ACCIDENTS LEND A HELPING HAND

Hi everyone

How time and years do fly by and you never realise until you look back and think to yourself wow.

What am I talking about you may say .... well I'll tell you.

I have final finished my Aran cardigan after putting off and off and off.  It is no lie that I must have had this project on the go for about 4 and a half years.  It was something I set myself to acheive thinking that if I could knit this then I could probably give any knitting project a go.

So why did I pick up this project again after so many years and why in the first place did I put it away.

Well first of all it required me to concentrate alot. So I would only do little bits at a time.  If I left it for a long time it took me ages to figure out where I was in the pattern and the decreases and increases etc.  

The reason I picked it up again was because I had it stored in a knitting bag in the corner of my front room.  This knitting bag didn't zip up so the enormous ball of wool that I was knitting with was always spilling out of the bag.  As you may know if you keep up with my blog on a regular basis is that we got a new furbaby about 7 or 8 weeks ago - 

Well I thought I could smell something very funky for a few days but wasn't sure what it was.  When tidying up and moving my knitting project I noticed that Reilly had gone to the toilet on my lovely ball of yarn.  Thankfully only a number 1.  If it had been anything else I definitely would of noticed.  My heart sank.  I didn't blame wee Reilly after all he is still learning his toilet skills in our house and things are still new to him.  I did though think to myself why oh why have you left this project for so long, you might not even be able to get this yarn anymore.  (Let me just tell you that I had a good amount of it knitting up by this point - Only one arm and the collar to finish).

A few days later I went back to the shop that I had purchased the yarn from (The Craft Shop in Belfast).  Low and behold I was lucky.  They still sold the yarn I was needing and in the colour I had picked.

I decided that this was the kick up the bum that I needed to finish my cardigan - So in the end I had to thank wee Reilly for his bad toileting skills because he was the friend I needed to get going and put away my fears and finish this project.

DA DA!!!

Here it is.  I'm so proud of it.  It maybe oversized a tad, but it is so warm and comfy.  The perfect thing to snuggle up in with a good book and a nice cup of hot chocolate.

I have been wearing it most of the last 2 days since I finished it.  it's softer yarn then real Aran wool and not quite as heavy.

I knitted it with 

In this pic you can see that it really was a big ball of yarn.  It took about 1 and a half balls.  So I have some left over to knit a scarf or something else with.

Let me know what have you been putting of for years that you are glad to have finally finished.

Cheerio till next time

BEAUTIFUL

Hi everyone

It was my birthday in March and I was spoilt rotten as usual.  My family are so good to me.  I'm very lucky.

Any body who knows me, knows I love yarn.  So my mum got me some very lovely red yarn from her local wool shop (which is situated in the Courtyard - Carrickfergus.)  Mum is very lucky cos she has 2 great wool shops in her town.  Where I live is lacking a bit in wool shops.  There is 1 wee shop, but it doesn't sell any of the fancy wool that people are used to now - to be honest that is probably a good thing, because I would be out a fortune.

Anyway back to the lovely red wool.

Isn't it just the nicest.  It has wee red sequins all over it.  I haven't found a project for it yet.  Mum reckons I should make some mittens.  Would the sequins get in the way though when your wearing them?  Let me know what you think I should knit.

I also got some lovely yarn this week when I was away on holiday for the night.  

My sister in law had gifted us a night away in a hotel in Arklow, Co. Wicklow for Christmas.  

I highly recommend taking a trip there it's so lovely and relaxing.

We went for a walk up the street the first day and from a distance and without my glasses on may I add (usually I can't see anything in the distance if I don't have my glasses on) I saw a sign for wool.  I was determent to have a look the next day before we headed off.  So the next day after breakfast I got my yarn radar on and headed out to see what delights where about.  I wasn't disappointed at all.  The shop was full of all the wool you could think of and more.  I homed in on some skeins of multi-coloured wool and found 1 I just couldn't resist.  I was on holiday so I treated myself as you do.

Imagine what it will look like when it is knitted up - just beautiful.  I also got to use my skein holder for the first time.  It works a treat.

I had my ball of yarn in no time at all.

This also doesn't have a project, but because of the beautiful colours and also the yarn it's self is so lovely to touch I was thinking of adding it into a blanket of some kind.

I can't wait to knit them up and show you all what I've created.

Cheerio till next time.

SOCKTASTIC

Hi everyone

So lets talk socks.  I have 2 finished pairs of socks to show you.

The first pair are knitted from cotton yarn that I purchased in Lidls of all places.  I fancied trying to knit a rib pattern.  I knit rib 1x1 for the cuff.  The pattern for the sock was knit 3, purl 1 for the round.  

My lovely mother in law had given me some of the same wool months ago which I used to knit a wee girls dress.  I still had some left over so I used it to add a bit of contrasting colour to the heel and toes. 

Next time I would use the contrasting colour to knit the heel flap too, because you can't see much of the colour on the heel.  

I have been loving wearing these.  They did fall down my leg a little, so I took some elasticated thread and weaved it on the inside of the cuff and secured it tightly so it wouldn't come undone.  It works a treat.

The second pair of socks that I have finished are a similar pink colour but with multi-coloured strips after ever 7 main colour round.  The pinky wool I used is a baby wool.  I wouldn't think you could get in your local wool shop anymore because I found it in a second hand shop and it looked quite old. (I find some great bargains when it comes to wool in my local second hand shops.  Give it ago I really recommend it.)  

They are shorter then the other pairs of socks I have knitted but I love them.  If you can remember the socks I knitted and gave to my mum they were knitted in the yarn that I used for the strips in these socks.  I had some left over so I thought I would give it a go.  I really like how they have turned out.  

I decided to just knit the heel with the main colour and use the mutli-coloured yarn for the toe.

I have a pattern written down in my notebook just to keep me right but they really aren't hard to master.  If you want me to blog the sock patterns please leave a comment and let me know.

I'm not knitting socks at the moment but I'm sure it wont be too long until I'm back knitting them.  I found it so pleasing and now that I have mastered knitting them to fit my feet its not so hard a job. 

Cheerio till next time.