The Shawl Was A Hit!

My friend Brenda came over on Tuesday and picked up the shawl that I made for her as a Thank You present. She loved it and said she would use it alot. She really loved the colours. I managed to get a shot of her wearing it before she left.

Here is a shot of the shawl spread out on the floor so you can see it fully. There are alot of colours going in and out of this yarn. Its interesting to look at. This pattern is a fun and quick knit. It was my fifth time knitting it and Im sure it wont be my last.


This is a close up of the crochet edge on the shawl. Its a little hard to see the detail with this colour. This shawl can be made 3 different ways. You can make it in 3 colours, 2 colours or all in one colour like this one was. It looks different every time depending on which colours you use and which yarn you use as well.


All this week I have been working on the blue, green and white cotton blanket. I am pretty close to finishing. I am up to the decreasing part and have about 3 more balls to work through for it to be done. I will be glad when its done but then I will have to weave in all those ends which is not fun. I then get to start another blanket that will be almost like it but it will be in pink, purple and white, smaller and with a little hood. It should knit up alot faster than this other one. Im just about over seeing these colours constantly hehe so a change in colour will be very nice.

Tomorrow we are off to the Chautauqua County Fair. I really hope it doesnt rain. I think we will be going regardless of rain because we already have our tickets but Miss Victoria has been excited about this fair since we left last year so it would suck if it was all rainy. I am fully prepared to see many farm animal butts in stalls and smell all the fair food smells. Its just a tiny little fair but the kiddies like it. Its big enough to have fun but not get pooped. Now the fair in August is the one where we all get tired at the end of the day. Lots of things to see there.

Last Friday we received via delivery our new 56" big screen tv. Yes its a monster hehe. It is still sitting in its box and everyone is dying to start using it. First we had to wait for the tv stand we bought for it, then today the high definition cable arrived that they forgot to send and this weekend will be the ever exciting changing around of the room to put it in the right place and unplugging the old stuff. It will be worth it when its all done though. I love the stand even though it was a huge pain to put together. Its a pretty cherry wood not like the black or glass ones you see everywhere. I think everyone is excited about this tv because lots of friends and family have told us to call them when we have a movie night so they can come and watch hehehe. Lots of fun! I will take a shot of it when its all been set up.

Thats all I can think of right now. Im sure something else will come to me as soon as I post this.

More Flowers

This is mine and Victoria's favourite flower that has popped up so far. Im not sure what its called but it looks really pretty. If I could find out what its called I think I would plant lots of them all together next year. That would look really cool.


I do know that this is a pink Poppy. We also have red and orange Poppies growing. They are very cool looking even when they are buds.



Natalie tells me that these are called Asters. We love these because we have lots of different coloured ones growing. They start from really dark purple all the way to very light pink. They look very pretty all together.



I kind of went flower picture taking crazy because I use to do photography in school and my favourite things to take photos of were nature shots and animals. My dad is into photography so I think he would appreciate my flower shots hehe.

Some Yarn And Some Flowers

We went shopping at a place called Big Lots last weekend which is this big shop that has everything you can think of but cheaper. They dont really have a craft section but they have a few tubs of this really obscure yarn that you never see anywhere else. The bonus of this yarn is it only costs $1 a ball. The next two pictures are of the 4 balls of yarn I picked up that day. Im not sure what I will do with them but I love the colours and the fluffiness. The pastel pink and yellow looks like it belongs on a baby blanket or something. They second lot which has magenta, fuchsia and lime green in it, looks like a scarf or part of a bag. Something stylish because the colours really pop. I did see some cool fluffy orange that would go well for pillows in Megan's room but I thought I would get some of those another time. They had plenty of it.



I always said when we moved out of our crappy old house the first thing I wanted in our real house was to make a garden. Now I had no idea how I was going to make a garden but I figured what was the worst that could happen when trying. The hard part was the house we moved into had absolutely no garden so wherever we wanted a garden we had to dig it all out from scratch. This was alot harder than I thought it would be. My helpers dropped like flies and I ended up out there for hours digging by myself apart from Victoria's sometimes worm hunts she would go on. So I planted a 3 strips of Wildflower Cottage Garden Mix seeds having no idea what was going to come up because they dont even tell you on the box apart from a small photo. We were all very excited when things started to grow. I was very vigilant in my keeping the soil moist as the box said and things kept growing. The only problem was there were no pretty flowers. Everyone elses garden had flowers and to quote various people who visited our house, our garden looked like weeds. Where were the pretty flowers from the photo on the box. I kept watering and crossed my fingers that it just meant that all these flowers were just going to be exploding all over the place when they finally arrived.

About 2 weeks ago we finally started to see some colour and every single day we are getting more and more pretty colours and all sorts of different flowers. Everyone keeps telling me that they love my flowers and people even stop on the footpath to take a look at them all. Yay! Success! Me and the girls just love to go out every day and look at what has bloomed that day and pick out what are our favourites. It has been alot of fun and worth all that hard work. I would do it all again. We did plant some Sugar Snap Peas and 3 plants grew. We have been able to eat a few and they taste great. We did learn our lesson this time and will be planting all the seeds at once and not some every week because 3 plants dont give you many peas. We also wanted to grow cherry tomatoes and strawberries but didnt get to. I did get a strawberry planting set for my birthday but I didnt plant them for fear that we were planting to late and it wouldnt grow so I am saving it for next year. So the rest of this post and the next one will be photos of flowers that are growing in our garden. Im sure my mummy will be proud that I grew something. She is the gardener as well as my Nanna's and I only had a vague idea of what I was doing from watching them. So thanks Mum and the Nanna's for letting me watch over your gardening. I did pick up something along the way.



This plant here I did not grow from seed. My friend Natalie has been hearing all my gardening triumphs and tribulations since starting and gave me this beautiful pink Hydrangea plant for my birthday to add to my garden. I hope it keeps blooming and getting bigger and bigger because the flowers are so pretty and have lasted a long time. I always worry I have put them in the wrong place but this seems to like where it is.

I've Been Taking Alot Of Pictures

I took alot of photos over the weekend and this has been my first opportunity to post them. You can only post 5 photos at a time so I will have to do multiple posts to show them all off.

The Homespun yarn I got last weekend to make a shawl for one of Megan's Girl Scout Leaders. I gave one leader an MP3 player and I am making Brenda a shawl because she has been wanting one of these for ages. Im not sure if you can see all the colours in this yarn. Perhaps if you click on it you might. It is sort of brown with flecks of blues and greens in it. Its interesting to look at. I am almost done with the shawl. Megan is staying at her house tonight and I will seeing her hopefully tomorrow so I want to have it done by then. Fingers crossed I will.


This is just a shot of a knitting a bag I have. Its not actually made for knitting but I bought it for that reason. I got it from Samaritan house for 50c. Its actually from The Gap. Its grey felt on the outside and if you look at a couple of pictures down you will see that it has pink suede and a little pocket on the inside. Its perfect for holding little projects and keeping everything together. I just recently started collecting badges. I have 3 Beatrix Potter badges that I got for my birthday. I just love Beatrix Potter and an I love Bloo badge because Bloo from Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends is the coolest cartoon character ever.


This photo is of the bag that is in the process of being knitted in the Moss Green Merino wool that I got with my Etsy order. It is just so soft and I love the colour. I would love to get back to knitting this as soon as I can.


Here is the inside of my fancy bag holding my green bag. This was a good second hand find.


This is the yarn that I bought that came with the Merino wool. This is going to be a cable messenger bag when I get the chance to start it.


Well thats all the photos right now. I just have to get Victoria into bed and then I will write a new blog with photos. She is such a snail but hopefully it wont take long.

Its Been A While

It feels like forever since I last updated my blog. I have been busy doing summer stuff with the children. I somehow managed to elect myself to be a summer reader leader at our local library for the Preschool and under aged kids. I feel like I have no idea what I am doing half the time. I have a wonderful lady who is my partner and she helps ease my mind alot. We had our first day of the program on Thursday and the kick off registration night was on Monday. We also went to what will be Victoria's school soon to help with the school garden. It has become quite the tradition to do this twice in the summer and gives Megan the chance to catch up with her old teachers. Victoria likes the digging in the dirt part and the eating of the hot dogs. There were some simply scrumptious M&M brownies this time. All this and I am having to fulfill Victoria constant need to go to the park. They have just installed this big slide set at our local park and every day she begs to go, not that we have done every single day but the constant asking is driving me crazy hehe.

With all this going on I have still been knitting of course. I got a call on Monday that a lady in the moms group just had her baby and she has requested instead of presents if we could all bring meals over so she doesnt have to cook while making this big adjustment. I decided I had to knit something to give along with the dessert I was assigned to give. I looked through the baby yarn I had and decided that I would make something out of this very soft mint green and cream I just got. She had a little girl and I figured she is probably getting tons of pink and I would be different. The pictures below are what I made. When I finished the hat I looked at it and wished that I hadnt done it in stripes. I think it would have matched the booties better if I had of done the band in cream and the rest in green. It would have also saved me having to weave in all those little end by doing stripes. Oh well its done now and being taken tomorrow. I cheated on the dessert. I found out she doesnt like chocolate and most of my dessert recipes are chocolate. Who would have thought. There is a little Amish baked goods stall just up the road so I bought one of their apple pies and some whipped cream. I have heard the Amish food is wonderful so I also bought a raspberry pie for us. It was oh so yummy.



This week I also went to the first meeting of the knitting group that the library assistant just started. I dont think word has got out well enough yet but I think the group will build because I have heard lots of people were interested. Megan watched Victoria for me for a couple of hours which is always scary and I got some quiet time at the library to knit. A girl in Megan's Girl Scout troop had come to the meeting with some crochet she started and some knitting. She had started to learn a while ago and had forgotten how to do it so I was showing her how to knit. She thought it was fun. It reminded me of when I was first learning and made me realize how far I had come since those days of constantly asking my mum to fix my mistakes and could she please cast on because I couldnt figure it out hehe. I hope the group keeps up because I think it could be really fun and its only just across the road.

Over the next couple of days I will try to make another post with pictures of the yarn I got in the mail last week that I got from Etsy. I got 5 balls of Lion Brand Wool Ease Chunky in dark green. Along with my order she had slipped in 2 balls of Knitpicks Merino Wool in Moss. I am still getting used to wool not being scratchy like I remember it being in the itchy jumpers we were made to wear as kids. This wool is so soft you cant stop touching it. With the moss wool I went back and forth on either knitting socks because it was so soft or a felted bag. I made a decision and have already started a small bag that will be felted. I hope I made the right decision. I figured I can always buy more from KnitPicks.

Oh I know something else I need to photograph. My wonderful sister just sent me a ton of beads to use on my felted bags. I think she had lots of fun picking these out hehe. I will take pictures of those because they are so beautiful that you just need to see them. Perhaps I will have to use some on my Moss Bag when its done. There are some nice ones that would match that colour nicely.

Well I guess I have waffled on enough for now. Stay tuned for lots more photos this week, I'm just charging up my camera batteries. I need to buy spare ones for when this happens.

Heaps And Heaps Of Yarn! Oh My!

This weekend we went out to celebrate my birthday from last Sunday. I got so much knitting stuff for my birthday. It was heavenly hehe. We went to the barn sale that's up the road. They are open every weekend during the summer. An old couple run it and the lady must knit or have a yarn buying obsession. She has tons and tons of bags of yarn on this big wooden table. She groups them all together in the bags sometimes by colour or sometimes randomly. These bags are so so cheap. The first three photos of yarn that you see here are what I got on my trip there. I got 4 bags of yarn for $9. What a bargain. The man was telling me that their attic is full of even more yarn that she wants to get rid of. Of course my little eyes lit up and I told him I would definitely be back to scoop up some more. I got some at this place last year for my birthday so I think this will have to become a tradition hehe. Now what to make with all this yarn, hmmm the mind is a ticking.




The yarn buying didnt stop there. For my birthday my husband gave me $30 to spend on my Etsy.com favourites list. After agonizing for 2 hours on what to buy, I finally made my choices. I have already received the teal mohair yarn that I ordered plus a very cute teddy bear knitting pattern with a cardigan pattern to knit for him. I still have some cute Beatrix Potter badges and 5 balls of Lion Brand Wool Ease Chunky in dark green. I have a cable bag pattern that I have been dying to try that requires exactly 5 balls. I also managed to save about $50 buying it this way.


While out shopping on this day I also bought a ball of Caron Simply Soft Bright in Watermelon for the phone cover order that I got last week. I just didnt quite have enough to do the project so I needed more. I finished that order today and Mary Ann picked it up tonight. I also finally managed to get some material for the pink felted messenger bag for my sisters friend. I will have to start work on that this week. This is definitely not to prissy as the last one was. It is just a plain colour that matches the bag. Can you believe it took me about 5 seconds to find this material and it was a quarter of the price of the other material. I just couldnt believe it. I also picked up a roll of pink and white checked ribbon for the baby set I made a couple of weeks ago. I was all happy I could finish that project off and wouldnt you know it, the roll of ribbon has disappeared. I checked our shopping receipt and its definitely on there so somewhere between checking out and coming home it disappeared. Im going to check our car tomorrow and see if it fell out of the bag or something. Fingers crossed it did otherwise I have to go and get another one. How annoying.


I did get some other yarn on the weekend but my 5 picture limit has been used up so I will have to post them next time. I didnt buy these ones though. My friend Natalie gave them to me to make the baby girl hooded cotton blanket that she wants made. I still have to finish the blue, green and white one first to free up the needles. I figured I got enough yarn at the moment and put the blue, green project on hold until I can get more of it.