Real life, an interlude

Wow do I have some serious posting catch up to do?! The blog's been a little quiet the last couple of weeks as it's been a little busy around here. With this being the mighty midget's first year at school, I hadn't realised how much they cram into the last couple of weeks of term! We've had the school fete, the sports day that had to be rescheduled because of the weather, the day trip to the beach. The meet the new teacher evening. It just seems to have been a never ending whirlwind! Still only two more days to go and then we can take a breather.

So anyway now to the pictures. The mummy returns.... somehow I managed to volunteer myself to build two 5ft oscars to decorate the entrance to the school fete. That'll teach me for having a glass of wine at tea time. Still, it was good fun. I haven't done papier mache on such a large scale for a long time. A couple of cans of spray paint later and we have the finished statue complete with red carpet. This year's theme for the fete was the movies (hence the oscars) and Class R picked the Little Mermaid and danced to the song "Under the Sea". They'd made head and wrist bands in class and we had to send them along in brightly coloured clothes. It was so cute!You'll have to excuse the slightly fuzzy photo's as I had to use my phone to take them. Last but not least are a couple of shots from sports day.

The mighty midget gurning as usual and an action picture from the sack race. Sometimes there are definate perks to this mummy business :D

UK Swap, Question #5

1. Go Green!!!, 2. kalayo, 3. Gone Fishin', 4. papapapapapapaaaa..., 5. Star light, Star Bright, 6. Gizmo, 7. View from Beeley Moor, 8. Just hanging around, 9. ready for the party......???, 10. a good wine, 11. . And now for something completely different ., 12. 'stick' together, 13. This is your cat on drugs., 14. Language of the Genes, 15. top o' the card catalog, 16. zero gravity

It's not so long since I did one of these mosaics but hey, it was fun the first time round so why not again? Actually it's fun trying to see how random you can actually make the images while answering the question. So anyhow want to see how I got there?

1. Stop or go? go
2. Going out or Staying in? staying in
3. Small town or big city? small town
4. Happy or sad? happy
5. Straights or Circulars? circular
6. Red or Blue? red
7. Seaside or countryside? countryside
8. Fish or chips? fish
9. Surprises or plans? surprises
10. Wine or beer? wine
11. Sweaters or cardigans? cardigan
12. Pizza or Pasta? pasta
13. Chopsticks or fork? chopsticks
14. Early Bird or Night Owl? night owl
15. Knitting or crochet? knitting
16. Hot or cold? cold

ok, that's me done. Now off to find some actual knitting content :)

Another BSJ?

It's been a few months since I made my BSJ and I've been looking for an excuse to make another to a while. Imagine my delight when I was browsing the BSJ group (Ravelry link) and discovered that there was a crochet version in the works. I managed to bag myself a copy of the pattern as soon as it was published and went stash diving for something suitable.Here's how it looked over the weekend (when we still had sunshine!). I'd ground to a bit of a halt at this point as I wasn't sure whether I'd made a mistake or not but then Monday night, I had a bit of an epiphany and it's now racing along again. If it carries on like this, it'll be done before the weekend.

Just in case you fancy a go, the pattern is courtesy of Stitch Stud and you can get it here :)

Revenge of the mystery shawl

GKMSClue2
Originally uploaded by Bearium

also known as the mystery shawl strikes back.

Yes, it's started already and the mistakes are beginning to flow. I thought I was doing so well. I whistled through Clue 2 and decided to crack straight on with Clue 3 only to get to the end of the first row and discover I was short by a couple of stitches.

Everything was fine before the increase row and as my enthusiasm hadn't waned at this point I gamely frogged back a couple of rows. I noticed that I'd missed a couple of yarn overs so put them back in and finished the row. Decided it was probably a good idea to put all the stitch markers back in during the following knit row and guess what? I have too many stitches now! Argggghh.

It's been sat like that since last Friday. They published Clue 4 last Saturday. I'm really slipping behind :(

New shoes!

I do have knitting progress, really I do but I have new shoes too! I haven't given up on the idea of some clear converse yet but these are really comfy and I reckon, big enough to wear socks with. Yay. Not sure that many of my current hand knit won't clash horribly with the shoes but hey, that just means I have an excuse to knit more.Now I just need to find a few more hours in the day. Ho hum.

Swaps again and goodies for me!

I mentioned that I got a parcel last week as part of the last AY Knitting Forum swap, well here's mine in all it's glory. (I did battle with the camera and won) Look, I got goodies! There's a beaker with sheep on it, some pencils with more sheep. A big fluffy pen, some nail varnish with spangles in and some of my favourite chocolate, mint Green and Blacks! It was all wrapped up beautifully and tucked into the bottom was a fabulously soft green lace scarf. I will have to try and get a better picture because it's really hard to capture the colour which is a very deep green/blue. Will have to check what yarn Ruth used as it's lovely and if I get over my phobia of lace weight, I might have to get some more.

Thanks again Ruth :D

It's a mystery

Having not completed last year's mystery shawl you might think it's a bit strange that I've signed up for another. This time around it's the Goddess Knits shawl and it's going to be a bit of a challenge. It's a Pi shawl, so not only will it be my first attempt at a circular shawl, it means getting to grip with laceweight. I hate to be beaten by anything and it was hard to admit last year that I was never going to finish the swan lake stole. Largely I put it down to my dislike of the yarn (jojoland Harmony) once I started knitting it. Well, less the yarn and more the colour I was using, it was a bit insipid. So remembering that I had a skein of screaming red lane bogosesia stashed away I decided to give it another whirl. I did a swatch and settled on 3mm needles and here we are with Clue 1 completed. (I opted for Chart A for those in the know) You can see from the number of stitch markers, I wasn't brave enough to just knit.

Now I'm part way through Clue 2, I'm becoming a bit braver and have reduced the number a bit. However, I'm beginning to wonder whether I should have used a smaller sized needles after all? I know lace is supposed to have holes but I really have holes! Arrgh. I think maybe I'm just a little too far out of my comfort zone.

Baby Babette

Babette
Originally uploaded by Bearium

We have progress at last! Yesterday I finally finished the last square. The downside is that I now have to stitch them all together. Gulp. Hmm, how hard can that be? It's only a baby blanket after all.