Easter Fun

Happy Easter everyone! I hope you all had nice relaxing weekends. Here's an overview of ours.

The little bunnies above were made in a few hours for my Nephews. A friend recently shared Frankie's Knitted Stuff with our knitting group and I immediately queued tons of the projects. They're all out of the box thinking, cute and ingenious things, so have a look. 

The Baby Bunnies took small amounts of DK yarn in the stash and I found them really fun to make.

The mini pom poms were made by a technique using a fork. Useful!

I made Hot Cross Buns for the first time and they were AWESOME. As with all bread type products they take a long time to make but are worth the effort. I've even frozen a batch so the Easter fun and go on and on.

I won a competition at work and got this luxury Easter egg from SAID in Soho. They're an Italian Chocolatier and every time I go into the shop I want to buy something but simply can't justify how much everything costs! So this was the ultimate treat. Hidden inside was a carefully wrapped little bottle of Grappa and every time I open the box the beautiful smell of bitter chocolate fills the room. I shall be eating this slowly over a long period of time. That is unless the Mr. finds it.

Finally, here's Flo stuffing as much easter egg into her face as possible. Egg-cellent.

Goodbye to Kiefer

It's been very hard to know what to write in this post. It's been in my drafts for some time now, with one or two things written and then deleted. But this week I managed to write my article for Knitting Magazine all about Kiefer and how he suddenly died last month and so I feel I can final write it here too.

We got Kiefer from a rescue home last year and he really was such a lovely little man. He quickly became part of our family, our daily routine and gave a constant heartbeat to our home. In total he only lived with us for five months, but I know that he had a better life with us than if he wasn't re-homed, which does help with the sadness of it all. He was completely surrounded by three peoples' love each day, which is more than even some people can say.

One morning Kiefer just didn't look right. He was acting strangely; walking round in circles, falling off of things, not eating and would just look at me and cry a sad meow. The vet suspected many things could have been the cause but that the most probable was a virus called FIP which effects kittens exactly at Kiefer's age, is deadly and has no cure. It was obviously a heart wrenching decision to have him put down, but to watch a beautiful young kitten go through a long drawn out death didn't seem to be an option.

And so our home is much more empty now. We miss him terribly and as I'm sure anyone that has lost a cat will know, they are such a fixture of the house you still think you can see them out the corner of your eye, sleeping on the sofa, tiptoeing under the bed and sitting looking out the window. And when you look they're not there.

We will re-home again in the future, but just need a little time.

Goodbye my little man.

Purl Soho, aka Purl About New York

As promised I'm back to report on my trip to snowy New York and more specifically my visit to Purl Soho.

The last time I visited New York, I think in 2006, Purl Soho it was in a smaller premises and I bought some Bly Sky Alpaca's Brushed Suri. I still have that particular yarn in my stash because I could never decide what to do with such fluffiness. I simply wanted to bring something home from an exciting New York yarn store as a souvenir. On this latest visit they are now in a much bigger shop which includes fabric and yarn in the same store, but despite having a lot of yarn squirrelled away at home already I still wanted to bring back a little something from my trip.

When I entered the shop it was a busy hub of activity, which is always a great sign, especially considering it was 3pm on a Thursday. Were all these people skiving off work too? Instantly the sales assistants greeted me with a friendly "hello" and left me to browse.

Yarn packs the walls all the way to the back of the shop where it is replaced with fabrics and haberdashery. On every surface there are examples of knitted garments you can make with the luscious yarns, most of them are made from the free patterns on the shops very own blog, the Purl Bee. It was lovely to be able to squash and feel everything as I wandered around as well as get the inspiration from  the knitted up items.

The customer service was excellent. As I pulled my tiny wheeled suitcase around behind me one of the sales assistants asked if I wanted to put it behind the till so that I could browse more easily. This instantly made my shopping much more enjoyable. Then I asked if someone could show me some yarns that I might not be able to get in the UK and a lovely red head lady took me around the whole shop showing me all the different yarns they carried and telling me a little about each. When I mentioned that I was thinking about knitting a hat they printed out one of their free online hat patterns for me immediately. The service was so good, friendly, knowledgeable and thoughtful. I wish all yarn shops were like that.

Kiefer couldn't resist getting in this photo

Eventually I settled on this skein of deep green Brooklyn Tweed Loft, with an accompanying hat pattern and a Purl Soho zip up, nylon, project bag. I had never seen or heard of the yarn in the UK before but sadly I must have been living under a rock as you can indeed buy this yarn in the UK. The purchase is still special to me though as it will always remind me of my quick stop over in New York and my lovely experience in Purl Soho.

Bye Bye NY. Till next time.

Fly and Knit

Not a bad view to knit with, aye?

I'm currently in New York on a work trip, lucky, lucky me! Only for 2 nights but it's still making me smile from ear to ear. The snowy view from the plane was breath taking but I also got to watch a couple of movies on the plane and some TV shows too, which all mades for great knitting time. My new project is making good progress because of it.

Before I left yesterday I started doing that thing where I couldn't decide if I'd packed enough yarn or not. I've been on planes before where I've run out of yarn on the journey home and been really annoyed with myself but I've packed 3 balls and haven't even the finished the first yet so I think I'll be ok.

This is a pattern called Papillon by Svetlana Volkova. I think it's the first time I've paid for a one off pattern on Ravelry but it was exactly what I wanted to knit, so I'm hoping it will look good on me once finished.

Although I won't have much spare knitting time while I'm here I am planning on popping into the nearest yarn store to our office, Purl Soho. So hopefully more to report on that when I get back as well as the return journey to knit some more.

Brainy Brainless

At Christmas I had an unwanted visitor: Shingles. This is the left over virus from childhood chicken pox that lies dormant in your system until you get run down, at which time it will climb up a nerve of it's choice in your body and attack! Mine chose a nerve on my head. Gross. Most of the time the Shingles virus will make you feel crappy and the rash itself will hurt. Thankfully I felt pretty normal and although it hurt to touch I wasn't in the habit of touching my head all the time and so the pain wasn't really an issue. 

The major down side was that, although I couldn't give people Shingles, I could give people chicken pox if they hadn't had it before and so Christmas was cancelled for me and my two lovely Nephews. It was pretty crushing as I sent the Mr and Flo off to my Mums to open presents and have Christmas dinner with the Nephews and the rest of my family, but I was determined not to let it get me down and so spent the quiet time at home to it's best advantage winding yarn and starting a new project. With a glass of fizz to accompany me of course. 

And here are the finished socks! The pattern is called Brainless which I took to mean - a pattern I could do easily without using my brain. However this was an entirely wrong assumption. The pattern kicks off with Judy's magic cast on, which required me to have a YouTube refresher. Then there was the cabling to contend with, the curious gusset, a new method of turning the heel, more cables and topping it all off was Jenny's surprisingly stretchy cast off which again I needed refreshing on!

The first sock didn't go as well as the second, as indeed I learned a lot doing that first sock. As a consequence there are inconsistencies in the cables, increases and borders between the two socks. But I don't really care. They still look cool.

2013 Knitting Round Up

Well, hello 2014!
As we step into the New Year it's time to do my annual knitting project round up. So here's 2013 in projects:

The year began with the Milla Mia Charlotte cardigan for Flo
A Mellow cardigan for me
Two Pay It Forward projects of a scarf and some socks
Then a quick hat to warm me up
Followed by two versions of Picovoli, one for my sister in law and a cheeky one for myself
Some baby trousers
A baby cardigan for my nephew
Finally a finish to a long standing blanket project
The gift of a washcloth
A vintage cropped jumper
Speedy cowl knitted on a plane
Baby jacket
The Fieldwork cardigan
My final Pay It Forward of some quick Skipworth mitts
And a shoulder bag Christmas present for my Mum

Looking back I upped my number of projects in the previous 2 years from an average of 11 to 17 projects this year!
I also usually average 1 knitted top for myself per year. This year I managed 1 top and 2 cardigans all for me!
I'm still hitting my average of 1 blanket a year and at least 2 baby cardigans consistently.
The main difference in my knitting this year is that I have managed to knit a lot more for other people. This has a lot to do with the Pay It Forward projects I made, the kindness of my own damn heart and the usual baby making that happens so often round here.

All in all 2013 was a productive one. I'm setting no goals for 2014 except to keep on enjoying knitting and doing it for enjoyment above all else, otherwise, what's the point, right?

Come on then 2014, lets do this.

Marshmallow Twist Bag

Wendy is one of my most talented knitting friends. I met her through my local knitting group and she has been my knitting guru ever since. I've written about her awesomeness before in my Knitting Magazine article, but now I have an additional reason to blow my Wendy-is-awesome trumpet.
Not content with being just generally great at knitting she has turned her hand to designing some stunning little kits under the name of Muddy Sheep. My favourite at the moment is the Marshmallow Twist bag which Wendy has kindly let me test knit for her.

First thing to say is that the yarn is lovely. Squashy, warm, rub your face in it snuggly. It's easy and a pleasure to work with. 

The pattern was well written and had enough interest in the stitches and construction to keep me interested. 

There is as little sewing up as possible, which is always great.

But my favourite feature of the kit has to be the gorgeous little finishing touches. As well as a cute little wooden button you also get a board insert to keep the bottom of your bag sturdy and a colour matched oil cloth insert. I think this is genius. You get the squish of the yarn on the outside but the benefit of a sturdy, wipe clean and colourful inside. It just adds that special something to an already great kit.

I managed to finished it just before Christmas and gifted it to my Mum as I know she will use and enjoy it, plus she deserves it. Look at her happy present opening face on Christmas day!

Wendy has several other patterns in the Muddy Sheep range such as the Never Knit Before Cowl which is a perfect kit for beginners and the Striped Messenger Bag which comes with a soft cotton lining to sew. All the patterns are available as downloadable patterns or in a complete kit. These kits are great gifts for a friend (either in kit form or knitted up as I did with my Mum) or indeed are a lovely gift for yourself! 

Obviously everyone's a little cash strapped at this time of year but Muddy Sheep Knits also has free patterns, an online needles and notions store to peruse and clear video tutorials to help you conquer those tricky techniques.

Right that's enough trumpet blowing for one day. All that's left to say is Happy New Year to all of you and your families!