Just keep knitting

Well I’ve completed very little over the past fortnight in the Nerd Wars hiatus. I knew this would be the case, but it still makes me a little sad.
I’m continuing to work on hubby’s scarf, which was intended as a Christmas gift, but alas it’s almost late enough for a birthday gift. He’s not getting a knitted thing for his birthday – or it’s very unlikely anyway! There are some things in my Nerd Wars queue that might fit… but probably not.

The chickens are doing very well; we’re getting between two and three eggs a day at the moment. They’re not as different in colour as we had hoped, but they are different. This means that we have lots of fun trying to work out which chicken laid which egg!
We’ve discovered that they love melon, banana (the softer the better it seems) and mashed potato. When I give them mashed potato, I add a little cod-liver oil, which is meant to be good for them. They also get vinegar water once a week.
We let them out into the garden a little while ago when it was quite mild. They seemed to like it, though Buffy wanted to know what goes on inside the kitchen. Silly Chicky.



I hope to have some nice knitting to show you guys soon, and some spinning (I got some lovely things from the knitters for my birthday).

Veggies!

One of my Christmas gifts was a set of indoor propagators, and some packets of seeds.

I've started putting them to use now! Here's the first of the three on my south(ish) facing windowsill.



I've planted 2 seeds in each plug - I'll "thin" them to one plant when they start coming through. I've planted 5 plugs of tomatoes. There's some built-in redundancy there, I'm not sure I want 5 tomato plants, but I'd rather have more than I need than have them fail (my squashes failed like that last year)
I've planted 15 plugs of onions. I may plant some more of those, I'm not sure yet. I think you get one onion per seed.
Finally I've planted 20 carrots. These are an early dwarf variety, so I'll definitely want to plant some more.

I've also got some seed potatos.



On the left are "Arran Victory" - a heritage variety of potato with purple-ish skins. These are a maincrop variety of potato. The others are "Duke of York", a nice early crop there, good for salads so the packet says.

I'm quite excited about these. I've made a note of the planting in my RHS diary, and I'll be keeping track of my future plantings and their progress in that book too.

Well, I'm off back to my knitting now. I love having creative hobbies!

Planning for 2012

Well, hello there 2012, and what do you have in store for me?
I’m hoping for another action packed year!

Here’s some highlights of what I have planned

• A Birthday Party! – since we were at a wedding on my birthday, I’m planning a second birthday on my husband’s birthday. We’re even considering booking a hall for the occasion!
• My sister’s wedding. I’m going to be a bridesmaid, and it’s lining up to be even better than my wedding! I’m really looking forward to it!
• Going to France – we’re off back to visit Hubby’s family in central France in the summer, and we face the challenge of travelling with just a cabin bag each!

I’m also hoping to start getting to grips with the garden. We’re thinking about getting someone in to sort out the front garden. It’s basically decorative and I don’t care enough about it to weed regularly. In the back I need to make space for lots of veggies this year, I got some fun garden based gifts this year, including seeds to be sown – the first of which go in this weekend! Squee! Growing my own veg is fun, I was so pleased with last year’s courgettes and carrots; I hope I can do even better this year. (Note to self: decide whether there are any other veggies to try growing…)

On the crafting front, I’m going to be part of Nerd Wars again, so I need to plan for some projects I can complete within a month. I also want to get some of the existing current projects finished, preferably before the end of January. (Tournament four starts on February 1st.) I’m still knitting from stash where possible. One of the things I want to make is the $5 in Paris sweater. I have some lovely pink and brown yarn that would work for this. There’s also a lace weight top that I want to knit. I’m not sure I can fit that into a month, but perhaps it could be a dissertation for the three months. I really need to knit some more socks too, not least because I accidentally felted a pair not that long ago (sadness!) and also I have a lot of sock yarn! And I want to do more spinning, that’s a lot of fun. I just need to get the fibre currently on the wheel spun up and off the wheel so that I can spin some more. (That’s another January task, all being well!)

Well, I’ve prompted myself to make some lists now (don’t you love lists?) – For veggie growing, for knitting and spinning, lots of planning to be done! Woot!

Felt Like Weaving?

So, here's a project I didn't share with you yet!

I created a square (that's important) cardboard loom, approximately 20cm square with 5mm cuts in the edge for looming with. (that's not the right verb!)

Then, I started to weave on the loom, using continuous weave. This method used the same strand to create the warp and the weft at the same time

This created two slightly scruffy looking bits of fabric.

which I crocheted together and added a small loop for a fastening

and then felted (I haven't added a button yet)

(sorry, the radiator cover is in better focus than the bag there...)

Pattern: Continuous weave
Yarn: Noro Kureyon
Hook: not relevant, but it was 4mm
Modifications: n/a
Verdict: Continuous weave is good fun and interesting. On a larger scale it could be amazing. Cardboard probably wouldn't stand up to much larger a loom though.

2012...

Happy new year folks, lets make 2012 a good one!