re-do the re-do

Do you remember I frogged some of my pixie beanie and got to work reshaping it? Well, I've frogged it half back again. It wasn't rounding over my head fast enough and by the time I would have worked it to the point I wanted it would have been much longer than I wanted. So I'm redoing it a second time. I had shaped off the leaf pattern before and this time I'm shaping it off a little differently. Hopefully this is the last big froggin' redo I'll have on this project. Usually I don't bother so much but I have such a cute idea in my head that I'm willing to do the extra work to get it right. Still trying to keep track of what I'm doing to hopefully write up a pattern but my notes are getting pretty messy now so we'll see how that goes. Fingers crossed.

wedding in the making

The main event of my europe week was the final weekend in Dusseldorf, Germany where I participated in the celebration of a friend's wedding. What a delight! I even got to be a bridesmaid. It was beautiful and I had a great time.

I also helped out with a few tasks using my creative talents. Best of all was this bracelet. We made her cry with this one. :) All day Thursday was the bachelourette day. We four bridesmaids planned a day of delight and relaxing, in between the blindfolded excursions. We also presented the bride with this bracelet I had made. The note accompanying it read:

Two hearts in one spot as you and your fiance come together to make one family.
A flip flop for M thinking of your Hawaii holiday and many good times together wearing them.

A graduation cap for K thinking of the scholars you were together.

A pair of hands for J thinking of the support and love shared through your prayer partnership.

A palm tree for Kelly thinking of how you met and became friends in California, USA.

One crown because you are now queen of your own family.

The bride also had to wear a sash I made saying "Bride to Be" and we wore badges. We also met up with a bunch of other girls after dinner to go clubbing and they wore badges too. Still, if anyone is getting married or going to a hens/bachelourette night, I still have a whole bunch of these.

I also made a necklace for me to wear on the wedding day. We had watermelon bridesmaids dresses and were asked to get grey shoes so I made a grey necklace.

I also did a bunch of decorating tasks like this candy bar and decorated the cake stand and made a sign for the photo booth they had.

This has taken up quite a bit of time but now that my friend is married and the partying is over I will be moving onto other things.

Note: You can read about the rest of my adventures during my europe week on my other blog.

off and away

I'm as packed as I can be for the night before a holiday begins. Tomorrow I'm off on my long planned trip to Germany for my lovely friend's wedding. Since it's not until 18th June I've planned to scuttle through Paris and Luxembourg on the way. ^^

I still find it odd to think I'm going to be in France tomorrow. I'm sure before I know it I'll find it odd that I've been and I'm back in England again so I'm gonna try and soak it in as much as I can. My camera is packed and the two sets of batteries are fully loaded. I suspect I'll do a number of posts to share my adventure with you all in the weeks after I get back.

As for now, I'm gonna curl up with a Merlin episode and then sleep the night away before my week-long adventure. I hope your week is somewhat exciting and joyous even if not as much as mine.

oh no!! :(

I went to block a special project where I used hand dyed yarn in six different colours and when I dipped it in the water the colours ran badly. *sob* How do I fasten the colour!? It's currently resoaking in a vinegar/water mix with my fingers crossed.

It's been suggested that I wash and wash and let the colour run out as much as it's going to. The red is the main culprit. I don't know if I just didn't dye that one properly. I had it a dark pink before I found the pillar box red and re-dyed it. Red seems to be a troublesome colour when it comes to bleeding. And bleed it has. It looks like the crochet hook I used was too sharp! I'm hoping it will wash out a lot when I put it through its paces. I'm gonna just do the red area first for a while I think before I work on the whole lot.

an irish knitty evening

I had last Friday off so I decided to go to Ireland for the weekend. Coz I can. ^^ After I arrived and checked in to my hotel I wandered down through the streets (with a little tourist shopping on the way) to Trinity College. There I met Sinéad, an irish knitter whose blog I read. She took me to a cute little knitting shop called This Is Knit. It was a very inviting store with shelves clearly displaying a variety of delicious yarn.

Sinéad showed me around pointing out different yarns that she liked and some irish crafted ones. Some of her other knitter friends met us there and they chatted while I looked around and chose what to spend some unexpected early received birthday money from family on.

I decided on two skeins of Malabrigo in Atardecer (about sport weight/5ply) which is 51% Silk and 49% Merino Wool. Warm and so soft. I quite like the colours and I'm currently thinking of making some kind of cowl. I also bought two balls of Studio Donegal Aran Tweed in yellow and grey. This 100% wool was spun in Ireland partly using irish wool. Aparently irish wool isn't great for knitting on it's own and is mostly used in making carpets.

Once my shopping was done, we went to Cafe Manila for some Filipino food. It was nice food, once I decided what to have, and we chatted for ages about all sorts and had a good laugh too. And of course we all pulled out our yarn works after the food was gone. :) Knitters.

I had a most lovely evening with these ladies, one of whom is a friend of Ysolda Teague too! (I plan to buy her new knitty pattern book Little Red in the City.) They were great fun and it was interesting to meet up with them.

Most of us went out to a pub afterwards where I tried a Guinness. I drank my half pint. It's a done thing. And it won't be done again. Ha ha. Gross stuff but I'm not a beer drinker anyway. It was fantastic to hang out with some irish people and get a regular irish experience. If I'm ever that way again, I'm happy to go for another round.

The rest of my weekend can be read about here and here.

pixie fix

The lovely idea of my pixie beanie in the gorgeous colette has been put aside for quite a while as I'd got to the point where I was unhappy with the progress. I'd started declining too soon and it was getting tight on my head. I'd also found a mistake in the tricky to read leaf pattern part right at the beginning before I figured out how to interpret the pattern. I wasn't sure to which extent to frog it.

When I went on a holiday with my work family to the Cotswolds the other week. I decided to grab my pixie beanie to take along. I decided to frog back to the start of the decreases and keep the mishap at the beginning for that handmade touch. :P So I threaded my circular needle through the stitches where I wanted to frog to and then ... rip it, rip it. Then I got to work again. This time I added another two or three straight rounds before decreasing again. And I happily worked away with no internet to distract me. It really was quite lovely.
I'm now attempting to round off the leaves to enter into a straight knit as I decrease to my pixie point. I must be into the pixie idea at the moment because I finally found these shoes for the wedding I'm a part of next month. They even had 'pixie' in the title.

Now that I'm in a job where I work 40hrs a week I have to readjust my free time. All in all it's pretty good for full time work (and work is going well) but after I play on the internet a bit or walk to the shops I realise I haven't got as much time for crafting as I've had in the past few years. I am managing to work some in. I have a couple of secret projects on the go which I obviously can't show you just yet. I've also been busy booking a Europe week (including the wedding at it's end).

One crafty thing I thoroughly miss is a big craft store with all sorts in the one place. Where I am now there is a little thread shop, a little wool shop, a little art shop and a little scrapbooking shop. Limited supplies. *sigh* As for people to sit around a knit with...sadly there's no ravelry groups near by but I have found some local groups (you have to pay to go to!). I'm going to a craft group tomorrow night though that is a 'bring your project and we'll sit around crafting' type of gathering so there'll probably be various crafts. I'm looking forward to that. Other than that I'll just keep up my own crafting coz that's what I do.

:) Happy Mother's Day to my Mum! xo

adjusting

I made it to the UK--finally! It took an extra 25hrs on top of an already 28hr journey. Delayed in Malaysia. But I have now had my opening week and boy was it a bit of a jolt to the system. Oh how I've loved my 30hrs or less per week jobs! This one will be 40hrs regularly but last week was 43hrs with the dad away for my first week. Getting use to new routines, a new environment in a new country, new people and helping care for a toddler and twin babies has been full on. And all that after my extended journey. Phew! Hopefully this week will flow a bit better and I'll feel more and more settled as time goes by. I made it to Canterbury for a shopping trip. I particularly needed more clean tops for the twins to slobber and spew on. ;) One top I got was this grey cardigan. I quite like it. The way it is now. I just finished adjusting it. Can you tell? It use to have double buttons all the way down. But I didn't like it all buttoned up and thought it looked a little odd mostly undone so I cut the buttons off and sewed together all the button holes that I didn't want there. I also took off the knitted belt/tie coz it just didn't suit my shape and cut the belt loops off. Now I think it makes a lovely swing jacket. It's about half wool too so will give me a good bit of warmth on cooler days. The only downfall now is the sleeves. I love the length of them but when I put it on for this photo, over another long sleeve top, I had to drag it up my arms. Why do half the tops here seem to have such skinny sleeves? Give us some room. Otherwise I'm most happy with it.