back to Uni, so if the scarf isn't finished by tomorrow (which is highly doubtful) then Dad will have it for when they come down to stay.

I decided to do a bit of a Works in Progress round-up yesterday and took a few piccies of the knitting on the needles. So here they are.......

Possibly my favourite current WIP, a one-button jacket which I'm knitting in Patons Diploma Gold DK in a gorgeous plummy shade called Lupin. I'm currently knitting the first sleeve, although it's taken a bit of a back seat because of the scarf:

Progress on the Central Park Hoodie in Sirdar Highlander Aran in a beautiful, snuggly, deep red shade. This is fab to knit as it's relatively easy in terms of cabling, but not as mind numbing as pure stocking stitch!
You can just about see the cabling on this in-yer-face-red picture LOL!!

This cotton jacket is on hold until spring! It's a Garnstudio pattern in Paris aran weight cotton in what looks like red but is in fact a heathery cerise.

And of course, the tedious ribbed scarf... need I say more?? LOL!!

I'm knitting it in 4 ply sock yarn on 4mm needles - the best thing about it is knitting on these fabulous Surina needles - yum!

This New Year I don't want, or need, too many WIPs on the needles as I don't feel that anything is ever accomplished when only a few centimetres are knitted on each item. I'd much rather have one or two projects on the pins and get them finished quicker. It also means that I can cast on something new without feeling guilty!

All that remains for me to say is HAPPY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY, PEACEFUL, PROSPEROUS AND SUCCESSFUL NEW YEAR.

Maybe next time I'll confess and tell you where I stand with my destashing vs stashing figures.... or I may just leave you to guess.... *wink*

A Stressful Fortnight

Poor 'Big' Little Melody. He's been through the wringer this past fortnight, with suspected scarlet fever and tonsillitis and, just as he was recovering, he picked up a nasty cold virus that knocked him for six. The poor little lad has had one of those very high temperatures that's lasted for about five days in all and another sore throat along with a bunged up head and nose :( I think we've visited a GP of one sort or another four times in the last two weeks (twice the other Friday when Matt was so poorly with his tonsils/rash) However, this afternoon has see his temp approaching normal and his eyelids don't look so swollen and red - a turn for the better?


Last weekend we did manage to get out of the house as the boys wanted wheels for their Lego builds and we ventured into the middle of Leicester. We passed a Shelter charity shop on the way there and I spotted a fabulous camel coat in the window. As we passed the shop on the way back to the car, I popped in and asked to try it on. I was a bit nervous as I haven't really asked for things to be taken out of shop windows to try on before!


The photograph doesn't do the coat justice as I took the photo with a flash in very poor light... but.....Voila! A wonderful BRAND NEW Marks&Spencer wool and cashmere coat with the tags still on and it fits perfectly. A size 12 petite so I don't even have to shorten the sleeves. It was a pure bargain at thirty quid and helps out Shelter to boot.

I found out later that Shelter often have M&S end-of-line garments for incredible, bargainous prices so I might just have to pop in there again on the way to buy more Lego wheels *wink*

Neglected Blogging

I know I've neglected my blog of late - apologies where they are due! I'm at home today - on a Friday of all days - as the Biggest 'Little' Melody has some sort of virus or could have the start of tonsillitis. I took him to the GP this morning whose first thought was scarlettina (oh boy!!!) as he had developed a rash under his skin this morning as well as high temp, sore throat, swollen glands, headache and vomiting from yesterday.
I must have looked a bit shocked as I said
"I thought it was probably a virus when I saw the rash??"
We have a deferred script for the 'good stuff' from the Doc, so he'll either recover on his own or need antibiotics!

I promise I'll take photos of the projects that I'm 'up to armholes in' over the weekend as I don't have the time just now. Little Melody wants a lettuce and salad cream sandwich.... yeuk!! Only a sick child could order something like that for lunch.

Clothes and Powerpoint

I have to confess! Last weekend I bought *new* clothes with apologies to Wardrobe Refashioning. I needed a few more sweaters for the colder weather we've been having recently, and I just haven't had the time to knit any as quickly as I needed them. I needed some good sweaters for TE1 and I bought a long black skirt as well. I like my long navy skirt a lot, so I bought an equivalent black number that will look good with my suede boots that I bought earlier in the year.

I started Wardrobe Refashioning at the start of September although I joined the WR blog on 1st October. So I have actually completed my two months as I'd completed a month before I started. I think that 'work' clothes are excepted anyway, so I don't think I broke any rules.

Powerpoint. What a Wonderful Creation. I've spent years trying to avoid this software, not having any use for it really before now. I've just made a Powerpoint presentation for my lesson tomorrow and produced resources from it too and all I can say is 'WOW!!' LOL!!

Feeling Ropey

My chest hurts and my voice is so deep it sounds like I'm smoking 40 a day. I think I might have a touch of what the boys had last week *rolls eyes*

I've got tons of planning to do this weekend and I've had some bonkers ideas for lessons while the house was quiet and my mind was on other things this morning (like knitting!) , so I just need to tone them down a bit, make some resources and all will be well.

I found out that my placement school that I'm in at the moment has a knitting club - how cool is that?!! It's held during Tuesday lunchtimes and I thought I'd pop in this coming Tuesday as it will be the last time I can go to it seeing as it's my last week of TE1. But our tutor is coming over on Tuesday to chat to our mentor teachers and watch us teach, so I may not have the opportunity to sit and knit for a while. Which is a shame 'cos I'd love to take my pins, knit and chill with the kids!

Projects ----- I'll take some photos later on and post them up here I promise!

Fewest Amount of WIPs for Ages

Funny how things change isn't it? Last weekend I was bemoaning the fact that I had become a conscious incompetent, and in the middle of this week I'm high on teaching adrenalin. A few days maybe, but so much change.

Indeed, the profile of my Work-in-Progress count has also been a-changin'. I currently have the fewest WIP count in months with only 4 WIPs and one of those is on-hold until next spring. Things might be getting finished Chez Melody.... but I wouldn't recommend holding your breath......