Wednesday 13 January 2010

I'm baaaaaaack!!!!

& I can't believe how neglected this poor blog has become! So, since it's a new year & I'm full of (very likely temporary) good intentions, I've resolved to update at least once a week. We'll see how long it lasts.

First thing I guess is to have a quick rundown of the second half of 2009 - you know, the bit that I've totally missed. There's been a wedding (not mine), a holiday, the usual swaps & loads of other stuff. Here goes . . .

The end of July saw DH's niece get married. I was thrilled - at last, an excuse to buy DS his first kilt! & knit him kilt hose to go with it.

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DD3 also got to wear the party shrug I crocheted for her & I even managed to knock up a quick shawl for me - a good thing too as the wedding was held at Aberdour Castle & the wind whistling through the ruins was rather chilly. Check out my new silk dress too - in Monsoon's sale at 70% off woot!

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On ravelry there were a couple of big swaps;

In the Swapperneckers group I got the most fantabulous package from bcowgirlswt -

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Noms

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The scrummiest fingering-weight alpaca & fibre, fibre, fibre (plus a 3.25mm crochet hook - a size that I just can't get here in the UK) -

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There were even noms for the kids -

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In the Ankh-Morpork Knitter's Guild we had the big Guild Swap when midatlantic totally outdid herself;

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I entered as a member of the Guild of Seamstresses (hem hem) so the scantily-clad chocolate goddess was appropriate as well as delicious;

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As well as all the goodies in the pic there was a beautiful extra-long hot pink skinny scarf, crocheted by midatlantic. Sadly, I still haven't gotten a good pic of this despite wearing it almost constantly altho' you will see it peeping out of my collar in a couple of our holiday snaps.

Here's the package I sent midatlantic in return;

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The wrap was crocheted in a 50/50 wool/acrylic blend & was a joy to make;

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The AMKG also had a Detritus mini swap when I got a fabulous spinny parcel from Brownie22;

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In October we had a week in Pitlochry & were lucky enough to have almost a whole week of good weather, which meant lots of walks in woods & around lochs as well as a fair few ice cream cones from the kiosk by the river (Baileys ice cream - om nom nom);

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I can't leave out Halloween! DD3 was easy to outfit - she took one look at a cat costume in Asda & fell in love. DS was a bit more problematical since he decided he wanted to be the dragon from Room on the Broom & there's a distinct lack of dragon costumes in the shops. Thankfully I had a big skein of red yarn that turned out to be enough for a dragon hat, fingerless mitt 'claws' & a pair of wings to sew onto a black tunic;

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Over the last few months of 2009 I joined Hogwarts @ Ravelry (just cuz I'm a big kid) & have been taking part in various classes.

For transfiguration I crocheted & felted an owl using my own pattern. Here he is with the house scarf (i'm in Hufflepuff heh) & the wand, both crocheted to my own patterns too.

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There was also a temporary transfiguration project so I crocheted a cabled headband/earwarmer/neckwarmer using my own handspun. It has 3 different interchangeable flowers. This was my own pattern too.

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For Astronomy we had to write about a celestial body, then spin/knit/crochet a representation of it & *then* knit or crochet a moebius scarf, cowl or shawl (something I've wanted to try for a while). I chose Aries, which represents the golden ram whose fleece was stolen by Jason & the Argonauts. I decided to use this as my theme for the whole clas & spun up some golden fleece (heh) for assignment 2;

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& used the resultant yarn to knit my moebius cowl;

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For Apparitions class I made the dragon outfit for DS but you've already seen that so I don't have to add more pics :0D


So, I think that's me mostly caught up (& if there's anyone still reading this far down then good on ya!). I've loads of stuff on the go still but if I actually manage to stick to regular posting no-one'll have to trawl through such an epic post again ;0)

Cheers for reading,

S x