Not sure what happened, but the past I wrote on Saturday doesn’t seem to have published… so going to write it up again super quick!
Another “pattern” from a 6 yo – so cute! Used the free Turtle II chart by Sandra Jäger and my now standard cobbled together hat pattern.
In other news, I kind of fell off my resolution of using only wool from the stash…
Monday – I needed about 50g of a specific colour for a requested knit, and wound up coming home with the correct colour, just 3x100g worth…
Tuesday – was having a bit of a bad day and when I got home, found two balls of ‘pick-me-up’ wool from Engel. (He’s a sweetie, they’re a good colour and the correct weight and type as the majority not my stash)
Thursday – I was given a 300g ball of wool for another project to help raise funds for Felix’s school.
Friday – bobbed into the shops to get a little something sweet and walked out with 4 more balls of wool…it was a lovely colour!
So my wool count now looks like this:
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 25 (5 this week!) Wool bought – 7 Wool given – 3 Wool gifted – 0
A friend of mine needed a bit of a pick me up, and he had mentioned previously that he would like Rammy, a character from a game called Castle Crashers.
How could I say no?
He is made from combining the free pattern Oh Balls! by Marcie Nishioka (which I used last week to make Inklings blaster ammo) and Skull by Vanessa Mooncie from the book ‘Monster hats’ (another pattern I’ve used, though that was for the matching family cultist hats!)
Funny how two patterns can make something completely different!
In other knitting news, I’ve nearly finished one of the big projects I’ve been doing – with luck, I’ll be able to post about that next week!
In non knitting news, not much to report. Works been busy, kids have been happy, and other than an incident involving them sneaking downstairs in the morning to eat a tin of homemade shortbread destined for my work, there’s not much to tell.
But no news is often good news, and with things the way they are in the news lately, I’m going to keep hoping for quiet times!
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 20 (3 this week!) Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
inkling has been wanting to join in with our little Nerf wars in the house, only he can’t prime a standard blaster, and the flywheel ones are too heavy for him to carry and aim at the same time. A solution has been found, in the form of a “Little Tikes blaster”.
Inkling adores it. He can load it, shoot it, and run around all at the same time. Only issue is that it came with just three balls for ammo, and that lasts all of four seconds.
So I have been knitting balls. Bright, multicoloured, balls.
And a Nerf bag for them to go in, that match his blaster, so he can join in with the rest of us when dart sweeping.
The pattern used for the balls is a free one called ‘Oh Balls!‘ by Marcie Nishioka. It’s a great pattern for using up little scraps, or in my case, wool that’s so bright and obnoxious I’m not too sure what to make with it!
Not much else to say really for this week – it’s been busy, like really busy, but not a lot to talk about it…oh! I got to play my new game, Llamas unleashed, and am now resisting the urge to knit an army of llamas, alpacas, goats and rams to match all the different artwork! So cute! Fun to play too…
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 17 (2 this week!) Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
Something that isn’t hats! But what exactly is it?
Is it a llama? Is it an alpaca? We can all definitely agree it’s cute! Pattern for the actual critter is a free Ravelry download – Flounce the Fluffy Alpaca by Tabitha Rose – and I just winged a blanket and teeny tiny pom-pom detailing!
I made this cutie as a thank you to a fellow yarnie work colleague who crochets as opposed to knits, and gifted me a cone of the fluffy wool as it wouldn’t behave for her crochet hooks! I made it yield to the knitting needles!
(The llama unleashed game was Engel giving me a random ‘saw this and thought of you’ gift, squee!)
That’s all today, Inklings had a stomach bug start of this week that rivals THAT scene from the exorcist, and after one day of peace, Felix has now started…when will it end?!
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 15 (2 this week!) Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
Just like the title says – it’s Bad News Badger. He’s made roughly following the free pattern Rabbit and Bear by April Cromwell and is a companion piece to The Angry Badger I knit a while ago.
I had far too much fun with this guy – especially making his little tiny newspaper! He’s small enough he can sit in the palm of my hand…
In other knitting news, still working on those two big projects, interspersed with a few small ones as I’ll go insane otherwise…
Just a short one today, it’s been pretty manic as of late! Oh, except to say that after knitting the Ryder hat for Inkling, he has decided that his traffic one is the bestest hat and is now wearing that…sigh….
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 9 (2 this week!) Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
First things first: Happy Chinese New Year everyone!
On to the knitting:
In my quest to get Inkling to wear a hat for more than 8 seconds (his car hat I knit him to match his jumper lasted 8 seconds, previous record was 6) I have resorted to my TV nemesis, Paw Patrol.
After a lengthy discussion with a 2.5 year old over his favourite character (Zuma and Chase, he won’t have one, it’s not fair) his favourite colour (blue and green, maybe orange) I have up and watched several episodes with him whilst knitting in a sulk.
Then I saw it.
Ryder (the boy who looks after all the pups) wears a red and blue knitted beanie in the winter/cold weather episodes. That there, was the solution to my problem!
I followed the Basic Family Hat by Yarnspirations Design Studio (free pattern) changing the colours to match and added the Paw Patrol logo on free hand at the end.
He wore it for thirty five minutes! Paw Patrol came to the rescue!
In a few years I will look back on this and laugh…I hope…
Have a good weekend everyone!
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 7 (none this week sadly) Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
Happy new year everyone! May it be happier and healthier than last year!
Since my last post, I finished up three projects – a snake hat for Felix, a cosie for the in-laws and a teeny tiny knitted jumper, as I keep getting asked by someone to make them a jumper and, no, just no.
The tea cosie is based on the free pattern Mug and French Press Jacket by MK Carroll, as you can see in the photo, it’s a glass teapot with a very, very short spout and I figured having the bottom covered was better than the top!
The jumper is made following the free pattern Mini Sweater Ornament with Cables by Emily5446 – very cute, very well written pattern and I have a jumper that’s about 4 cm tall!
As for 2020, I have finished my first project just yesterday! Maleficent!
This pattern is based on Dragons by King Cole Ltd – though I had to tweak it a fair bit and add a lot of extra details to turn it into Maleficent! The reason for this is that every year I knit a Christmas decoration, and for 2019 I planned to knit a Mickey mouse head to mark our first proper family holiday to Disneyland Paris!
Except Felix told me no, I had to knit Maleficent. I argued that I wouldn’t get all the detail into an ornament, to which I was told not to make an ornament, but a dragon big enough to sit on top of the tree!
Engels oh so helpful in put to this was ”if you knit an even bigger one it could sit under the tree and guard the presents!”
So Maleficent it was, and at a hefty 60cm long she’ll either be taking the whole top of the tree, or hoarding the presents beneath – we’ll have to wait till next year to find out!
Till next week!
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 2 Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
Total – 702
I feel I had best explain why my wool count has gotten so much bigger – I was given quite a few balls for Christmas (Inkling gave me two yellow balls and informed me that one was a digger and the other a bulldozer, hmm, I suspect he’s learning from Felix) and I ripped out a few old finished projects that weren’t being used, so that wool has gone back into the wool stash. I also bought four balls of bright orange in order to make a project I have planned! This year, I really do hope to finish with 600 or less!
Have you noticed that most couples have some cute or endearing little terms they use with one another if the other is say, in a bad mood, or being particularly excited?
For example, if myself or Engel want to be left alone, it’s described as ‘being a squeezle’ ( a No Reservations reference to a porcupine) or if one of us is being just grouchy then they’re ‘a grumpy bunny’ if all’s well then we’re ‘little/big cat’.
Well I was requested to make someone else’s version of ‘grumpy bunny’ and that is ‘angry badger’…
Think he looks angry enough? I think he looks ready to murder someone…
And a side view of him having a tantrum and destroying all the Duplo…
I’ll be honest in that I had a lot of fun with this, I’ve not knitted a badger before (this is a great free pattern Miss Barlow Badger by Jem Weston) and I have never purposefully tried to make a toy look angry before!
He went down really well, and there’s already been a request for a ‘bad news badger’ for Valentine’s, I’ll wait till closer to the time to see if that’s something that is genuinely going ahead, but it’s certainly made me laugh!
Not much in other news, well, that’s not quite true, a lot has been going on, but not the kind of stuff I talk about here. It’ll all be fine in the end, just need to remember that there is an end, and it is in sight.
Christmas has descended upon the household, did a Grinch-mas trail last week and the tree has gone up today. A bit early for myself personally but the combined puppy eyes of Felix and Inkling made me cave in.
Oh, one more thing, the wool count! Normally I pop it on the bottom of the post and leave it at that but after using one ball up these last two weeks I am now at 666! The number of the beast!
Though I keep singing ‘Knit-Knit-Knit, the stitches of the beast!’
On that note, cheerio till next week!
Wool Count
Starting total – 576
Wool used – 108 (1 this week) Wool bought – 63 Wool given – 167 (was gifted four balls this week) Wool gifted – 31
A friend of mine does a bonfire/Halloween fancy dress party every year, and after being rescheduled several times, finally happened last night. The theme this year? Lovecraftian Horror!
After much debate, I settled on myself and Engel being cultists of Shub Niggurath, (Black Goat of the Wood with a Thousand Spawn) and Felix and Inkling went as two of the said spawn.
Rabbie did me a huge favour in putting together a pair of awesome cultists robes (that double up as jedi robes and wanderers of the apocalypse robes) Edit: just linked to her blog post about the cultists robes and it made me laugh, I took my two to a cthulhu themed party, complete with bonfire, and she’s taken the fur baby to Santa Paws…
Anyhow, so all I had to do was whip up four pairs of hats with horns! Which I started monday. Oops.
Managed it more or less and super pleased with the outcome!
These are made based on the pattern Skull by Vanessa Mooncie from her book “Monster Hats: 15 Scary Head-Warmers to Knit”
Ready for the full effect?
I’ve positioned it so you can see inside the cloak and see all the eyes of the other 998 spawn yet to be summoned. Felix wore her knitted sheep costume from a long time ago, plus hat, and Inkling had his bear costume on, with goat horn hat rather than bear hat.
All in all, we made for an adorable family set! I’m also pleased to say a lot of people also turned up dressed, and there was an amazing Hastur and a good number of people with that ‘Innsmouth Look’ about them!
Will leave it at that, see you all next week!
Wool Count
Starting total – 576
Wool used – 107 (2 this week) Wool bought – 63 Wool given – 167 (was gifted four balls this week) Wool gifted – 31
Total – 667 (If I use one more ball, it’ll be the number of the beast! Or would that be knit of the beast?)
First of all I shall start with this weekends activities – The Winter Battle of BritNerf! Fridays battle as held in a skatepark, and I’ll be honest, it was chaos. I hit it too hard, too fast, and hadn’t eaten properly because of driving all the way up to Scotland, and about half way through went all wobbly. Once I had eaten and recharged I was good to go, and 15 seconds into humans Vs zombies, I got tackled and had I been on anything other than the smooth skate ramp, I’d have been fine, but instead went down, along with the ‘zombie’ and landed hard on my left wrist.
One of my fellow team members immediately called in first aid and I had an ice pack on it in under a minute and a very thorough apology from the Zombie. After twenty minutes I realised my wrist was definitely sprained and the drive to Rabbies was rather painful.
Worse still, I couldn’t knit. The horror!
Saturday saw the main event, a close quarters combat scenario, and in this set of games in tight narrow corridors with small areas to hide and hunker down and also to snipe the ‘enemy’ – myself and Engel where in our element! Despite my sore wrist making me unable to prime any blasters (thank goodness for flywheels!) I lasted the majority of the games, and instead only had to call it quite after being literally smoked out.
Asthma and smoke bombs in confined areas, not a great combo. I missed the last two games and due to even more smoke bombs, decided not to dart sweep and instead tidied the resting/set up area.
And despite taking it easy on the wrist, no knitting on Saturday either…
Overall, a great weekend, made better by good company and my sister’s fantastic sweet treats and her adorable dog, Missy. I wouldn’t go to the effort of the four hour drive for the skate park again, despite being fun, just not quite my cup of tea, but for another close quarter game? Definitely!
I’m just doing some research into gas masks that would be suitable for nerfing in, and which I can easily purchase filters for…
In knitting news, I shipped up my holiday knits, some very boring but incredibly good stash busting dish/washcloths!
In more interesting knitting news, Engel managed to somehow sell one hat to two people. He nearly sold it to three before it was realised. What hat was it?
My dead Blinky hat! The original was a commission that fell through (hence why I now ask for half payment up front) and was never actually photographed and recorded anywhere. This is the second, and as most have probably already guessed, made following the free Knitty pattern Fish Hat [Dead or Alive?] by Thelma Egberts.
That’s enough nattering for now, I need to rub some life back into my legs following this weekends mad activity! Mine aren’t too bad, more stuff than sore, Engels though…
Wool Count
Starting total – 576
Wool used – 105 (0 this week) Wool bought – 63 (I fell off the wool wagon hard this weekend, there was a few absolute bargains of wool I really like that’s being discontinued so I stocked up…33 balls…In fairness, my guilt from doing this meant I bought Engel a Hades (a very, very big Nerf blaster!)) Wool given – 163 Wool gifted – 31
Total – 665 (If I buy one more ball, it’ll be the number of the beast! Or would that be knit of the beast?)
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