Boo!

Happy Halloween (for those of you who celebrate it of course). We don't really, but with DH being from the good ol' USofA and all, I think he kind of misses it. Esp now that the boys are getting to the ages where he'd normally be dressing them up and taking them out trick or treating. We do get a few trick or treaters around here, but sadly most of them don't even make the effort to dress up, they just come around with bags and expect lollies. Anyone not dressed up this year is getting nothing from this house!

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. L's school has a casual day today, and being Halloween they decided to have an "All Things Scary" theme. L originally wanted to be a pirate, and knowing his penchant for dressing up (he doesn't have one) and the fact that the pirate costume we do have, (a) he's refused to wear for the original purpose we bought it for back when we bought it, (b) is slightly feminine IMO and (c) probably likely to not even make it past the first morning bell, or even be put on at all, I decided to talk him into something else.

This is what I came up with:







I knit the spiders with some left-over yarn, drew on the spiderwebs with some fabric dye sticks, then sewed the spiders on to the tee last night. It looks pretty cool if I do say so myself. L was very excited. First thing he said this morning was "Where's my special t-shirt?" LOL

Some little &*&^%$ at school came up and told L that his tee wasn't that scary (in a not very nice manner :( ) but luckily L didn't seem too phased by it and one of the other mums standing near by assured him that it was quite scary LOL A couple of the kids turned up with quite scary, gruesome looking masks on, which IMO was a bit much - werewolves, some weird squid-like thing, and zombie type masks - which scared L's best friend (Batman) so much that he was standing in the corner hiding his face in his hat, and then when they tried to take a class photo, L wouldn't get in it and ended up in tears because of the scary masks! Hopefully he'll be ok for the rest of the day and we won't have nightmares tonight.

Have to make another tee today for M, who was a bit put-out this morning to discover that I hadn't made one for him.

One fish, Two fish....

These were super-quick and a lot of fun to make. I cast the navy one on at around 10pm last night (right after I finished the other one) and this morning just finished off the head and put on the eye. I'll be making more of these as gifts I think. so cute!




And my first ever dishcloth - Chinese Waves. This only took two days to finish. Really easy pattern and it's already been put to use in the kitchen. DH seems to like it - but don't think it's going to get either of us to be more enthusiastic about the dishes LOL





I must say I know what people mean now when they say knitting with cotton hurts their hands :( mine are feeling quite sore, so I'll be taking a break from knitting (at least for the rest of today!) to let them rest, and probably leave more knitting with cotton for a bit. But I was quite eager to get all of these completed so it's probably just my own fault for doing too much at once.

Put a fruit tingle on the tip of your tongue...

...cause the tingle-ingle-ingle is a lot of fun!

I'm calling this "Fruit Tingle Juliette" because it's colours match those deliciuos little morsels almost perfectly (I only had an orange one here for the photo, no yellow, but the pink and green are a perfect match!).

I used the Dyelicious Soaker Club yarn from Yarn Collective. It's gorgeous - the yarn, the colourway, the pattern. I LOVE it!!! I made the large size, even though Miss F is not quite 6 months old and it fits! Not too big, but still plenty of room to grow into it. Which is good because I don't think I could wait to put this on her and show her off in it :) No action shots yet cause she's sleeping and we have to dash out shortly, but will put some up soon.

Yarny goodness

A few things that have winged their way to my door recently.

First up some more EcoBamboo in Cherry from The Yarn Cafe. Something for me planned with this.



Then some Shimmer Sock yarn, also from TYC, in "Kiwifruit". This is lovely IRL. Need to find a pattern quicksmart for this one!



Next a Yarn Collective sock club installment - October I think?



And finally some 10ply cotton - Peaches n Cream - from The Wool Shack, which I plan to make discloths with.




DH hasn't noticed any of these LOL

Button, button, who's got the button?

Me. I've got quite a few now. Spotlight was having a 20% off everything sale so I popped in yesterday. Disappointingly it looked like they may have actually cleared their yarn shelves before the sale began, as there were A LOT of completely empty shelves in the yarn section. And if they didn't clear them, then they certainly didn't make an effort to restock them. So I got no yarn suitable for my plans for Christmas knitting. But I did console myself with a big bag of novelty buttons. Not sure what I'll do with them just yet. Some will be useful for garments, but others will probably just be good for embellishments, or for the boys to use to create things I suppose. M certainly likes them anyway. And there was a small kerfuffle over the bag when L got home from school yesterday. Small things huh.

And in knitting news.... I have cast on one of these (sorry, no non-Rav link, but it's a soaker with a skirt attached for anyone not on Rav). Going pretty quickly so far, but the main colour I'm using for the body is pooling. Undecided if I'm ok with this or not. And then not sure really what to do about it if I'm not. Yep, all the big issues around here!

Sprout

Done.



Only took me just over a month of knitting mostly in the evenings. If I could have sat down for longer stretches I might have finished sooner. Oh, and I did have to frog it back a little after splitting for the arms because it was looking a little big. Glad I did, because I'd say it is probably still a little larger than it could have been and still fitted well. But I wasn't sure and it does actually fit comfortably so I'm happy with it for now. I'd like to make another one, or something very similar (with a bit more interest in the body maybe) a bit smaller.

And I'm proud to say that this is my very first finished adult object! Not including adult-sized socks of course. Which I don't count as an adult sized garment.

I used Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece, which was the wrong gauge (hence it being a little big due to upsizing a bit too much), and I love the way it's knitted up. I've had lots of comments on it IRL so that's great too :) It's supposed to have 6 buttons (there is one in the pic) but it actually only has two on it atm. I wanted to wear it so searched desperately through the little stash of buttons in the sewing kit and came up with two that were the right size and the same! This button stash is made up of spare buttons that come with garments, so I was stoked to find two that matched, but disappointed that I didn't have 4 more of them because I think they work quite well. Oh well, off to Spotlight to find 6 matching ones today.

Ooh, and I've just noticed I match the wall in the background LOL

I'm still here

I think I've just lost my blogging mojo. Taking pics, resizing, uploading. It all takes too long. It's been school holidays here (almost over) so time has been even less available.

I've nearly finished Sprout. Just the front button bands to do and then to find the buttons. No pic of that yet though.

I did finish this not so long ago....





It's a test knit of a baby shrug. I used Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran Tweed in Taffeta, which I had in the stash from the CPH that I'm yet to finish. I used one of the balls from the wrong dyelot, so it's not as pretty a purple as the CPH will be, but it still looks and feels so nice. It's a bit big for F right now - she's not quite old enough for the size I knit, but it should fit her great next year when the weather starts to cool. As long as we don't get heatwaves in March like we did this year!

And some time ago I made this....



Which is way too small for F and never got worn. I think it probably came out newborn size. It's actually an adult hat that I tried to resize down without success :( actually it was going ok until I decided to decrease a little early. So anyway, now I'm waiting for someone to have a newborn (girl) so I can gift it LOL It's a pattern I got from Ravelry. But I can't be bothered with links right now.

And here's a pic of F. She did this to herself by the way. I don't generally cover my babies up with blankets and watch them try to escape LOL But of course I did have to run for the camera before DH rescued her. She wasn't distressed at all. Just couldn't work out where everyone went LOL