It's a mystery....

Yes, yet another mystery knitalong! A circular shawl this time, apparently using the 'rays method' but I have no idea what that is! I'm liking it so far!

Needles are 4mm Knitpicks Options, yarn is Cherry Tree Hill merino laceweight in Blueberry Hill. Pretty!

It's all about the socks

Pic heavy post - you've been warned!

Sock yarn, that's where it's at. You've seen my own private stash, well this week i've hit upon a brilliant plan to squeeze and love lots of yummy sock yarn without getting told off by the hubby - i'm making luffly sock yarn for the shop! Obviously if anyone buys any i'm going to have some serious separation issues since i'm in love with all of it.....

I've been knitting as well, still enjoying the mystery stole 3, i'm about a third of the way through clue 4, and i'm going to get further behind because i've got double essays due this week. Ugh. Excuse the carpet in the picture, 2 children + beige carpet = grim mess, and I don't have PSP on this laptop to crop it out lol.

Some of the girls from Stitch n Bitch came over last weekend to do some dyeing, they all dyed 200g of aran in some pretty pretty colours, some people (penguin julie!) were a lot more particular about it that others....

Julie 1 rinsing out her lovely variagated pink yarn

Joelle doing some cleaning up...

Penguin Julie (I call her that because there are 2 julies at s&b, and being a bear of very little brain I need to distinguish between the 2 on my phone, so she's penguin julie on my phone because when she first came to s&b she was knitting a jumper for a penguin) demonstrating how to make a yarn look as much like Noro without actually being Noro as possible.

Julie 1 modeling her fabulous apron..

Penguin Julie and Joelle doing a spot of stash worship...

After dyeing we all went to Pizza Hut with green hands, which was quite a feat considering it was only actually penguin Julie that used any green dye.

I'm also cracking on with the spinning, here's my first effort, slubby, uneven and hideous, but I did it!! Have convinced the husband he wants to get me a smaller wheel for my birthday, i've been eyeing up a Hitchhiker....

And finally, most random happening of the week goes to the email I recieved on tuesday evening, entitled 'Are you Gemma the knitter from Preston?'. I knew I was being spied on for the government! Well ok, it was actually from a lady who works in Starbucks in town who wanted me to help her out by gathering a few knitters to go in on friday morning and knit little hats for the Innocent smoothie fundraising thing. Ever keen to spread the good word of knitting, the Preston Stitch n Bitchers will be in attendance. The promise of a free drink and smuggled cake helped ;) If you live in or around Preston / Lancs and fancy joining us, we'll be in Starbucks on Fishergate from 9.30am onwards, come and say hello!

And that is all!

Got Stash?

And you thought I was bad....

Worlds Biggest Stash?

Let no one berate me again!

Faith

Non - knitting post alert, step away from the computer if easily offended by yarn-free ramblings.

So, faith. By this i'm refering to the faith in a higher power so to speak, God if you will. We could spend forever defining what faith means to different people, what you believe in, what you don't etc, and even defining what my faith means to me is no mean feat.

Since having the boys i've becoming increasingly interested in exploring my faith a bit more, when we moved we started attending a wonderful church, really family orientated, young congregation, exactly the sort of community of faith i'd like the boys to grow up in if you see what I mean. We attended a few churches before settling, that sounds like we were shopping for a house doesn't it, but honestly, feeling like you've come home is really important to me, and at least one of the churches we attended didn't feel like that. This particular one sticks in my mind because it was openly homophobic in it's service. Now i'm not niaive, I know the churches stance on certain things, but i'd like to think that they are becoming more tolerant and not preaching hate in sermons. Tolerance is the key, so many people think religion is the cause of all evil in the world which isn't strictly true, people are the cause of evil, that they choose to do their evil in the name of organised religion is, well crap really. It's important to me that the boys growing up being tolerant of others, be that other faiths, sexualities, life choices, whatever.

For me, faith and religion isn't about knowing your scriptures inside and out, it's about being a good person and knowing that ultimately you have nothing to fear. I know you could do all that without being religious, but I think i'm just someone that likes the idea that there's a point to all this, that God is watching out for us, it's comforting i suppose.

I'm not doing a very good job of explaining it, maybe faith is a hard thing to explain. It's something i've been thinking about a lot lately, most of you will know at least one of the reasons why that is. Another reason is that a friend from a parenting forum I go on very recently lost her baby son. She posted a beautiful poem on the forum yesterday, it's a lot to ask that she found some comfort from it, how do you gain any comfort following such a loss, but I hope she did.

God’s Lent Boy

I’ll lend you for a little while a child of mine, God said,
For you to love the while he lives, and mourn for when he’s dead.
It may be six or seven years, or forty two or three,
But will you, ‘til I call him back, take care of him for me?
He’ll bring his charms to gladden you. And should his stay be brief,
You’ll always have your memories as solace in your grief.
I cannot promise he will stay, since all from earth return,
But there are lessons taught below I want this child to learn.

I’ve looked this whole world over in my search for teachers true,
And from the folk that crowd life’s lane, I have chosen you.
Now will you give him all your love and not think the labour vain,
Nor hate me when I come to take this lent child back again.
I fancy that I heard them say, ‘Dear God Thy will be done’,
For all the joys this child will bring, the risk of grief we’ll run.
We will shelter him with tenderness, we’ll love him while we may,
And for all the happiness we’ve ever known, we’ll ever grateful stay.
But should the angels call him much sooner than we’d planned,
We will brace the bitter grief that comes and try to understand.

At the moment it's faith that's helping me stay positive that the other thing will turn out ok, it's going to be a long slog.

I vow to thee my Blogger

That I will try and be a bit less sporadic with my blogs. Nearly a month again, that's not good now is it!

There's a lot going on at the moment, family stuff that isn't great but hopefully will be ok, OU stuff that i'm not enjoying. I think i'm going to have a year away from the OU after this course, i'll only have one left for the degree, but there are other things i'd like to concentrate my time on so i'm going to give those a whirl.

One of those things is of course KraftyKoala. The shop is another thing that's sporadic, I did an update this week of aran and a lot of that has gone, i'd like to ge getting at least an update a week but it's finding the time. I'm not good at time management. I'm doing a fair bit of custom dyeing as well and that eats into shop time. Anyway, i've taken delivery of 2 kilos of aran and 4 kilos of sock wool this week, i'm also going to be getting some double knit and some laceweight in the near future so watch this space. Plans are afoot!

What else have I been doing..... Hmmmmm, welll we went on holiday to Devon, where contrary to popular belief, it didn't rain all week.

Although it did rain a fair bit, which allowed me to crack on with MS3, or Mystery Stole 3 for those not in the know ;). I haven't done this weeks clue yet, but here are weeks 1 &2 progress.

I also made the worlds funkiest dishcloth, or at least I think it is, for a swap...

And I made the huge mistake of getting out and sorting my sock and lace yarn... here's the sock.....

And here's the lace.....

It#s not good is it, and that's not including all the cotton and acrylic and other lovely aran and dk yarn. Or the yarn that's attached to the multitude of WIP's! It's really not good! I can't wait to get on Ravelry and catalogue it all heh heh.

And it's only going to get worse, look what I was given today...

She's a Haldane, and she's old and well loved, and I adore her! Thankyou Andrea, i'll take good care of her! I'm practicing my treadling as I type heh heh.

I think that's everything, i'm also knitting a debbie bless sheep dress in lilac baby cashmerino for my new niece but i've lost the cable for my phone where the pics are so you'll just have to use your imagination.