Crazy Times

Things have gone crazy in the last few weeks and suddenly everything is happening at once!

We need to move home as our landlady needs our flat back, so I am occupied with finding somewhere to live that will have enough room for all my yarn. The extensive yarn/ craft cupboard I currently have will be hard to beat and I will miss it dearly. I also am slightly worried that the Mr might have something to say when there’s more moving boxes marked ‘Yarn’ than anything else in the moving van.

I’m going back to work in a couple of week, just part time, but the thought of having to use my brain in a logical way again is quite daunting. Trying to slot back into things after a whole year without work seems like an impossible task but I know it will be a positive thing for our little family.

Some very exciting news is that I will be teaching knitting classes again! The Creative Biscuit is a local and very cute ceramics cafe. Apart from having ceramics painting they also run classes like jewellery making, have a book club and importantly serve tea, coffee and cake! My Beginners Knitting Workshop will be the latest edition to their crafty repertoire and we will be learning to make a simple garter stitch hairband. Here it is modelled by me and then by Flo, who wasn't too happy about being a model.

In other news I managed to finish my Hap blanket! I’m really pleased with it and it’s lovely and cosy. The only question now is what to knit next?

The most earth shatteringly crazy thing that’s happening at the moment is that Florence is turning 1 year old next week! It’s so difficult to believe that a whole year has passed since she arrived, but it’s amazing, given her extremely rough start, that she is thriving as well as she is. We will be of course having a party, with cake, next weekend, so it will be all stations go on party food and birthday cake making duties. Phew, crazy times indeed!

Greg Wallace, Now That's True Love

Happy Valentines day!

This year I haven't been sucked into the whole Valentines day present thing and so got the Mr a nice card and a kiss instead of a present. I didn't bank on getting a gift myself, so was totally blown away by a personalised Greg Wallace (of Masterchef and greengrocer fame) apron, which is perfect for my continuing baking adventures.

The Mr and I love to watch Masterchef and are so excited that it's starting up again on Wednesday this week. The best part of the show is when Greg comes out with his amazing one liners which you can read tons of on this amazing facebook page which is dedicated to them. My favourite one so far has to be "Give me a cup of tea and I'll finish it" which is now on my baking apron, spurring me on to bake treats that even Greg would be proud of. Although to be fair I think he would happily tuck into a flan that had fallen on the floor.

This weekend I went on a little road trip with my friend Dr Stitchlove to Portsmouth see our preggers friend Startitis. She's been knitting away for the arrival of her little one and I had to take a picture of this AMAZING creation. I just love the little squirrels around the yolk and the colours work so well with the design. This knit is made all the more amazing by the fact that the pattern was entirely in Dutch! Well done Startitis and thanks for the yummy cakes too.

How did we do?

Pointless was a mixed experience. We spent the first day doing nothing as we were last to know if we’d get on the show or not. I shudder to think that I almost didn’t bring my knitting with me as the Hap blanket has become rather cumbersome of late and I didn’t want the extra baggage. Thankfully my common sense came back to me and so the 9 hours we spent sitting in the green room were well spent making some good progress on the border to the blanket.

On the second day at the BBC we did get on the show but we can’t tell you how far we got, so you’ll have to wait until it’s on TV to see if we won or not! I should know the exact date that the show will be on BBC2 nearer the time, so watch this space around March and see me and my sister in law do our best to get a Pointless trophy.

Oh, and the only on-set gossip I have is that Richard, the guy that sits behind the desk with all the answers, is ENORMOUS. He’s literally a giant, which is probably why they’ve sat him behind a desk.

In other news Flo received a very belated Christmas present from some lovely friends last weekend of a beautiful hand knit jumper. I just love the colour combination and I can’t get over how nicely the sewing up has been done! If only I had those skills. The jumper was bought from a local shop called Knock Down Ginger and was knitted by someone local. If that was you then I’d like to know your sewing up secrets please?!?

Note to self: child safe googly eyes for stuffed toys are not child safe! Wilbur the whale sadly had his eye bitten of this week and luckily I caught Florence before she could choke on it. He will now be a decorative whale on a high up shelf rather than a hands on kind of whale.

Pointless, Cake - I didn't mean it like that!

Since I've been at home a lot I have got into the habit of watching day time TV. At first I felt like my brain was slowly dying but then I came across my saviour - Pointless! It's the best quiz show on TV and as I became more and more involved in the show I decided I had to apply as a contestant. Now lets be clear, this is not the kind of thing I've never done before. I am not in the habit of applying for game shows, so I was totally shocked to be called in for an audition with the other half of my team, my sister in law Brooke. After a crazy audition where I was convinced we simply weirded out the production team we have been called up to actually be on the show! The new series starts in March, so you'll have to keep an eye out for us on TV - wish us luck!

I also wanted to share with you some pretty cakes I made at the weekend. They were made using two recipes. One, for the cake, is from a brilliant book called The Cupcake Ward Cookbook. This was put together by a 12 year old who wanted to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital. She has managed to get lots of celebrities, chiefs, family and friends to donate their favourite cake recipes and nearly all the profits go to the Cupcake Ward at the hospital. With this hospital being very close to our hearts, because Florence was resident there for the first 3 months of her life, I really love this book and encourage you to buy a copy here.

The recipe I used from the book was for Fern Cotton's chocolate cupcakes and the icing was from a Jamie Oliver Sainsburys leaflet that I picked up in the summer, which is basically cream cheese, icing sugar and raspberries blended. This works really nicely with the chocolate, YUM!

The Return of Social Knitting

Since the darling Flo came into my life obviously lots has changed and that includes my knitting being, shall we say, a bit up in the air. One of my favourite things about knitting is the social aspect of it. As one of the founding members of S&B London, which was the biggest knitting group in the UK at the time, I was meeting, teaching and knitting with new people at least once a week for four years! That’s a lot of social knitting. However, the only people I’ve been knitting with for the last few months have been the cast of Grey’s Anatomy or True Blood during the odd quiet night in front of the TV. So it was like an angel from above when I received an email from a fellow new mum telling me about a knitting group started by my local NCT group (National Childbirth Trust).

It was hard to contain my excitement at the prospect of a weekly night of knitting again and after two weeks of meetings I’m already starting to feel at home. It’s been so lovely to sit amongst a group of new people and have a good natter about everything from kids to yarn, TV to road rage and suitable birthday gifts to the new John Lewis opening in Stratford by the end of the year (which we’ve talked about at both meetings so far and I think we’re going to continue talking about until it opens and we’ve bled it dry of yarn).

Having people to knit with always gives me so much inspiration. Just seeing what others are working on, the yarns and finished projects fires up my creative juices and makes me want to start about a thousand projects all at once. But I am restraining myself to working on the Hap Blanket by Ysolda Teague. This is basically a simple large garter stitch square until I get to the border but the simplicity of the project is giving me the head space to relax. I think if I attempted anything too taxing at the moment that I’d have a bit of a knitting meltdown.

The lovely photo of Flo in my last post and the one here of the Hap Blanket came from my latest photo shoot with my good friend and trusty photographer James Diggle. You can check out his amazing photography here.

I'm Back!

I have been informed that the latest issue of Knitting Magazine is out and therefore, I'm back in!

To celebrate, here's a cute picture of Flo brandishing a giant knitting needle.

It's all over

I hate taking the Christmas tree down. The cavern it leaves makes everything seem so bare and the spaces between all the furniture seem so big. I found these crochet remnants of Christmas 2010 in a shop window while on New Years day which seemed particularly poignant to my woolly brain. Fairwell Christmas, till next time!

I managed to get to the sales in Bluewater today and took a trip to the yarn department in the John Lewis there. The yarn was indeed stacked high but having so many WIPS (works in progress) in my craft cupboard I really couldn't justify buying any more yarn to stash away for no real purpose. Does this mean I'm getting old and sensible?

I did help my Mum buy some cut price Debbie Bliss Eco as I bought her the pattern book as a gift last year. It turns out you need at least 16 balls to make any of the garments in the book, so if you were to buy the yarn full price you're looking at around £80 for most of them! Long live the yarn sales says I!

I promised you pictures of the vintage snood I made from Jane Wallers Knitting Fashions of the 1940's and here it is.

My sister in law is disgustingly glamorous.