An Actual Knitting Post

No, really!

I haven’t done a lot of knitting (or spinning, and certainly not crochet) lately.  And by lately, I mean… the last 18 months.  Or thereabouts.  But in the last week or two I’ve picked up a couple of projects that’ve been languishing and started work on them again.

First of all there’s a hat for Miss RA.  Whether or not she’ll wear it is another matter.  She doesn’t seem too keen on keeping hats on!  Anyway, this is it so far:Bumpity Bump hat

And the other thing I’ve picked up again are the mittens for Mum’s shoebox project.  I didn’t finish them for last year’s box, so I figure if I do them now then I can be ahead of the curve for this autumn.

Shoebox Mittens 2013

I’ve been thinking I should also get at least one of the jumpers that are laying around in bits finally sewn up.  Yeahhh.  I’ll get right on that.

FOs in 2010, Part 1

As I didn’t post all that much last month in the end, I thought I’d do a round up of last year’s finished projects now, before it gets too out of date.  Some of these I’ve mentioned before, but I wanted to get some better pictures of one or two anyway.  So, in order of finishing:

Continue reading “FOs in 2010, Part 1”

All Hands on Deck

I haven’t blogged much recently because I’ve been knitting.  Which means I don’t have enough hands to type at the same time!  I should at least be mostly done with the things I’m knitting as Christmas presents.  Ahem.  I might be completely done, who knows?  I probably would have been fine, but Mum asked me for mittens which I then had to factor in… and it all went a little bit wonky.  Not too much though.

Other than present knitting, I’ve finished my gloves (pictures soon), done a bit of spinning at the 1066 Spinners group, and of course have been Christmas shopping.  There’s an open air ice rink in town for the festive season, so Jo and I are hoping to go down there at some point.  Although it’s just started snowing today, so I spose it depends how bad that gets.  I also did an hour of carolling at the local hospital last night with choir.  I really love singing carols, so that was lots of fun.  Even though I did have to stand in the front row where people can – oh no!!! – see me!  Happily for my ridiculous stage fright, most people didn’t stop and stare: we were in the foyer, so the majority of the people just passed through.

Anyway, I’d better go and have dinner before KnitJam tonight.  I’m sure there was something else I was planning to blog about, but I’m sure it’ll come back to me.  If not, it probably wasn’t important!

A bit of a catch up

Oops again: I managed not to blog for yet another whole month, and missed my 8-year Blogoversary in the bargain (thanks for the ‘versary wishes!). So what have I been doing?

Well, I’ve done a couple of websites for my brother and another group in his year at uni, for one of their group projects (no, I wasn’t doing the work for them! They’re allowed to ’employ’ people for various jobs that they can’t cover themselves in the group). Gave me a chance to do something new-ish with embedding streaming video and audio, and play with some CSS3 as well. Hooray!

Talking of websites… I still haven’t got the redesign for this one sorted out. Really must buckle down and do that. I had to delete the (MT) search script for the blog because it was being hammered with spam and overloading the server… hopefully when I switch over to WP I won’t have that problem. However, I want to get the new design done before I change over (so I don’t have to faff around turning this one into a wp theme as well), especially since I’m going to be running the whole site apart from the photo album through it.

Other than that, I have got some knitting done: I finished Em’s mittens, and I’ve even managed to blitz through the rest of the WFS [RavLink], which is actually Mum’s birthday present… from last year. Ahem. But it’s done now! All except a bit of weaving in, and the all-important blocking, that is. I’m thinking I’m going to evict the cat from the bedroom tomorrow, clear off the bed, and use that for blocking it on. If it doesn’t get dry in time, I can always sleep on the sofabed for one night. I’ve actually been quite organised with my knitting so far this year: I still have several unfinished projects, but I’ve put most of them to one side and worked on just two or three… which has meant I’m finishing, or getting towards finishing things! My final pair of SKP08 socks, and the gloves I’ve had hanging around for ages with just one done are both well on their way. No pictures today, though. Site redesign first! Off I go again to work on that :-)

Oh, hi, Happy New Year!

And…. oops! I completely gave in to the Dreaded Lurgy, and failed to keep up with my BloPoMo challenge. D’oh! I did make 22 entries (23 including this one) though, so that’s ¾ of it achieved at least. Yep, let’s look on the positive side of things! Also on the positive, I’m pretty much over said Dreaded Lurgy and can now speak (and breathe) again. Well, I think that’s a good thing ;-)

I didn’t do much for New Year – mainly I was huddling indoors keeping warm! But that’s fine, I didn’t have any big plans that I had to cancel through feeling grotty, so I was quite happy with watching the Hootenanny and drinking hot chocolate.

I haven’t done much knitting since Christmas, either. I’ve done a bit on the second sock for the fifth Pentathlon pair, but I didn’t get them finished (obviously) by the 31st December deadline so I’ve slacked off on those again. And I’ve cast on for E’s second mitten now that I’m no longer coughing all the time. But that’s pretty much it! I have had some post-knitting-gratification, however: I’ve found out that both the hat that I made for little H, and the fingerless mitts I made for my brother are getting lots of use and are very much appreciated and liked. Wheee :-D

Anyway. Since this is now the Twelfth Day of Christmas, even though I didn’t manage to finish the challenge, I now declare my BloPoMo officially over! I am going to make a new blogging resolution, though: to blog, um, more often. I think I should probably be more specific about that, but I shall have a think about what’s reasonable and likely for me to maintain. I could say three times a week, or I could pick specific days of the week with the option to swap if I had something specific to say. Not sure which would work best. Hmm. What to do, what to do?

How many voices, now?

Huh, yeah… you remember how I was babbling about different voices. Or ranges / registers in your voice, I suppose. Well, my chest voice is now still about as much use as it was the other day, but my head voice has taken itself off as well. D’oh! I probably sound rather silly. However, I feel quite a lot better, so yaaaaay! I haven’t gone back to knitting anything because I don’t want to cough over it and make it all germified… although I spose if I do my Pentathlon sock it won’t matter since that’s only for me anyway and the needles should be perfectly washable.

Anyway, here’s what I did get done for Christmas:

Photo of M's Christmas fingerless mitts
Some fingerless mittens as a surprise for my brother, since their flat is really cold! He also thinks they’ll be good for when he’s on his bike. [RavLink]

And some rather less finished….
Photo of E's Christmas mittens in progress
… mittens for my sister-in-law-to-be (I have got to find a snappier way of phrasing that, but “brother’s financee” is almost as long to type!). I did actually finish this one, but I forgot to take a photo. D’oh. Anyway, I gave her that one as an “IOU”, and as soon as I’ve stopped being all yuck, I’ll get the other one done. At least I now do know that I had the sizing right! [RavLink]

I think they both liked them – I wasn’t quite sure what my brother would think about a (*gasp*) hand-made present, but he actually seemed pretty pleased :-)