How to keep your Ipod warm

While in Sydney this past weekend, I presented my sister and her husband with Ipod Socks for their relatively new Ipod Nanos.

A pink one, for Adele.



A blue one for Paul.



They're really snug. To look at them before I handed them over, I was starting to wonder if they would fit at all, but rib really does stretch and the fit was perfect.



I got the oh so easy pattern from here. I used left over sock yarn. The pink is Lorna's Laces. The blue is Patonyle. Each one took 2-3 hours at most and best of all, I had to remember how to do Judy's Magic Cast on which made these little beauties utterly seamless.

Now I just have to make one for myself. Because I've got a different Ipod Nano though, I'll be using Rosered's pattern. But with Judy's magic cast on because avoiding seams is fantastic.

Bells

ps If you haven't seen it already, there's a beautiful story of a single sock looking for love in all the wrong places (but eventually getting it right) here

Party time and a vest

This weekend, we went to Sydney for our nephew's fifth birthday. Boy, these birthdays are coming around way too fast for my liking. It's a good thing they're fun days, or I'd be less inclined to feel good about how fast they're flying by.



This year, his birthday party was a simple affair in a local park in Sydney. While the table and decorations were being set up by his parents and Uncle Sean, we went off to play. We found an ibis. With so much wildlife around, I thought we had to play explorers just for a moment.



Doesn't he just look so manly in his akubra hat?



It was Adele who cooked up the idea of a vest for his birthday, but it was Willem himself who chose the yarn when he was visiting. Blue is his favourite colour so I presented him with three different blue yarns from the stash.

Adele liked the dark blue. Willem liked the light blue. He got his choice, and here it is.



Getting him to pose in it in the morning before the party was a challenge. The night before, he'd been delighted with putting it on over his PJs, but the light wasn't so good for photos. Perhaps he had pre-party nerves? We only just managed to get him to cooperate by putting on a lovely shirt sent from Nana (our mum).



It's hard to tell just from this photo, but it does fit. Here's one where you can see it all, but he doesn't look so happy.



I was just happy it went over his head. I'd done the neckband twice because I was sure the first time it wasn't going to fit. The akubra he's wearing in the the top photos is actually an adult hat he inherited. And it fits him. So you can see why I was concerned.

So here are the details.

Pattern: Basic Vest from Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns. This is a really good book. If you haven't seen it, it takes basic knitted garments, from hats to jumpers and cardigans, and once you work out your gauge, you can follow simple instructions to basically make up as you go any of these patterns, with a multitude of variations.

Yarn: Cleckheaton Country Naturals. Colour 1830. This is a yarn I'm sure half of Canberra has in their stash, picked up in the Cassidy's $2 sale by the bucketload. It's machine washable, 85% wool, 10% acrylic, 5% viscose. Good for little boys.

Needles: 4.5mm Addi Turbo for the body. 4mm Knipicks Options for the neck and arm bands, which I did at a smaller gauge when I did them for the second time. Because I was trying to work them looser, this seemed to avoid floppiness, while allowing them to keep their shape.

Timeframe: Superfast. March 13 - March 22nd.

Result/Modifications: Handsomely cute. I made it longer than the pattern suggested. Willem might be tall for his age, I'm not sure. I also knit it in the round. Knitting flat? Pfft. As if.

Bells

A Story About Stories

Since a few people asked about books, writing and me, I'll tell the story.

In my last post, I mentioned what I thought was a pretty well known fact, that I had written a book before. So it turns out this isn't as well known as I thought. It's funny the things we just assume people know, as if all our histories are written on our faces for everyone to see.

I've probably not mentioned it here for a long time but I remembered today I wrote a post in 2006 about why I gave up writing. You can read it here, if you're interested.

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I think I have wanted to be a writer all my life. I know I took writing stories pretty seriously as a child and was often praised for the results by my teachers. I loved the praise as much as I loved the making up of stories, so I kept going. I'm not sure I ever finished a lot of stories, apart from those I had to write for school, but there were always words around me, in the books I read, in the stories I started, and in the dreams I had for myself. I said that when I grew up I wanted to be many things - a teacher, a nurse, all those things that little girls say, but really I wanted to be a writer.

I have no idea when I started saying 'I want to be a writer' but I'm sure it started before I hit my teens. By then I was passionate about great writers - the Bronte sisters in particular - and those books kept me from entirely losing the plot during the long, very lonely high school years. It was a case of me and the books against the world.

The bullied, frightened child will always need somewhere to hide. The further I retreated into books and dreams, the more certain I became that writing would save me somehow from a miserable and isolated existence that was my life at Eden High School.

Part of the problem with this beginning, of course, was the certainty that fame and fortune was the way to freedom, as far away as possible from small town high school and crippling loneliness. Years later, I would start to see that the dream of fame of fortune was ultimately immature and destructive, obscuring the actual desire to write.

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Fast forward a decade - the mid 90s - and I was writing.

University was over and I was living in a group house, discovering, in a wide eyed way, the wonders of life outside of home, the church and all that that entailed. I told anyone who would listen that I was a writer. I was working in dead end temp jobs, trying desperately to delay entry into permanent employment because attaining that dream, literary fame and fortune, was just around the corner. The book I was writing was going to make me a star!

I knew I was on the right track because I was short listed for a short story prize and the writer who ran the writing group I was part of said good things about my work. Things were going to happen.

At the time, grunge was all the rage and in Australia, there were loads of young, grungy writers making big names for themselves. I thought I could be like them, but I was writing a nice book, about a girl growing up in a small town and dreaming of the Brontes. I was never going to be like the young, grungy writers.

In 1995, I entered the Vogel award with that book. The Vogel award is a lucrative, prestigious contest for an unpublished novel by an author under the age of thirty-five. I didn't win and I remember being crushed, as if I had really stood a chance. The novel was literally finished and printed out just days before entries closed. I think one or two friends did a quick edit and that was it. I really thought that was all there was to it.



By 1998, I was living in London, having escaped a disasterous, short-lived marriage. That was fine. Such things made good novelists, I was sure. A bit of tragedy, a dash of suffering, that's what writers needed.

I remember saying to a friend around that time, 'What else are all these experiences for if not for writing about them?

'For living?' he suggested. I've never forgotten it.

In London, I submitted a reworked version of the first novel to The Women's Press and then quickly left the country to come home, because I was homesick and lost.

My aunt forwarded a letter from the Women's Press months later. They were interested in the chapters I'd sent them and could I send more? Of course! I quickly tidied up the book again and sent it off.

A rejection promptly followed. They rejected it so did I. It was time to move on. First novels are notoriously self involved and poor and I decided I could do better.

The second and third novels never really got off the ground. There might have even been a fourth. I don't remember any more. Well into this decade, I was still plugging away. I'd had more success with short stories, being shortlisted but never winning.

The novel writing had to happen around life. I was a public servant by then, and had met Sean and settled down. The more settled I became, the more tortured the writing process became. Like the biological clock, the more years passed, the more desperate I felt. Every time someone asked me how the book was going, I felt the blood rush to my head and my ears would ring ferociously. There was no book. Just an endless stream of rejected drafts and a growing sense of failure.

I took courses. I attended workshops. I read books on writing. I sought inspiration from the writers I loved most.

And yet it wasn't happening. I was miserable. The post I linked to at the beginning tells about how hard it was for me and why I gave it up. But in short, I had to. I'd completely lost the ability to enjoy writing. I hated it. I was doing it because I'd backed myself into a corner. It's what I felt had to happen or else my life would be meaningless.

In mid 2004, I collapsed under the weight of my own expectation and knew that writing had to stop. Suddenly, I felt like I could breathe again. My time was my own - or more than it had been for a long time - and I could do anything I wanted.

What did I do? I dug out some old needles and began to relearn knitting.

And here I am.

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I never said I'd give up writing for good. Blogging has been a wonderful way to keep up the act of writing in a way that's been so much fun for me. There's been no pressure, just the exploration of a craft, making friends and communicating.

I'm afraid, I'll admit, of opening up the door to that pressure again. I fear the moment I sit down at the computer to "write" as opposed, to just writing like I do here, the pressure will mount and I'll be back where I was in 2004. How would I fit it in? I work more now than I did back then. I have filled my life with so much.

I don't know what the answer is but I am starting to feel like there is another book in my future. Not today. And not tomorrow. But after that? Who knows? I just know that the dream has changed. It's less about winning major awards now and more about enjoying doing what, deep down, I've always suspected I'm best at.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. It's been a pleasure to write and to remember. I'm here right now, writing these words, because people read them and that means so much.

Bells

The right time of year

I love autumn. It's the season where I start to settle into the year and figure stuff out. This might seem a strange concept to northern hemisphere residents who live through autumn as the calendar year winds down, but for us, autumn means the year is just kicking off.

I found my newly planted autumn crocuses this week. They only went into the ground a few weeks ago because i was slow off the mark. Young Will helped me plant them when he was visiting. He took the job very seriously.


1. Autumn Crocus closed, 2. Autumn Crocus Aerial, 3. Autumn Crocus Stamen, 4. Autumn Crocus against sky

So now the days are cooler and I'm more relaxed, I'm bursting with ideas!



1. Red and yellow Everlasting Daisy, 2. Red Everlasting Daisy 1, 3. Pink and white everlasting daisy, 4. Red Everlasting Daisy

I can't say too clearly yet what the ideas are, not because I'm being secretive but because they're not yet formed. They're flashes of ideas. I'm finding them in strange places, corners of the internet I've not really explored before. What would be great, I'm starting to think, is to find out where work and passion collide. That's something that's really missing from my life, probably from many of our lives and I often feel there has to be a better way.

Maybe I'll write a book again. Maybe I'll be better at it this time. Maybe this blogging thing I love so much could help me find that better way. Maybe the way forward isn't in a book but something else I'm yet to figure out.

Either way, I'm going to start exploring those ideas here a little bit, just to see where doing so takes me. I'd love people who hang around here to come with me. So stay tuned. I want to look back one day and see where dreams and realities intersected. Maybe it's here.

Bells

Ask and you shall receive

I'm very, very grateful for all the helpful comments on my Something Blue cardigan. I asked and lots of people delivered. Don't you love the internet?

There's an awful lot of information to consider and weigh up, particularly regarding the raglan shaping. That was something I hadn't picked up, that maybe the fit wasn't right there.

Interestingly, the designer herself, Wendy Bernard, had the following to say when I wrote to her via Ravelry and asked for her thoughts (thanks for the suggestion Cindy2Paw!)

Wendy writes:

Yeah, except for the front, it fits right. (note: Wendy didn't mention the raglan shaping. Interesting!)

I think that the back fits nicely.

I’m not sure if short rows will be the total solution. You could rip back and start your bottom ribbing at least 2 - 3 inches later.

As far as the “wave” at the bottom edging what you need to do is pick up sts at a greater rate at each of the bottom edges so that when you do your ribbing you’ll have more sts grouped there and it won’t want to pull in so much.

I used the Blue Sky Alpaca cotton, and that cotton isn’t is springy. I didn’t read about your yarn choice, but your substitution may be sproingy-er and could contribute to the bottom edge pulling in more than the cotton does.

Wendy, it seems, suggests a much easier solution than either going back to the raglan shaping or adding bust darts or other kinds of shaping. On the one hand, I'm quite grateful. Who doesn't like an easier option? Although, here, 'easier' is relative. I still have to undo all the sewn in ends, rip out the band, redo the short row shaping on the neck blah blah blah.

Oh and she's right about the springiness of the cotton too. My cotton choice was Lana Grossa Nico which has 3% polyester and does make for a very springy fabric. Must keep that in mind.

But you know, there's a lot to be said in favour of trying out some bust shaping. I know the clothing I have in my wardrobe which has bust shaping is just so much nicer to wear, and now might be as good a time as any to figure it out. PrincessPea wrote a fabulous tutorial on the subject which I remember noting at the time it appeared, figuring the time would come when I'd need it.

On the issue of the toggle-style button, I'm in two minds. I admit I chose it in a rush from Lincraft one lunch time last week, a place not known for its extensive range in buttons. I rather like brown and blue together but am not 100% wedded to the button. That said, an impulse purchase doesn't necessarily = bad. I still kinda like it but have another blue button I found which might work too. I also very much liked the idea of a brooch or shawl pin.

So many choices!

In short, I'm not going to rush this. I'll stew on the idea for a while and update on progress later on.

In the meantime, I got to practice some of that edging issue on a smaller blue item over the weekend. Will's vest, to be gifted at his birthday next Saturday, proved tricky. My skill at picking up stitches for bands is clearly lacking. When I'd done the bands, it was clear the arm holes and neck were all too small. It'd never fit. So I ripped, read a tutorial or two and did it again. All fixed! It'll be a much better fit now.



I'll discuss what I did when I do the vest write up.

Thanks again for the comments everyone. I plan to re-read them all again and again in the process of figuring out the solution.

Bells

Hey Blue, here is a song for you

I need honest opinions on this, ok? Something Blue just isn't right and I want to hear all the ways I need to fix it.

First, it should be longer, right?



Quite apart from the fact that the band makes it ride up at the front, I just think it's too short. By about 2 inches. Here's the back view.



I really don't like the way the rib opens up and makes it look like it's really stretched across my hips. It does that, doesn't it? Or does it not look as bad as I think? If I do change that, one of the ways I might do it (thanks for the suggestion, RoseRed) is to make the lower half all stocking stitch, with perhaps a band of rib in the middle for shaping. Thoughts? Leave the rib or ditch it?

Also, I have a feeling I should continue the knit part down maybe by about an inch before I start the ribbing. Or not?



And what about that band? I see quite clearly that I'm going to have to redo it, but how do I avoid that most unattractive pulling/curling that it does there at the bottom? I cast off the band as loosely as I could but that doesn't appear to be the problem. Perhaps at the beginning of each long row, I should have slipped a stitch instead of doing my usual trick of giving the first stitch a little tug?

Also, I think the button hole really has to change. The pattern asks you to put it 3/4 of an inch from the body, then you go on and knit the band til it's 2 inches (or more in my case. i wanted it wider). So it's really got to be more in the middle.

It is also up too high. My sister is always impressing on me that single buttons need to sit beneath the bust, not on it and I think I messed up on this one.

The other thing that tells me the button placement is all wrong, is that the button is obviously putting a lot of strain on the hole.



Other than all of the above, I love this cardigan. The cotton is divinely soft. The colour is one I think really suits me. The concept appeals to me and dammit, I want to be able to wear it. I believe in wearing my hand knits. Those that I don't wear taunt me from the back of the wardrobe and I wish I had taken more care.

So, let me have it. I want to hear what's wrong and what needs to be fixed! All suggestions welcome.

I should add, because it's knit top down, adding to the length isn't too hard. I'll take off the band and rip back to the start of the rib, if I have to.

Bells

A few dot points

There just really hasn't been the scope/need/desire/material for blogging this week. I've got nothing I can show that hasn't been seen before, or else nothing that has been photographed in readiness for posting. Nothing. So, a few dot points is what I'm capable of for now.

• I will forewarn you all (apologies to those who've been reading me whining in emails or in person or on Facebook) that I think my Something Blue cardigan isn't much cop. I intend to post photos of the finished cardigan on the weekend when I can get photos but I'm really not sure it's me. Unflattering, is how i feel about it, but I'll let the readers help me decide.

• Some of you may not know, because we've been slack for quite some time, that RoseRed and I have a shared food blog. It's called Mouthfuls of Heaven and it's devoted to the work of British cook, Nigella Lawson. RoseRed's been baking and updating the blog. Her Boston Cream Pie looks wickedly wonderful.

• I fully intended to be a good girl this year and only buy yarn on the rarest occassions, and when it seemed like a considered and worthy purchase. For the most part, I've done that although I did buy more of that $2.50 Chinese cotton earlier this week. That can hardly be said to be overdoing it, now, can it?
  
  
• On that note, however, I did splurge considerably this week. A blogger many of us know and love, Kylie, is heading to England and Wales for work tomorrow and I've placed an order for some stuff that we either can't get here or which is a better price over there (despite the poor value of the Aussie dollar against the pound). Stay tuned. I'm a little bit excited. Have a safe trip, Kylie.
  
  
• I'm all about the gift knit at the moment. Young Will is turning 5 next week and I'm knitting him a vest which is flying off the needles. Adele turned thirty-something last week and I'm working on a little item for her to accompany her main gift (not knitted). And a friend at work is having, shall we say, intimate surgery next week and will need several weeks' recovery time. I'm going to be working on something for her over the next little while, too. The sooner that's finished the better because I want to give it to her early in the recovery process, not later.
  
  
• Now that the weather is cooling down, I've made a startling and wonderful discovery. This time last year, I owned one shawl. My brown forest canopy shawl. I'm wearing it right now and love it to pieces. It thrills me to no end to realise now that I have not one but four small triangular shawls to choose from every day and I fully intend to have more. Sean asked, 'how many shawls does a girl need?' Scoff. As many as she can knit I say. In all those different colours? Why not?
  
  
• Do you Tweet? If you do, I'm there too as Bellsg. Follow me if you want!
  
  
• One other thing, I believe some readers thought that in my recent post on the crochet doily I had completed said doily in one, sleepless night. Even Sean said it read that way. No no. Not at all. I was only awake for a few hours that night. It was completed a few days later at more sane waking hours.
  
  
• And finally, a bit of advance notice. In April, which is my blogiversary month, I've had this crazy idea that I'll attempt a repeat of last year's Blogtoberfest scheme - remember the month where lots of us posted daily? I thought it might be a fun way to celebrate my third year of blogging and to include random prizes for small items periodically. So keep an eye out for my month of celebratory (and, most likely, draining) daily blogging! With prizes! You have been warned!

Have a good weekend everyone.

Bells

So Kyuuto!

Last week, I had a night when I couldn't sleep, which was how I came to find myself learning to read Japanese crochet charts at 2am on a weeknight.

I bought the book Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts Lacy Crochet last year, fiddled around with a hook and some cotton for about half an hour then promptly forgot about it. So why I opened it at 2am last week is beyond me. I suspect it was out on the coffee table because I'd yet again been trying to sort out where to put my knitting (and crochet) books.



I like to crochet. It's what I did first. Every year I promise myself I'll do more of it and every year, I don't. But I want to! I really want to! Spending a sleepness night lost in Japanese charts seemed like a fun re-entry. Here's what the charts look like.



Unlike knitting charts, they pretty much look like what you'll end up with and if you know how to crochet already, it's pretty easy. Each stitch has its own symbol and away you go. If you don't know how to crochet, it's got handy pictures all through the book!

Here's what that chart turns into.



A doily! How about that? Two doilies in one week! This is for a swap, too. The same swap as the other doily is going to, actually. Which is kind of a pity because I think it looks nice under my green glass jug. I'll just have to make another.



You know what I learned in crocheting my first doily? That whole blocking thing is, on one hand, easier because this is what it looked like before I ironed it (as per instructions in the book). Not much different to the photos above, huh?



And while that's cool, I mean, who doesn't love something that's easy to finish, it can't possibly impress like the blocking process of lace knitting. That said, I still love it and I'll make more. Me and my hooks are going to be spending a lot more time together, I think.

Oh and I should mention the cotton I used. It was a bargain find. I passed a stack of this stuff almost every lunch time in the city at Top Dollar. I ignored it because, after all, how good could cheap as chips cotton from a dollar shop really be? One day, the call was too strong when I saw an open packet of it on the table. Surprise! It felt lovely and soft and I noticed there were some great colours. At $2.50 a 50g ball, why not try it, thought I.

It's Yatsal Crochet Cotton - 4ply. I'm planning on snapping up a whole lot more some time this week, unless everyone else has found out about it!

Bells

A Day In My Life - March 14 2009

It's that time again. A Day in My Life time. Each month, on the 14th, as inspired by Little Jenny Wren, the idea is to post a run down on your day. Just the way the day panned out. I was pleased this month when I realised the 14th wasn't going to be a work day. There are only so many ways to make a work day not sound repetitive every month!

So, today we woke up in the guest room of our friends who live in a nice house out in Murrumbateman, a little town 15 minutes outside of Canberra. A few of us gather there once a month or so and stay over, all having breakfast together in the mornings. The mornings tend to be a bit slow, as we sit around in our PJs, drinking tea or coffee and recovering from the inevitable wine consumption the night before. No one was too much the worse for wear this morning; only a little bleary eyed and fuzzy.

Here's how the morning greeted us. There's a slight mist although it's hard to see.



We dined on a sumptuous breakfast which included these delightful mushrooms with bacon, butter and mustard.



I worked on a vest I'm knitting for Will, while drinking tea and waking up. We were entertained, as always, by our little friend Miss Mollie, who you can see in the background of this photo. She's an amazingly adorable little girl.



We were home by lunch time and the day, after that, was unremarkably domestic. We bought a new dinner set this week and had to find room for it. It required moving around a lot of kitchen cupboard space.



Throughout the afternoon, the sky grew darker and we hoped for rain. I even hung washing out in the brewing storm in the hope that doing so would bring on a downpour. It did, within an hour or so, but not for long.



Domestic duties over, I got to work on some crochet I've been doing this week. This is a basic round doily from a Japanese pattern book called Kyuuto! It's been quite fun learning to read Japanese charts. I finished it tonight and will post about it in a day or so.



Late in the afternoon, the skies opened and we got a decent amount of rain. In the interests of capturing the evidence, I took some photos. Here are some rain drops on my Daphne.



In the evening, Sean cooked a Thai beef curry, we drank a Chardonnay and watched British crime shows we'd recorded during the week. All astoundingly normal, every day stuff. Just how we like it!

Bells

So pretty

I made a doily and I couldn't be happier.



It's the Hemlock Ring Doily, which I've made twice before as a blanket so you could say I had some idea what I was doing when I began attacking this a couple of weeks ago.

Casting on in crochet cotton (Coats #20, inherited from RoseRed) is not fun but I managed it. And happily I went around and around until, lo and behold, I had a doily. Note, if you attempt it, look up the errata for row 35. It'll save you the night of ripping back I went through.



Doilies are fun. I'll make them again. Hell, I'll probably even start using them from now on, although not this one, because it's a gift in a swap I'm doing.

I just love love love, as always how you can turn this



into something beautiful just by doing this



Apart from the swap I'm doing, I also did this so I could have something finished for A Long Lacy Summer. My black lace shawl is still a work in progress and I suspected I'd be able to get this little love done on time. And I did.

Phew.

As for my thoughts on knitting lace, now that I've devoted the better part of a summer to it, I love it but I've discovered something important. Lace, to me, feels like luxury knitting. It's not the meat and potatoes knitting that I need to do in order to feel productive. Oh spot the Protestant Work Ethic Knitter in me! I need good, solid practical knitting in the form of cardigans, scarves, socks and the assortment of gift knitting I undertake. Lace knitting is wonderful, beautiful, creative knitting and I love it but I can't churn it out fast enough to feel useful.

I'm not about to stop though. No way.

Bells

A Long Lacy Summer - Part 2

So even though A Long Lacy Summer was, as I dubbed it early on, a half-arsed Knit Along, it was still fun to see people mentioning it and saying it had inspired them to do some great lace knitting.

The kind of knitting happening around the place was anything but half arsed. I mean, look at what Samurai Knitter Julie did.


That's three months' worth of not-half-arsed knitting. Julie also dyed that piece, which eventually was given to her mother in law.

Over at Pass the Slipped Stitch Over, Jan spent the summer churning out lace scarves and shawls at a rate that made it look like she was knitting garter stitch squares.

One item I kept a close eye on because I'm planning on doing one myself was Terri's Icarus. She just posted it this week, describing herself as smitten. I can see why. Can't you?



Another relative late comer was Amanda, who made the most stunningly vivid blue Mandala.

Hmmm....there's a lot of blue so far. Let's find another colour. How about some red?


That's a beautiful scarf from Victorian Lace Today by the lovely Kylie. She gifted that scarf to George. Talk about generous. I'd have had trouble parting with that.

And then there was Shelley, who not only did the lace knit along, but also the Southern Summer of Socks Knit Along, all the while travelling to the UK and struggling with her PhD.

Amongst other things, Shelley made not one, but two Swallowtail Shawls. One of them was generously gifted to me a fortnight ago.

(later edit) I missed Deb. She also wrote a round up post and I'm very sorry I forgot to add it! Deb did an amazing count of three swallowtail shawls! Each one a stunning piece is glorious colours. So sorry for missing you out Deb. Here's a photo of one of Deb's shawls.


That concludes a summary of all the Long Lacy Summer round ups I've seen. I do hope I haven't missed any.

And what about me? What did I do? That was, after all, the reason for making it a half-arsed Knit Along - I wanted to make sure I didn't lose much of time to managing participants and not actually knit anything myself.

I think I will save a summary of what I did for a post of my own because I'm about to go and cast off a particular lace item (hint: not the black lace shawl) so I'll save it for the next post.

Thanks to everyone who participated so enthusiastically. What a thrill! And to those who didn't quite get into the zone, thanks for signing up anyway. Maybe we can try again next summer?

Bells

A Very Lacy Summer - Part 1

Autumn is upon us and so the time has come to reflect on the achievements of A Long, Lacy Summer.

The idea was born when I decided late in 2008 to devote much of my knitting time over the summer to lace, to trying my hand(s) most notably at the kind if light, airy lace I admired so much. Why not get others to join in, I thought. And join you did. The sidebar shows the list (which won't be up for much longer though).

Over the last couple of weeks, the reports have been coming in as people have been writing their own roundups of the work they've done over the last few months. I'll post links to the round up posts I've seen. They are most certainly worth checking out, if you fancy a spot of lace lust. People did gorgeous stuff. I'm going to do a couple of posts about this because otherwise, the round up will be huge!

So, to begin.

At Knit, Knitty, Knit Knit you can see the beautiful doilies and shawls that Disquina made. She came to the party late and more than made up for lost time. Note I said doilies. Plural. Here's one of them.

Nettie had her first ever go at fine lace and introduced us to her Gail. Not an easy knit for Nettie, but the result was worth it.

RoseRed ruminated on her efforts and concluded that she in fact produced more lace than she had realised, including this beautiful reversible lace scarf.

George came up with a beautiful December-January-February Baby Sweater (love the name!) in yarn she dyed herself

And Princess Pea created a stunning Laminara shawl that is the most beautiful shade of green.

One project I felt quite mushy about was Jen's Mini-Pi. It's so cute but was not without it's problems. Several participants struggled with the sudden appearance of big, gaping holes in their work, like Lynne.

Lynne proved herself to be a hard-core participant, with a lace deadline to make the most seasoned lace knitter break out in a cold sweat. She had to complete a Myrtle Leaf Shawl for her daughter's January wedding. With some false starts and pressure-induced mistakes, it was touch and go for a while there, including the appearance of every lace knitter's fear, a massive hole, but she got there.

As did Dianne who discovered a hole upon blocking.

Chilling stuff. Thankfully, everyone who had such a disaster, managed to sort the situation and lived to tell the tale.

Tomorrow, or maybe the next day, I'll cover a few more projects. What a colourful array of lace there is out there!

Bells

A few quiet moments

For the last few days, I've been pretty occupied by things that don't involve either work or, it has to be said, much knitting.

My sister, her husband and the adorable Will are visiting. I took a couple of days off work and have thrown myself headlong into hostess stuff and aunty stuff.

Adele and I became aunts earlier this week, thanks to our youngest sister who had this little pumpkin. Alice Rachel. 



We took Will to meet his first cousin on our side of the family. It was a lovely moment.



The rest of the time, we've just been hanging around.



Adele's hubby has had pretty bad gastro so we've had some bonus time together while we wait for him to get better. This has meant not so great things for my knitting, but brilliant things for wonderful quality time together, though so not much for gastro-boy.

I'll leave you with this photo-less story. On Friday, Will was feeling unwell so he and I had some quiet time at home while his mum and dad went to visit the new baby. I was knitting and looked down at one point to see my lovely boy holding needles I'd discarded and some scrap yarn I'd given him to play with. He was absently moving the needles up and down with the "string" while we watched TV, just like Aunty Bells. 

Be still my beating heart.

Bells