Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt: April

So, of course I am late for my own party - I was a good 15 minutes late for my wedding so it's not exactly a surprise. In the meantime, please go and look at the pictures on these lovely blogs -

Rachie
Emma
Serotiny
Ruth

Inspiration
Late this year, but the magnolia is out and I LOVE it.



This was in Oxford last week, on a trip for the AGT students to the university. My AGT job has been disappeared in the latest reorganisation (not my actual job, you understand, just the extra bit) so this is probably the last event I will do. Luckily it was a great one! Oxford on its own is quite an inspiring place, I think.

Something I Made
Golf club sock for Mr Z. I made it up as I went along and it worked quite well.

I finished a cardigan this month too, bar the fancification of the button band and adding the buttons, but there'll be a whole post for that soon I expect.

Red
Continuing on the blossom theme, my tulips have just popped out in the garden. What a treat! Normally they're long finished by now. I have these and an ever-increasing quantity of dark purple ones.



Western



My obsession with Nashville has me looking wistfully at my battered old cowboy boots (the real article, from the very cowboyesque Boot Barn in Vegas) and wishing I could get away with wearing them with skirts and not look like I was in costume for something. I have also been planning our summer western adventure, camping in California: maybe I could get away with it there.

Rocks



Spoilt for choice, really, but I picked this mysterious chunk of rock that has been in our garden for a long time. I remember first seeing it and thinking it was a chunk of raw meat leftover from a barbecue - it is a lot redder than it seems in this picture. I can't remember where it came from but I think it looks quite interesting.

Tuesday Ten

Three years ago I made this post about what I was intending to knit with my stash. It is nice to revisit it every so often; I have done number 2 and number 6 and I'm working on number 3, although a different pattern - I'm saving Myrtle for a different yarn (see below). I gave the yarn for number 7 away to a lady who needed it to finish another project. And in spite of my best intentions, I haven't knitted a single additional pair of Ugg baby booties; the search for which, by the way, probably brings more people to my blog than any other.

Anyway. I am doggedly knitting my way through a From This Day Forward cardigan with the pretty pink yarn from number 3, and I am determined to not start anything else until it is finished, so of course, all I want to do is start new projects. Therefore, it's clearly time for a "Ten things I want to knit" post.

1. A Cheshire Cat jumper, a la Tim Burton -

(I hope it is OK to use this marvellous picture - it's from this website but I didn't want to risk it becoming a dead link.)
We watched Tim Burton's frankly creepy Alice at the weekend and I loved the rendering of the Cheshire Cat in grey and turquoise, rather than the Disney pink and purple. It made a little lightbulb go off in my head, as I recalled I had some turquoise Alpaca DK I bought from UK Rav Day way back in I can't remember and ... hang on ... isn't that grey Knitpicks I have leftover from this cardigan Alpaca DK too? BOOM!
Neither quantity is enough for a whole jumper, but together they will make a stripey garment of wonder. I am just trying to work out how I can also include my turquoise Chinese buttons in there somehow.

2. Watermelon socks. I have the kit. It is awesome. I just need to get started!

3. Fossil t-shirt, in one of the colourways of Damask I hoarded before they discontinued the yarn. I may have rather a lot of this yarn. I'm thinking this one -

If it goes well, I might knit it again with the blue sequinned Jo Sharp yarn I brought back from Australia with me.

4. A Lion & Lamb pinwheel blanket. Ridiculously opulent. I have been collecting blue-tinged yarns from the Jimmy Beans Limited Edition specials for a couple of years now. I have 13 skeins, assuming I'm not giving up all of my all-time-favourite Royal Wedding to the project, which will make me roughly 50 pinwheels. My pinwheel shawl is 10. I figure I can get started on it, at least; it will be a long time in the making.

It really will be the snuggest blanket ever.

5. This lace jacket in the Blue Heron metallic I splurged on last year at Wonderwool. I have just been looking at the projects in this yarn on Ravelry and it is all I can do not to go and wind the skein and swatch tonight.

6. A snowman jumper using leftover yarn from this project (Rav link) and modelled on a slipover I saw when I went to Iceland last year. Er...the year before (where does the time go?!) It looked like this -

My version will have snowmen around the collar. It is a practice run for....

7. The REAL Icelandic colourwork jumper, knitted in the Lopi I bought on aforementioned trip. In fact, I bought it at the shop where I saw the above jumper. Really, this should neither be difficult nor take long to knit. Having read an excellent article about procrastination last week, though, I wonder if I am avoiding it because I'm afraid I won't make a good job of it.

8. A Myrtle cardigan (Rav link again) out of this gorgeous confection -

Now I'm coming to the end of my first 4-ply cardigan and it hasn't actually taken forever (even though I cast on in August, I have only been working on it properly since the end of February) I am keen as a bean to start the next one.

9. A Matilda Jane cardigan out of this cotton fleece, which I bought from ebay an embarrassingly long time ago for exactly this project -

10. Something that will do this gorgeous yarn justice -

It's Mirasol Miski. I have about 1500 yards of it. I had a lacy hoody queued for it but I am reconsidering, because during this long, cold winter, my most useful garment has been a stripey crew-neck jumper and I feel like I could do with another. Also, I would have to pay $5 for the pattern and I think I might already have enough patterns to not need to do that.

It saddens me that so much beautiful yarn languishes untouched. One day I will have enough time for everything.

Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt: April Topics

Sorry I'm late! I hope you have fun finding things for the topics this month.

Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt: March

I am so late this month - and I'm hosting, too! My most sincere apologies to all those playing. I realised that I was going to be away until April 1st but just figured I would schedule ahead of time; for some reason that didn't quite work out as planned.

Something I Made

Any excuse to haul out these gorgeous squishy things again -



I would love to say I kept up my one-rose-a-day plan throughout March but that didn't happen. I have been concentrating on finishing a new cardigan instead. However, I did manage to exchange a skein of Cascade that I had bought in the wrong shade of pink, so as soon as I get my winder out again I will be ready to go.

Inspiration



I bit the bullet and ordered three colours of Lion & Lamb from Jimmy Beans this month. I had a coupon. I think I now have enough skeins to complete a sizable pinwheel blanket so I should get started. This colour, Beverly, was my favourite from the order. I took the picture without a flash to try and get the colour right (hence the slightly blurred effect) but I still don't think it has been done justice - it's a real Mediterranean blue.

Quiet

At the beginning of the month, this was me:



We appointed a new headteacher at school. As a governor, I attended the meeting on Friday night to ratify the decision but had to keep it super-secret until it was confirmed with the successful candidate. I sent this picture to my friend when she texted me for the 7th time asking me to tell! She replied with, "Is it written on that post it note behind you?"

Beast



I spent Easter with Jen and her husband and daughter. They keep tropical fish; these big suckers get very animated late at night and come and suck all the algae off of everything. They look pretty beastly to me.

Motif: Numbers

Bit of a stretch, this one (I always worry that my pictures aren't "crafty" enough to properly qualify for this game) but here is an interesting chart that was shared with me at a training event I attended in March. It was very interesting.



It shows the brain activity of a teenager, tracked over 24 hours for a week. The argument of the speaker was that this student had more brain activity while sleeping than he/she did during class, and that too often learning is a passive activity when it should be an active one.

Well, there we are! My topics for April are coming up; thank you for your patience.

Tuesday Ten

In spite of many promises to myself to blog more regularly in the early months of 2013, I have not been super-successful. There's been a lot of worky stuff going on - not particularly negative, which makes a change for March which is when work usually manages to screw me over. Ofsted have been and gone (3rd Ofsted and I was finally observed!) I had an unsuccessful interview (a bit relieved it was unsuccessful). I was part of the interview panel for the new headteacher (SO interesting). We had the Murder Mystery (theme: holiday camp; murder: shark attack during a synchronised swimming display). And this week I have Big Scary Session to run on Friday and a fabulous conference to go to on Saturday and then next week is the last week of term! How did that happen?! Naturally I am massively behind.

So naturally, I am blogging.

I see Aimee Artsyville is retiring her usual list-it prompts so I am glad I caught the last one.

Ten Kiddie Games

1. Scrabble. Played with my Nanna. For some reason, although we had a set at home, it was only ever played with her.

2. The Game of Life. Still remember getting this one Christmas, with the little pink sticks for the ladies and blue sticks for the gents.

3. Monopoly. Though, it caused fights. Can't remember ever finishing a game.

4. Uno. They still play this at school up in Learning Support - I have completely forgotten the rules but I seem to remember there was at least one very mishandled card in our deck which assisted me in cheating. I was a terrible cheat when I was a kid. Hence the Monopoly fights.

5. Slam, or Spit, or whatever you call it. This was a card game we used to play every breaktime at school. It is a bit like playing solitaire against somebody else. It got to the point where we had to have a referee and instead of slamming the small piles we shouted "Stop!" because somebody's hand got hurt once. We were ultra-competitive. As a teacher who regularly turfs students out of classrooms at break, I can understand my own teachers' frustrations better now.

6. Black Mariah - or Hearts, as the rest of the world calls it. Father Hand taught us this on holiday in Holland. He said it was a game for three so Mother Hand never played. I must ask them about this now I am a grown up and know it can be played with four. It is definitely not a game for two - Sib and I tried.

7. SuperMarioBros. Sib had a NES, then a SuperNES....

8. Trivial Pursuit. My parents were massive boardgame fans with quite a large social circle, so they had lots of games we didn't quite understand; Dingbats comes to mind. Trivial Pursuit looked the most fun but was the most inaccessible. They bought me a junior version one Christmas and I was overjoyed. It had a bright blue box.



9. Chess. I was on the school chess team. I was not very good but there weren't many of us. I have a vivid memory of taking a coach to a chess tournament, having to get the coach pulled over on the way because I thought I was going to throw up (coaches were not my friend as a child), and then in the second round, not noticing the obvious threat to my queen and it being taken by my rather surprised looking opponent. I just nodded and smirked and tried to look like I had done it on purpose.

10. Cluedo. One to be played with the cousins on Boxing Day.

Thanks for the inspiration Aimee! Looking forward to what you have lined up next.

Weekend WIP

I posted some of my attempts at knitted roses in my last post, but they weren't really done justice. I have been knitting a few here and there for a year now; I finally measured my chair, worked out how many I would need to cover it and realised I was a third finished. So, having come to the end of six skeins of Cascade, I decided it was time to felt and see if they were going to come out the same size as the pattern suggested, since I don't have a toploader and wasn't about to felt them by hand.



All lined up and looking pretty. I had to stitch up six at knitting group which was a real bind - I must force myself to do it as I go from now on. I am usually quite good at sewing in ends etc as I go but I can turn out two or three of these an hour if I don't stop to sew them up and it's a bit addictive.

They went in on a 60 degree quick wash, no spin, in a zipped up pillow case with a couple of towels. As per usually, the pillow case managed to unzip itself partway through the exercise but luckily, this didn't seem to have much of an impact.



Some of them turned themselves inside out which made me worry a bit when I started reshaping, but the beautiful thing about felting is that it almost always behaves itself. All those curling edges I had worried about were miraculously felted straight and in no time at all (quite a long time, really, when you're handling freezing cold, wet fabric on a dull March day) they were reshaped and drying on a tray.



I fear they may be drying on the tray for some time; but I'm in no hurry.

I am very pleased with my colour choices. I have some purple Cascade in the wings and some pale pink leftover from the Cherry Blossom Bag, but I am now starting to think something just in reds and bright pink might be preferable. I need to dig it all out and have a look, really. I need 86 roses (I think) to do the front of the chair, and another 40 or so to do the back too, so I could always do purple and pale pink for the back. It would use up the Cascade.

Naturally, now I have successfully felted them I just want the chair to be ready immediately. This is a good long-term project of the sort-of modular variety, though, so I think I will stick to knitting my 4-ply cardigan for this month and maybe wind up some Cascade to keep handy at work for when I am hanging around waiting for a governors' meeting.

Crafty Photo Scavenger Hunt: February

Rachie picked this month's topics.

Inspiration



Lots of snow! On a very sunny day. I find this sort of weather very inspiring - tramping around in it, making snow angels, then snuggling up with something warm on the sofa. It was a great recharge time and I hit the ground running ready for the Ofsted surprise the following week.

Something I Made



I knitted another seven flowers (one was hiding in this picture) for my felted roses chair. This has been a WIP for over a year now.


New



I've been enjoying these immensely for the last week of February. They are growing on the wrong side of the garden wall, so I only see them when I am coming home. They're a good portent of spring!

Baking

















Just before I gave up sugar for Lent, I iced these. I decided I was sick of not being able to pipe properly when it came to icing cakes, so I had a little rummage online and found a piping practice session at Swinky Sweets in Bristol. We each got a dozen cakes and there were 15 bags of icing floating around for playing with, along with lots of decorative bits. Some of these didn't turn out quite the way I'd planned but it was fun and I definitely feel more confident with a piping bag now!

Motif: Triangles



Excessive cheating, sorry (I have a feeling I have cheated on a category before, with a picture of the same thing taken in the same bar!) but after Ofsted, relief came in a triangular glass.

Thanks for picking this month Rachie! Pop along and see what everyone else photographed.