Happy Halloween!

Thomas and Mummy made a Jaggedy Lantern! Thomas didn't want him to be scary so he's a happy jaggedy lantern.


And here's my little pumpkin all dressed up for his halloween party at nursery. I love the socks, maybe I could knit myself some.....

Conspiracy Theory....

It would appear the microwaves have been talking amoungst themselves. When I first started dyeing with koolaid, our microwave blew up so we got a new one. I used the new one for dyeing with acid dyes, so thats gone down to the cellar to be my project microwave, and we got another one on thursday night. This morning, after all of 36 hours in the house, beeped all night long then blew the circuit breaker. Hmmmmmm.

Has our house become the stuff of microwave legend? Do mummy microwaves tell their little baby microwaves tales of the horrible house where bad microwaves get sent to be steamed to death in a cloud of tropical punch flavoured vapour? Are we in the midst of a microwave revolution, where they'd rather top themselves than help dye another skein of bluefaced leicester? If the replacement microwave goes the same way, I may have to consider setting up some sort of microwave benefit scheme to bribe them into compliance. Heh, appliance compliance. God i'm easily pleased.

In other news, Leo moved into his bedroom tonight, hoorah! 8 months in with us, thats twice as long as we had Thomas in, we've just been so slow in decorating Leo's room. It does not bode well for the rest of the decorating we have planned!

I am becoming more and more attracted to this new Robin Hood fella, even with the dodgy stubble, he's a fine figure of a man.

Back to the knitting! Speaking of which, there a nice plain kids hooded tunic in this months Knit Today magazine that I want to do for Thomas, and I want to do it in hand dyed BFL aran, soooooo i'm going to have to do a guage swatch. *shock horror faint*

Gemma xx

Banished

Yes, that's right, Gemma and her wool dyeing escapades have been banished to the cellar. Using the kitchen wasn't a problem while I was just using Koolaid, but yesterday I branched out into using Omega all in one acid dyes and it's been decided that perhaps that's something best done out of the food preperation area. So himself has moved the microwave downstairs for me and got a new one for the kitchen, so I can create masterpieces without worrying about contaminating anything. I use the term masterpieces loosely incidently.

So there is the first attempt at acid dyeing, 200g of aran weight BFL which we shall name 'stormy seas' for the purposes of this blog. It is a lot patchier that it appears in the pics, they are flattering my dodgy first try to be honest, but I went at it exactly like I dye Koolaid, and now I have a better idea at how the dyes take (in the case of the marine blue with apparently no rhyme or reason at all but I shall work on that) hopefully my next attempt will be better. I hope. Still, it was fun, if not a little more nervy than dyeing with Koolaid, mainly because to my shame I still suck my thumb at night and I was terrified of poisoning myself. Good time to give up the thumb methinks.















Look! Grown up knitting! My first attempt at lace, (seems this week is a good week for first attempts!) it's going to be a birthday present for my SIL, and when it's done it will hopefully look like this but this is me we're talking about so don't hold your breath. It's also quite dependant on me winning some more of the yarn i'm using on Ebay which may backfire. Nothing ventured nothing gained though!

Stitch & Bitch last night, good as ever! Treated myself to a granola bar which was scrummy, and hopefully not too denting to the diet.

When is it ever going to stop raining! The window in the front room leaks and so we have to have a bowl stationed underneath to catch all the water. And we are the house of ill bills, everyone is unhealthy! The kids and stu have stinking colds, and I seem to have a permanent headache. Yak. And worst of all, on tuesday i'm having a root filling at the sedation clinic and i'm scared witless. Boooooo.

Ho, ho, ho!

Yes thats right, i've been knitting for christmas! If you are a member of my family, look away now.....

Behold, my new obsession! The Warshrag....




Not the best piccys, but you get the idea. I have this wonderous idea that I will pair up one of these little beauties with a nice soap and the boys can give them to people for crimbo. Sounds great in theory, but it's going to mean a lot of washcloths! Thankfully I stumbled across this website so I shouldn't run out of patterns and have to repeat them endlessly. It all sounds too good to possible work out so watch this space for certain disaster.

In other news, The bibble has become an expert sit-up-erer. How many kinds of cute is he?





















And speaking of cute...... Dante, he's a lovely puddy tat. Think he needs a knitted coat?





















Stitch n Bitch tomorrow night, I like my thursday trips to Borders to knit and drink overpriced but yummy beverages.

Night all!

Love is....

...........taking 100g of lovely hand dyed chunky alpaca/merino like this....

And turning it into this....

Because Po is cold mummy!

Love is also standing knitting an Zen Vision cosy on a bridge over the train tracks while you wait for the 16.15 to Carlisle to go under.

Happy days!

Demons

You know how some music just sends a shiver down your spine? A friend just sent me this link to a live performance by a band I love with a passion. If you aren't Super Furry Animal fan, well you should be!

Shamelessly stolen from Joelle's LiveJournal...

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Ribbit, Ribbit

It's been a bit longer than I intended, mostly because i've been too despondant to blog. Well that and the fact that it seems everytime I want to blog Blogger has been refusing to let me upload piccys so i've been deleting anything i'd written in a temper. It's the principle of the thing!

Got the ECA handed in a day early, not completely confident in it, but it'll have to do, and it's way too later now anyway! Unfortunately, apparently we don't get the results until December! Wonder if I can manage not to think about it until then....

I could do that by buying yarn I suppose... like this yarn for example....



Another Ebay bargain, hand dyed chunky and DK, alpaca and merino. Lulley.




Or this maybe..... washcloth cotton yarn, all part of my master christmas plan.....




An already started washcloth, quite pretty I think, well the colours at least, this is supposed to be a more masculine washcloth. The yarn may have a potential problem, it seems to be dyeing my fingers and the bamboo needles a sort of bluey green colour. It washes off easily enough, so i'm hoping a wash will remove any potential running problems. I hope.




This is the bane of my knitting at the moment. It's the second time i've knitted it. I got all the rows done at the weekend only to discover I'd cast on for 3-6 months instead of 6-9. Now bear in mind he's nearly 8 months already.... To hedge my bets i've started knitting a 1-2 years so he stands an outside chance of actually wearing it....

This is one of 2 gloves i've knitted, unfornately they are both different so I don't have a pair. Ho hum.

Had a major disaster last week, a certain small someone knocked a can of pepsi into my knitting bag... all over my Creative Zen, 3 projects, 2 books and the camera. The MP3 player and the camera seem to have survived ok, the books on the other hand have had it. The knitting seems ok, the evil jumper escaped the worst of it, and the 2 gloves were easy enough to wash. Theres a ball of hand dyed sock yarn that absorbed a bit, i'm thinking i'll have to knit with it and then wash whatever i knit straight away. Sticky knitting, appealing!

Right, off to S & B now, ta ta!

Normal service will be resumed...

Just as soon as my ECA (end of course assessment) is handed in. It it consuming my time, yet I have nothing to show for it, it's like swatching without the opportunity to stroke lovely yarn at regular intervals. I am getting hardly any knitting done, with the exception of one glove in the car on the way to my mums. Ack.

So, until I am free from short stories and the like, I shall leave you with a picture of something I would like living in my garden....