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Tag: Engel

by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Little one 2 Comments

A friend did us a huge favour when our oven died, by helping us get a new one that very night! There was some fun and shenanigans, and I learnt that he had a huge love of dragons, so much so he had a drawing of his own own complete with fantastic colour scheme!

So as a thank you, I decided to knit him up a dice bag with his very own dragon on it!

I took the dragon chart from Targaryen Knit Hat by Holly G Hats, (a free pattern) and combined it with another fantastic free pattern, Cthulhu Dice Bag! By A. A. Leavitt-Reynolds. Doing all the different colours to make it match the drawing was both a challenge and quite fun – it’s been some time since I’ve experimented with colourwork!

Aside from that, it’s been a busy week. My dad came to visit last weekend from Ireland, we all did the circus and saw the Blackpool illuminations, and then it’s been work, work, work.

This weekend saw next the part of cthulhu scenario where despite internal group sabotage, no one died. I need to up my game, or stop giving them special one off reroll tokens to increase their chances of survival…

Felix got to take part in the Rememberance Parade with her little Beaver Pack. Group? Collective? No idea. They didn’t let girls in the Scouts when I was a kid!

Engel informs me that it’s a Lodge.

Wikipedia informs me it’s a Colony.

I prefer Pack so let’s run with that.

As well as that there’s been play dates and knitting and the usual mayhem, as well as the added mayhem of a Nerf event next week, so Engel and his friend destroyed the living room modding Nerf guns…

Ah well, it’s worth it cause next weekend is going to be a blast! (Pun intended)

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 105 (2 used)
Wool bought – 30
Wool given – 163
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 635

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 2 Comments

It’s my favourite time of year, the weather is growing colder, the leaves are turning red, all the winter knits can finally be brought out and worn and best of all, Halloween!

Because if Halloween landing on a Thursday this year, we’ve managed to spread it over a whole week. The Manchester Halloweekend, Felix’s school spooky disco (the only one she will go to) actual Halloween and trick or treating, then friends coming round for games and far too much food…

For Engels costume I dug out my oldest WIP, and after 30 minutes of detail work, it was finished. Part of me feels rather ashamed of was sat in s corner for four years, the other part of me is chalking it down to experience…

A facehugger! This guy is of my design, the pattern notes for it is long gone, so it’s one of a kind too. Which is a shame, but that’s life!

Did everyone else have a spook-tacular Halloween?

But wait, there’s more!

It was my mum’s 60th a few weeks ago (it was dances of the decades with an encouragement for people to dress up) and my present was paying towards the big party bash. But I wanted to give my mum something as well, and Rabbie handmade an awesome elephant patchwork quilt, but what stereotypical gift do you give a 60 year old woman?

Slippers.

Elephant slippers (to match the blanket)

So I made these:

The Cuddliest Kitty Slippers by Janine Peter, a free pattern, tweaked a little as I prefer slippers to cover the ankle. But that’s a cat, I hear you say.

So I took those, combined it with ‘Elephant’ from Sarah Keens book ‘100 Little Knitted Projects’ and got…

Aren’t they adorable?! And we’ll received. My mum’s hinting at having more slippers…

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 103 (2 used)
Wool bought – 30
Wool given – 163
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 637

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting 1 Comment

Yep. I’ve been asked to remake husky no.1 again as the person who was given him was put in a situation where they kindly gifted him to a little girl who wants a pet dog but can’t have one, so now has part ownership of hers…

And yes, that brown blob is a tiny knitted dog poo to go with it.

I do get some strange requests…

This is the last of the pure bred huskies, there’s a husky/collie cross and a collie to go to finish this set off. There’s also other behind the scenes knitting going on, but we’ll get to that later.

In non knitting news, I am very tired! Friday and Saturday saw to the kids rooms being ripped out, some painting, new beds and lots of furniture building and some toy sorting with only a few scraped and bruises and a particularly badly bashed elbow to show for it in regards to injuries!

Today was a treat day with some friends at a cat cafe, with lots of kitty cuddles!

Apologies for the blog post being late this week, I’ve been unable to select ‘add post’ in my wordpress directory and yeah…two hours solid trying to resolve the blasted issue and I’ve finally managed it, but it’s left me rather cranky and debating if I should really continue this blog post on its own little website or just switch to a freebie one and have you all suffer lots of ads instead…wordpress has been very glitchy since it did a major overhaul a few months back and it’s not getting much better…

Oh, and with everything going on, I haven’t had a chance to play with my spinning wheel other than to check it works and have Engel align it all for me…hopefully next week!

Anyhow! Wool count then bed I think!

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 79 (5 used)
Wool bought – 19
Wool given – 157 (2 as birthday presents!)
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 644

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Cats, Knitting, Little one 2 Comments

Hi all!

Short post this week as I am ready to fall asleep and it’s not even the little terrors bedtime yet! My mum came down for a flying visit this weekend and we literally crammed as much as we could before she went back north in the train less than an hour ago.

The main highlight was Sci-fi in the sidings at the East Lancashire Railway – both myself and Engel have soft spots for steam trains and it’s passed on to both Felix and Inkling. Coupled with storm troopers and daleks? Sold!

And today it was a cat show, none of us had ever been to one, neither had the friends we met there, but it proved a laugh. Felix has now decided she’s going to show cats when she’s older after falling in love with a litter of kittens! The women who owned/showed them was very good with her and let her ‘help’ with filling out the numbers and giving the cats a lucky pet before they went for each showing…

We may also have rocked up wearing cat ears and tails, myself included, much to the bemusement of most of the people there… unfortunately my mum “borrowed” my cat Welly socks and they are now classified as MIA, so I’ll be needing to make another pair before winter sets in…

Enough of that, on to the knitting!

The second in a pack of huskies! The next few weeks will be seeing more of these guys. Like the first one, I’ve used the pattern Siberian Husky by Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne from the book Knit Your Own Dog: Easy-to-Follow Patterns for 25 Pedigree Pooches.

Till next week!

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 71 (3 used)
Wool bought – 19
Wool given – 155
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 650

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Little one 2 Comments

That as indeed been very much the question! Our nerf group is supposed to run every last Sunday of the month, but it was cancelled last week due to rain (anyone in the UK will be more than aware of all the recent floodings) and looks to be cancelled again this week…

Which is a shame as Felix had me make this cute bag for her:

After playing with one of the other club members Vortex nerf blaster (it shoots discs instead of darts, and is super easy to prime and fire do she can do it all herself unaided) she batted her eyelashes at daddy and he got her one. And Inkling too, at least.

Then one of the other club members turned up with one for Felix as, despite not aimed at him, he too fell for those batting eyelashes.

I’m going to have to watch that girl…

Anyways, so we have three nerf blasters that all take discs and Felix rightly pointed out that discs and darts should not mix, so I made a matching bag for the Vortex for all the discs to go live in.

And there’s a lot of discs, we went to buy some and there was a crazy good special on glow in the dark discs…and they really do glow! The fact this bag was so promptly made has nothing to do with the fact the discs were on my bedside table and actually distracting me from sleeping,nope, not at all…

That’s all from me this week, busy with everything and feeling rather poorly as I woke up Thursday morning with no voice. Fridays trip to the doctor confirmed that I had laryngitis, so I get to drink hot honey and lemon water.

I really, really dislike the taste of honey. And fresh squeezed lemon? Not much better….

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 64 (1 used)
Wool bought – 19 (3 more, I needed a pick me up!)
Wool given – 155
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 658

Fleece bought/own – 13 lots, varying quantities…
Fleece washed and bagged – all the above! Now in 10 bags.

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Little one 1 Comment

Buzz buzz buzz!!!!

These are based on the free pattern Teeny Tiny Bumblebee by The Ginger Hooker – larger needles used and I changed the wings.

For those curious, Felix chose bees as the next insect for her mini beast birthday party, having already picked butterflies. I’ve ended knitting over 60 bees as Felix kept giving them away, Inkling decided they were the must have for his bed and my MIL took a shine to them…

Not sure if I’ll make any more insects for the party (she has asked for ladybirds, worms, stick insects and woodlice amongst others) as I have a few other projects lined up first, but we’ll see if I can sneak another one in!

Short post this week, it’s been so hot I’ve not had the energy to do much knitting and certainly not spinning, though almost all the raw fleeces washed!

I have picked up a little table loom which Felix and Engel have had quite a bit of fun with, and subsequently used up some of my odds and ends bits of wool!

Oh, and I’ve joined a new gaming group, well, more a friend is putting together a time and place for people who want to play boardgames, wargames or RPGs to get together and do just that. I have a number of victims – I mean volunteers – who want to play cthulhu with me! I feel an evil laugh coming on…mwahahahaha!!!!!!

Till next week!

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 63 (4 used)
Wool bought – 19 (3 more, I needed a pick me up!)
Wool given – 155
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 659

Fleece bought/own – 13 lots, varying quantities…
Fleece washed and bagged – all the above! Now in 10 bags.

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Motorbike, Uncategorized 1 Comment

The title of this post has definitely given the game away over the knit to show you this week!

This is made following the pattern Siberian Husky by Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne from the book Knit Your Own Dog: Easy-to-Follow Patterns for 25 Pedigree Pooches.

The reason behind this cutie is based on the events that occurred the other week, which I mentioned in this blog post.

Short story: Engels motorbike died. Engels motorbike was revived temporarily. Person who helped revive motorbike also helped him find new replacement motorbike. New replacement motorbike is very, very nice. And called Meowzebub.

Said very lovely person also owns four huskies and a collie. I got lots of doggy cuddles that day. And as a thank you for helping us out for near enough a whole day at incredibly short notice, literally the night before, Engel suggested I make a replica of one of her huskies.

Isn’t he cute?

There may be the rest of the pack on its way eventually, I believe that’s in debate…

In other news, today was The Wool Experience! And my friends Sisterex and Charisobelle have convinced me to pick up spinning as a new hobby. Or to at least try it. So I went to get a little bit of sheep fluff and a drop spindle.

Yeah…

I now two whole fleeces, 5 little sample bags of different fleeces and 3 drop spindles. Sisterex also gave me three lots of commercial fluff I gave her the other year as it wound up in my stash by accident and Charisobelle also gave me three little bags of fluff in different washed stages so I could see the differences each step made and could practice on those for washing myself.

I think I need to learn this hobby, and get competent in it, pretty quick…

Oh, and I also picked up three skeins of undyed wool for me to have a play with my dyes some more…

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 56 (Still no change…)
Wool bought – 16 (3 more, mentioned above)
Wool given – 155
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 663 (It went up!)

Fleece bought/own – 13 lots, varying quantities…

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Gaming, Knitting, Motorbike, Updates 2 Comments

As the title says, socks!

Socks!

Socks!!

Yeah…I went a little sock mad…I blame Rabbie. She came down for the rather soggy doggy day and the night before her visit mentioned wellies, so Felix wanted her cat welly socks.

Then Engel rubbed it in that he had cat welly socks.

So cat welly socks for me jumped the knitting queue! All of the above socks resulted from this rather rash decision I’m afraid to admit! All of them are based on the pattern I used for Engel’s cat socks – Quick Kilt Hose by Jessica Correa but I tweaked the needle sizes and stitch numbers to get a better fit.

The first pair came out a smidge small, but a perfect fit for the MIL, so I removed the cuff and off those went to her. Second pair came out purr-fect and I finally got my cat welly socks!

But I had a bit of wool left, and Rabbie has the same size of feet as me, though they’re slowly being crippled by arthritis, and she really deserved a bit of TLC and a thank you for pulling out all the stops to make the soggy doggy weekend work…

So the striped pair practically fell off the needles for her! Not that she needs real wool socks in this sudden heat…

Oh well, winter is never far off in this country!

In non knitting news, the website gallery page is finally updated so you can see my 10+ years of finished projects that were actually photographed and recorded. Engel has his new bike, and she’s a beauty, so that’s one disaster nicely squared off, and we’ve had a busy weekend with the local village festival yesterday and nerfing today. I ache, badly, but it’s my own fault for throwing myself down grassy hills and into sandy bunkers to try and pick off the other team and not get hit…

Till next week!

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 56 (No change…)
Wool bought – 13
Wool given – 155
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 660 (No change…)

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Little one, Motorbike, Updates 2 Comments

Well, motorbikes. Which is what I’ll start on then I’ll get to the butterflies.

On Friday, Engels motorbike died. We knew that she had begun to slowly mechanically deteriorate, as all things do with wear and tear and the lovely state of British roads. She was a work horse of a motorbike and did a 40 mile round commute everyday in sun, sleet and snow. So when she died, Engel was left in a rather awkward predicament or requiring a motorbike to commute to work, as he cant feasibly get there via public transport, as fast as possible but with no actual savings to get one.

Yesterday (Saturday) we called upon a few favours and managed to get someone with motorbike know how to, firstly, breathe a few more last breaths into the old motorbike, and then go with Engel to kick some tyres and find a replacement. It was a long day, and I ended up driving for a total of 4 hours (but there was lots of doggy cuddles, four huskies and a collie!), but a new lovely lady of a motorbike was found and we just have to get Engels poor workhorse of a motorbike to last a few more days until everything is in place to get the new one.

Not going into any great details, but I now have a motorbike to pay off, so I’m officially reopening commissions – since Felix was born I’ve pretty much only been making things upon request for  friends and family (and work colleagues, as Yorrick is proof of) but as of now, anyone can request one. Full details on the commissions page.

I’m curious to see what requests get made, I’ve had quite a few interesting ones in the past – life sized knitted recreations of peoples pets, items from games or movies, a knitted womb that would double as a purse… (that last one wasn’t made in the end, after it was explained to me that it was going to be a ‘congratulations on your hysterectomy’ gift, I didn’t feel it would go down well and I do like to think I have a pretty dark sense of humour)

Now, onto the butterflies!

Felix has asked for a ‘mini beasts’ birthday this year (for those wondering what a mini beast is, its now the ‘correct’ term for creepy crawlies, insects, bugs etc – schools didn’t feel it fair on the insects to cast a negative light on them by calling them creepy). Her birthday isn’t until September but I figured that insects would make nice, small, travel sized knits.

So I started with butterflies…

Using the pattern Common Blue Butterfly by Lesley Stanfield from her book 100 Flowers to Knit & Crochet

I made a lot of butterflies.

But they were so good for using up scraps…

And using my hand dyed wool…

Oh, and I needed moths too!

After realising there was about 50, or maybe more, of the things I decided I had to make myself stop and choose a new insect for travel knitting. When I finish with that one, I’ll do another post like this one!

I’m going to go and get back to knitting some socks now (a very ‘normal’ knit for me I must say!) and working out which husky pattern to cast on next as a thank you for the motorbike friend…

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 56 (8 this week!!)
Wool bought – 13
Wool given – 155
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 660

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by RoxyPosted on Posted in Knitting, Little one, Uncategorized 2 Comments

I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It’s the only way to live
In cars

Got to love classic 80s synth…and funnily enough, Inkling appears to be a big Gary Numan fan, or maybe it’s just because he sings about cars…

And speaking (or singing) about cars…

Two green cars, as Felix insisted there had to be green ones…

And two orange cars, because it gave me the opportunity to use a partial ball of wool up…

So that’s four cars in a week with me not really devoting all that much knitting time to making them. I’ve been pretty worn out, so my other knit has been getting worked on a lot more as it’s pretty mindless!

Well, that’s all the knitting news, Happy Easter everyone!

…

…

Ok, my good conscience demands I come clean about the wool count. One of the guys at Engels works grandmother passed away, so in clearing out the house they came across some wool and passed it to Engel to pass onto me in exchange for my, at some point, knitting up a first gen Pokémon.

No problem!

Yeah…major wool miscount. The small bag of wool I was expecting turned out to be 151, yes, one hundred and fifty one, balls of wool. It turned out that 31 of those balls had mohair in it, so they were quickly rehomed, but that’s still 120 extra…

So. New wool count!

Wool Count

Starting total – 576

Wool used – 25 (1 this week!)
Wool bought – 13
Wool given – 155
Wool gifted – 31

Total – 688

If I see below 600 this year I will be amazed…part of me is upset about the stash increase, but the majority is rolling around in the new wool going ‘pretties!’

Till next week!

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