Knitting Away

I have been knitting a fair bit lately since I have been feeling better. I started the CPH on Tuesday night, and I am on the 3rd row of the pattern, after knitting 28 rows of ribbing. I am trying not to knit it at night too much, since the wool is so dark. Hopefully I will be able to knit some more on it today after some housework gets done. Lachlan returns to school tomorrow, so I should have some free time in the morning whilst Isabelle is at kindergarten. At least Lachie has finished his project for SOSE which is due in October, and no he did not go to work with Paul because Paul is waiting for his next job to be ready so he is outside cleaning the gutters. Good man that he is. By the way, he liked the comments about his jumper even though I put his face on the screen. Hee hee!

I also started knitting Isabelle's tank top from Barefoot Knits using Cotton Fleece which the pattern calls for. I love this cotton, so smooth and the stitches are defined really well. It actually makes my knitting look so much nicer. This color is Provincial Rose, which Meaghan so kindly ordered in for me. You cannot get this cotton in Australia. I did not even use 1 skein for the back. I am a bit worried about the straps not being long enough though, but I will wait until I finish the front and put them together to see if they need lengthening. I have already cast on for the front so it only takes a few hours a day to knit one piece, so hopefully I will finish this by the weekend. I also want to say a big thank you to Karyn who so kindly ordered me some Cotton Ease in the US, and has posted a picture on her blog so I can see what I am getting. I cannot wait for it to arrive, but like Karyn I think I will have to start hiding mine around the house. The bedroom is starting to look like a plastic container room with all the yarn I have. I hope Paul is at work when it arrives- he sort of freaks out when the postman knocks on the door, even though he loves me knitting. I think the next 10 years will be spent knitting from the stash after this. Well that is it for now, hopefully a picture of the finished tank this weekend, and a bit more progress on the hoodie.

An Updated Shot

Here's Paul finally modelling the finished jumper and it fits perfectly. His jumpers always seem too somehow, as for mine well that's another story. Excuse the sombre expression, Paul does not like having his picture taken, so I guess I am privileged. He even went outside to show the kids his new jumper, and he loves it!

Finally a FO!

The Harry Kewell jumper is finally finished. Too bad Paul had just gone to bed before I finished sewing it up. I will have to wait for him to come home to take a picture, and I will post it on here later tonight.

Pattern: Harry Kewell jumper - Australian Women's Weekly

Yarn: Country Naturals Print - 17 and a bit balls.

Time: I think sometime in May until 28 August 2006

This jumper is very big and heavy and I made the smallest size in the pattern. We'll see how well it fits tonight when Paul tries it on. The collar alone used over 3 balls of yarn. I am so glad to be finished this in time for me to begin my other project, but I will try to finish a few things this week as well, or at least parts of them. I am feeling back to my old self now so I should be able to get a lot of things done, and I did do a lot of housework yesterday so I feel like today I can take some time for myself. I hope you all have a bit of time for yourself too. Happy knitting!

Feeling Much Better

Thanks for your enquiries as to my awful bug that I seem to have had for about a week now. I am starting to feel much better, of course with the help of a "nana nap" in the afternoons to tide me over with my lack of energy. I have been knitting too though, a little bit here and there and hopefully by the end of today I may have an FO, if not maybe tomorrow. I am trying to get a fair bit of knitting in so I can start my new project on Friday, so exciting but I still cannot get that button onto my sidebar. Hopefully I will receive some assistance today with it. Cross fingers! I have also received some Cotton Fleece from Meaghan so that I can try it out in the Ruffled Skirt from Barefoot Knits. If it knits up okay, I may order some other colors, and hopefully Meaghan will stock it in her online store. I am hoping to start using it soon so I will let you all know what its like. It feels quite soft in the skein, but I'll see how it knits up. I will be busy this week as Lachlan has been in trouble again at school so is being kept home for 4 days, so there will be a lot of schoolwork done, and Paul is hopefully going to be able to take him to work with him for 1 day and make him realise just how hard it is to have a job instead of being educated at school. Hopefully things will settle down, and if not we have further measures in place that we need to do to sort out his behaviour problems. Well enough complaining from me, I thought I would post a little pic of Meggie that Lachlan took the other day. She is such a gorgeous cat, I love her to bits. She will be 8 years old in October and is still going strong. She has gotten a bit chubbier this year but I think maybe its just age. She is still my favourite kitty, even though I love the other kitties too. I hope you all have a lovely knitting day!

How I love green yarn

Rowan 8 ply in color Catkin and Rowan 4 ply in Sugar. Isabelle of course loves the sugar color, and I absolutely love the green. It is not as dull as in the photo, but you should know by now what my camera is like. The green arrived today and the pink arrived yesterday. I am sure that the delivery man is wondering what I am buying since he has been dropping them off so much lately, and Paul knows him personally too. There are 10 balls of each color, and the green I want to use for an old fashioned moss and cable jacket for Isabelle. Of course she said she doesnt want a green one, but I will see what happens. Thank you all so much for your comments on my lovely blue cottons too. I really like the colors. I showed mum them yesterday and she quite liked them too.

I would also like to thank you all for your comments asking about my headaches. Yes the headaches disappeared on Tuesday morning, but I am still running off to the toilet a bit, and I take medication for anxiety, and I think that going to the toilet so much is not helping with this as I think the medication is just going straight through my system, and of course now I have been feeling all panicky and anxious, not all the time but on and off which does not make you feel really good, and then of course makes me rush off to the toilet again. I am seeing my doctor on the 7th about some other things and for Isabelle to get her needle (which will not be fun) so I will get her to make sure that this bug has truly gone by then. I dont like feeling anxious and panicky. My doctor is very good, but she is so busy you have to book in 2 weeks beforehand just to see her, hence why I went to another surgery when I felt so sick, and of course ended up being worse than I was with the addition of a headache. I am hoping by the weekend that this anxiety settles down because I have to take Isabelle to a party tomorrow, and I do not want to be rushing off every half hour to the toilet. Sorry if I offend anyone with the image of me rushing off to the toilet every 30 minutes, but I am sure there are worse.

Now after all that information that you really did not want to know about me, I managed to catch up with Gillian yesterday. She needed some help with her sidebar, and I see that by the time I managed to get home that she had already done it. I also popped into Paul's nana's to buy some more budgies for Dad, which is his Father's Day present. We have Father's Day here on the 3rd of September, so I usually struggle with what to buy for him. His other budgie passed away the next day after he got the other two, and we seem to think that since they were inside for so long, that the cold weather and the outside might have shocked them. I know that I would not want to be sleeping outside in the cold. So now he has a birght yellow budgie called Sunny, and a white budgie with black feathers on its wing called Ash. The other two I do not know what names they decided on, but I will try and take a photo of them some time soon. Now all I have to do is find something really good for Paul for Father's Day for the kids to give to him. He has actually gone to kinder with Isabelle this morning to do kindergarten duty, so he should have fun. I think his mum is going to try and pop in to see her as well. She is travelling a lot at the moment, so we dont really see much of her. So that is all for now, sorry for the long whinge about being sick, I just want to feel normal again. I had better go and finish knitting the sleeve to Paul's jumper. I have just about finished the first one, and then I only one more to go. That collar on his jumper used 3 balls of wool, 233 stitches of double rib which took a really long time to knit, and I did a few rows here and there and then decided to just finish it. I am so glad that it fit perfectly into the neckline, there was no way I was going to rip out that much knitting if it didnt. So I hope you all have a lovely day doing what you love!

Swap Pressie Arrived

My mailman dropped off 2 parcels yesterday, one of which was from Karyn in sunny California. She had sent me two patterns for Isabelle, which were greatly appreciated and will be knit up in the near future. She also included a ball of Magic Stripes yarn in one of my favourite colors, and some little lollies called Smarties, which look nothing like our Smarties here in Australia, but I will be sure to send her some of ours to try out in the near future. Thank you so much Karyn for the pressies, and I hope that you receive yours soon. It made me feel much better as I have been suffering from a severe headache, and after reading the notes on the medicine that the doctor gave me, I think my headache and other symptoms were from the medicine. Since not taking any my headache has begun to subside, even though I still feel a bit wonky from having it for so long.

The other parcel was from Crochet Australia. I looked on their website and found some cotton that I had not seen before but it looked very nice, and since I have it I can say that it is very soft. I chose 3 different colors, but I do not have it next to me to say what they are but their website makes it easy to choose anyway. I am thinking maybe some hats or socks to make with this, or something else. It will go into the little (rather large really) stash box for now until I decide. So I hope that you all have a great knitting day or night!

Happy News

We just found out yesterday that we have a brand new neighbour after waiting for 9 months. Welcome to the world Rory Kate weighing in just over 6 pounds. I am sure she will be gorgeous just like her big sister. Isabelle was so excited that she wanted to see her straight away, but had to explain that mummies need to rest for a while before being barraged by the neighbours. By the way, the black and white photo of Isabelle is a picture that I took last week, when I was trying out the other functions on my camera. I have not really sat there and tried to figure out the best ways to take pictures of the things that I make, so I thought if I could get the pictures to look better it would help me out a bit. I still have not mastered that overpowering blue that seems to appear in my photos though, which is a bit annoying. I quite like black and white photos, they seem to have that old fashioned look about them which I love.
So since I have been waffling on (which Paul says I do a lot by the way) I thought I would show you the fabric that I managed to pick up on Saturday. Paul was working in Beaumaris, and had told me about a little post office that was also a quilt shop. How nice of him to notice for me, so of course Isabelle and I decided to travel to work with him and I had to check out the little store which was called Stitchin Post. Very cute shop, and lots and lots of beautiful fabrics. I only bought a few from the discounted shelf, and 2 fat quarters. I just noticed that I bought my favourite colors, yellow, blue and green. I am sure I can make some nice Christmas pressies out of them. Now going to Beaumaris to see the shop was not the only reason I went to work with Paul, I also finally got to meet Hannah, for about 10 minutes before she had her nap. I gave her mum the birthday cardi and hat I had made for her 1st birthday, and then we got to chat for about an hour before having to go home. Isabelle had a play with Bianca too before she had her ballet lessons, so then she went outside and played in the cubby house. It was a nice visit, not long enough, but we are hoping to catch up on the next school holidays in September which should be fun. I am glad that this weekend is over though as yesterday was a visit to the doctor with a stomach bug which he thought I had picked up from something I had eaten. I should be better by the end of the week, but at least the stomach cramps and dizziness have stopped. I should really go and catch up on my Monday morning housework, which involves laundry and vcacuuming and all the fun stuff such as toilet cleaning and washing of the floors, the jobs that I really dont like doing but have to do! Hope you all have a lovely day.

Christmas Is Close

Karyn and I have decided to do a little Christmas swap. Since she lives in the States, I thought that I had better get started on her daughter Noelle's pressie. She is a bit taller than Isabelle and a bit older, so I will need to make this a bit longer. I know its not purple Karyn, but I hope that Noey likes this color too. I cant say what it is since it is a surprise but I thought I would post this so she knows what color it will be. I am hoping to get this done before the end of the month since September will be devoted to the CP Hoodie and my birthday is in there too, and in October I am planning to make a dinosaur jumper for my nephew who will be turning 3, so small is good and quick. I received my Rowan yarn yesterday, but when I try to photograph it it looks nothing like the color it should, so I might try tonight and see if I can get a better result. Well I had better get back to my knitting, so I can send this off in November, and by the way Samantha, I will be stopping by the post office tomorrow to mail your squares to you. Hope that you all have a lovely day knit, knit, knitting!

Native Animal Day At Kinder

We had a wonderful morning at kindergarten today. Matt and Leanne bought their native animal zoo to show all the children. They were very excited, and very well behaved. It was so funny seeing some of the kids hold the animals. Isabelle loves animals so she just dove right in to feed and touch them.
First up we have the long necked tortoise. Do you know that they actually shed their shell. I never knew that about tortoises, and they explained that tortoises have webbed feet so that they can walk, whereas turtles have flippers because they are in the water more. How interesting. The turtle was so tiny so that's why I made the picture bigger so that you could actually see it. It actually runs along quite fast too.

Next up we have Scooby the koala. He is very cute. He just sat in Matt's arms and chomped on the gum leaves from the branch. He was really good letting all the kids pat him. His fur is very soft and light.

This is April, the joey who is about 11 months old. She was absolutely gorgeous, and I think my favourite. She hopped around the circle and ate pellets from the children's hands. She then decided to have a wander around the kindergarten, and when she was finished they popped her back into her large pillowcase which she just jumped straight into. It is like a pouch to her which the joeys usually sit in when they are with their mothers.

Here is Alannah, Isabelle and Olivia with the black headed python, which I am afraid to say creeped me out just a little bit. I did not touch it, but Isabelle kept patting it and stroking its tail. The kids all posed with the snake, and Dylan, a little boy in Isabelle's class just stood there with the python wrapped around him. He loved it.



Next up we have the bearded dragon, which looked like a little prehistoric dinosaur I thought. He was very lively and liked to wriggle around. His skin is quite prickly on the top to touch.


This is the other lizard which is a stumpy tail lizard. He was very cute and felt like a pine cone before they open up. He was quite cute to look at. There was also a tree frog and a fruit bat there too. The tree frog was Isabelle's favourite, but you must wet your hands before holding frogs so it does not take the moisture out of their skins. No-one was allowed to hold the fruit bat, just in case they had eaten fruit in the last 48 hours, because the bat would be able to still smell it, and try to squeeze your hands to find the fruit and squeeze all the juice out. He did eat some grapes and there was nothing left afterwards apart from a tiny bit of grape skin. They were all beautiful animals, and most of them are in the bush so we do not get to see them much around the suburbs. It is great for the kids though to be able to hold them and feed them, and the animals are used to being around the kids too so it makes it fun for everyone!

Rowan books

My postman dropped off a parcel yesterday, and I had no idea what it was. I mean I had only ordered my Rowan books last week from their website, and here they were at my doorstep. How exciting.

Top Left: Classic Babies
Top Right: Classic Bambino
Bottom Left: Classic Garden
Bottom Right: Classic Beach

They are all really beautiful patterns and I cannot wait to knit some more of them.

I also thought I would post progress of the left front and the back of my Twist cardigan. This seems to knit up so fast on 4.5mm needles. I am using DK Gold wool in a dark emerald green color, which looks of course like blue on my screen as always. I am hoping to have the other front knit up by the end of the week, and then only the sleeves and bands to do. The weather is starting to get a bit warmer and Spring is only around the corner so I wil have a new cardi to wear.



I did not get any time to look for a new sock pattern after my books arrived, as I was too busy looking through my new books. I picked out the Bo Peep cardigan and started it last night for my friend's daughter Bianca. It is just gorgeous and I am using Zara 8 ply yarn which knits up beautifully, and it was in my stash so it is just perfect. I also did some shopping on ebay on the weekend and was successful with 3 auctions. I bought some trampoline springs for the kid's trampoline as a few had broken and I told them no jumping on it until its fixed. I am just waiting for them to arrive so hopefully by the end of the week. I also bought some Rowan Rowanspun 4 ply which I have plans for in a Temptation color, but I will take some pics when they arrive. Now to get back to that cardigan knitting......

Corners of my house

This is my sewing corner which is situated in the front lounge room at the moment. It will eventually be put into the study one day when I pack up Isabelle's barbie house. She never seems to play with it much but as soon as I mention about packing it up, she decides to play with it for half an hour. I have just finished sewing the sewing machine cover. It is supposed to be in stripes with a flower embroidery on the front. I will do one properly one day, but now for the time being it is just plain. In the little cupboard which has lavender painted on it, are my sewing patterns and kits, some of which have been done, and a lot of which have not. The desk used to be Paul's dad's when he was alive, so I really do not want to get rid of it. Maybe one day I will give it a coat of paint and fix it up a bit. It really is quite handy having the machine out like this as it does encourage me to do some sewing when I cannot be bothered with some of my knitting projects. I also keep the little SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) bear there which I bought a few years ago. They really are cute, and I also buy the ones that they sell for cancer too.

Speaking of knitting projects, I have nearly finished the left front of the Twist cardigan. I am also halfway through the collar of Paul's jumper so things are progressing well. I also plan to go through my stash to find some nice green yarn to knit up the next square for Annette's blanket, and then off they will go to Samantha. I cannot wait to see the blanket when it is all finished. Quite a few people have knitted squares so far. I am also going to find a nice pattern to do some socks. Mum just finished knitting her second pair which turned out quite nice, so now I am getting the urge to knit some more. I have quite a bit of sock yarn so I will look in my sock book today and decide on a pattern to suit the yarn. The Nancy Bush books have quite a few nice ones so maybe one of those. I hope you all have a lovely day with lots of knitting!

Sorry I have not posted for a few days. I have been trying to catch up on some mental rest since having Isabelle's birthday. She is at my dad's at the moment helping him put his new budgies in the cage. One died the other day, and Paul's uncle breeds and sells them, so we went down to Bacchus Marsh to pick some new ones out. He got a nice green and yellow one and a blue one. I do not know what their names are yet. Isabelle has had a busy week. She lost her second tooth on Tuesday whilst eating lunch. Hopefully she keeps the others for a lot longer. We had to go to buy her another beanie teddy bear on Tuesday. Unfortunately for Isabelle, she had left her 3 favourite toys on her playhouse outside, and did not realise until about 8:00 pm that they were still out there, so Paul wandered out looking for them. He found two of them, but I am afraid that our dog Jake had become quite fond of Isabelle's pink teddy bear and had ripped its insides out and torn off a leg. I tried to hide it in the rubbish bin, and Isabelle was quite distraught about it, so I told her we would replace it, but she was not to take any more toys outside that Jake would ruin. The next morning she went outside, and popped her head in the side door and casually showed me the teddy's leg that she had found. It was covered in mud like the rest of the bear had been, so we put that inside the rubbish bin too. When it was time to get another one though she admitted that she did not want the same one, so instead got a rainbow colored one. Maybe the pink one reminded her of what had happened to the first one. I took this picture of Jake the next day, waiting for me to give him a pat and get his ball for him. Even though he was naughty about ripping up the bear, he is still a sweetie.
So onto the knitting for today. I have actually started knitting Twist which is Bonne Marie Burns pattern from Chicknits. It is really a nice and simple pattern, and so far I have nearly finished the back. I started it on Tuesday so that's not too bad. When I do the fronts I will take a picture so it wont be all just boring stocking stitch.
I also received my copy of Barefoot Knits from the States the other day too. I am going to make Isabelle the items on the front of the cover which are pictured. They are quite cute and go up in size to about 10 years old I think. There are also little dresses and some boys clothes in it too. Just need to find some Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece now.

The mailman also dropped this in the letterbox today. The Interweave Knits mag, which has some nice patterns in it. I really like this, the Sienna Cardigan by Ann Smith. It looks nice and simple. Maybe this will go on the list for future lists. I do not even want to look at that list, it will be like a list to Santa from my kids I think. So that is all for now, hopefully an update by the weekend, and some more knitted squares to show, and ready to send off. Hope you all have a great knitting day!

Garter Stitch Jacket

I have finally finished the Garter Stitch Jacket!

Pattern: Moda Book 7, Pattern 9
Hat: Pattern 13
Yarn: Baby Velvet and Color 4 Me, 2 balls of
each. This was an easy knit, and would have been much quicker but I had a few things to do in between knitting this and organizing Isabelle's birthday as well. I shall be gifting this to my friend's daughter Hannah for her 1st birthday which is on the 30th of August, so I hope that she likes it. I made the hat to go with it which I think is cute and very easy to make.


I also finished up 2 squares for Samantha and shall now do some green ones for her. I did the one in the dark blue using the basketweave stitch which I really like knitting. I will have to try some new ones in the next few squares. Yesterday's party was nice and relaxing, and we still have a bit of food leftover so no cooking dinner tonight, just heating up leftovers which will be nice and easy. Isabelle and I also made a visit to Stitchery Blue in Williamstown on Saturday, and I bought a new knitting book. It is an Anny Blatt book with some cute kids patterns in it. I also bought some 4 ply Shepherd baby wool for another project which I could not find anywhere else. It was nice and sunny in Williamstown on Saturday, but since Isabelle and I had left Melton at about 2:30 we did not have much time to do much else so we just drove home and finished up the birthday food shopping. I must also say thank you to everyone who wished Isabelle a happy birthday. Very much appreciated. I think next year just the 4 of us will go to the Werribee Zoo and have lunch. I feel a bit tired today after the busy weekend, but now have more time for some knitting. I also just finished the back of the stripey cardigan for me so I am going to try very hard to get it finished before I start the Central Hoodie. I will try and finish off the back of Paul's jumper this week and cast on for the 233 stitches for the collar. What fun that will be. I hope that you all have a nice and relaxing day and much time for knitting.

Happy 5th Birthday Isabelle

Happy Birthday Isabelle!

I cannot believe how fast our little girl has grown up. This is one of my favourite pictures of Isabelle which was taken when she was 8 months old. I do have some other favourites too, but time is getting ahead of me to scan any others. She is a gorgeous beautiful girl, who absolutely loves music and dancing. She is in her bedroom listening to Hi 5 and Play School CD's which we got her for her birthday along with a Barbie CD radio player. She is singing already as I can hear her voice from the bedroom. She sounds rather cute and is in time with the music. When we go driving in the car she actually sings along to most of the music quite well.
The day that I went into labour Paul drove me to the hospital. It was 3:30 in the afternoon, and Paul said he had heard the song 'Tiny Dancer' by Elton John on the radio and knew then that we would have a baby girl. Funny little things like that are nice memories when you think back to them. I had my waters broken after 8:00pm because they wanted me to have her that night, and my contractions had not been painful, so after that everything went so fast. I had no medication during Isabelle's delivery which was very different to Lachlan's, which was a very good thing. I could have gone through that birth quite easily again compared to Lachie's which was quite difficult. Isabelle was born at 10:17 I think weighing in at 9 pound 2 oz.
Isabelle is our adorable little girl who knows how to wrap daddy around her little finger and stir her brother up quite easily, but she loves him to bits. She is so full of life and never sits still for very long, and I am so glad that she is happy and healthy and that we had a little girl to complete our family, so I hope Isabelle that you have a very wonderful day and many many more happy birthdays!

Party Time

Isabelle had a wonderful time yesterday and its not even her birthday until tomorrow. She thought it was until I reminded her it is tomorrow so now she is all excited again. I did kindergarten duty and had a wonderful time with all of the kids. They are a really good group of children and all get along too. Isabelle had a little make believe cake at kinder so all the children could sing Happy Birthday to her, and then she chose a song for all of the children to sing to me. They are so cute. She also told all of the children how her tooth came out the day before and then showed them the butterfly bear that the tooth fairy had brought because your first tooth falling out is very special.
The McDonald's party went well too, 21 kids and no real dramas. She got lots of lovely presents which she could not wait to try out when she got home. Lots of nice art things to make and do which is great, since I think those are great kinds of presents for them to do at that age, and Isabelle loves doing them. Here she is blowing out the candles of her birthday cake at McDonald's sitting next to two of her best friends. They all got their faces painted and had a wonderful time playing together. Isabelle was so tired out that she fell asleep in front of the heater at mum and dad's house by 7:00. I took her home at 7:30 and she woke up, but once I put her to bed she went back to sleep again and slept until this morning, so she is in a great mood. I am going to go out soon and decide what cake to get for her birthday. She wants a Freddo icecream cake so hopefully I can find one for her. I only have to make the salads in the morning and a few small things which can wait until just before lunch and we will be all set.
Also I would like to say a big thank you to all those people that commented on my blog for Isabelle. I have read them to her and she was so happy, she loves reading the nice things you say about her. So for now that is all until tomorrow. Happy knitting!

Isabelle's first tooth

has just fallen out. Can you see it at the bottom! She was eating a punnet of strawberries and then she handed me something. At first I thought it was a hard bit of strawberry, but then realised that it was her tooth. I tried to take a picture of the little gap that her tiny tooth left. She is all excited now waiting for the tooth fairy to visit her tonight, and then her kindergarten party tomorrow. Either she will go to bed really early tonight or not want to go to bed at all because she will be so excited. I am hoping that it is the first so I can do some preparation for tomorrow. Luckily the McDonald's party are well organized and I do not have to take anything but lolly bags. On Sunday we will have a nice BBQ lunch and cake for our families. I will soon have another FO to show you, just doing the last part now, and I have nearly finished reknitting the back of Paul's jumper, only about 60 rows to do, which includes the neck and shoulder shapings. Well I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Books and Bendigo Yarn

The postman has been paying a lot of visits to my house lately. Somehow I forgot how many things I had ordered lately, and they all seemed to arrive at the same time. My wool for the Central Park Hoodie arrived just a few minutes ago, so I thought I had better add it to the post whilst the house is quiet and there are no kids home. Perfect opportunity for blogging I say. On the left is the Dusty Blue Aran yarn for the Hoodie. It is kind of like a darkish denim color and I really do love it. Wish I could start it now, but no, must wait for September. Besides it will give me time to finish off some other items that need doing. On the right is an 8 ply yarn, and the color is
Mariner. I absolutely love this color, but have not decided yet what to knit with it, but I will think of something good. I also received my two books that I had ordered from Amazon. The Handknit Holidays book has some really beautiful gloves and mittens in it. I have never knitted gloves before, but I could start one day. Greetings from Knit Cafe is a really nice book, and yesterday I sat in my bedroom and actually read through it. There is a little story that goes with each pattern, and you actually feel like you get to know something about the owner of the cafe. Wish we had a knitting shop where we could pop in for coffee, a chat and a knit. There are some beautiful dresses in here to make, not with my figure of course, but they are beautiful. There is a little girls skirt in there that would be quite good for using up leftover balls of yarn, including the fluffy stuff. It is very cute. I actually quite like a few patterns in these books, and they are very pretty to read and look at. I also printed out a copy of the errata page for Knitting Nature, so I had better make a copy to stick into mum's book too, which I am giving her for Christmas. I have also nearly finished knitting the second square for Samantha, and next hope to make a few green ones, and then I can pop them into the mail. Won't be too long Samantha, maybe after your trip you can pick them up from the post office.
I have also actually pulled Paul's jumper back out to knit on and have nearly finished knitting the front of it. Alas, there was a line that I missed out on for the back so I will be "ripping" it back to the armholes and reknitting it back up tomorrow. Then I will start the collar as I think it will take just as long to do that part as the sleeves, so I might as well do it first and get it out of the way. I will be glad to have that finished. I have put the other cardigans away in my green knitting bag out of the room so that I dont get bored with Paul's jumper and pull one of them out to finish off. You know how it is when you have so many projects on the go that just doing a couple of rows of one leads to finishing that one first, then you neglect the others, and they never get finished. Well I am trying to finish at least four of them before September starts so the Central Park Hoodie will be all I have to do until I finish it. I am so excited to be knitting this, as I love knitting cables.
I am also trying to get Isabelle's birthday party organized. I only have to do the lolly bags, so she is helping me decide what she wants in them for her little friends. I am doing kindergarten duty on Friday so we shall have to have it done before then. She is having it at McDonald's on Friday with her kindergarten friends, so I wont need to clean up afterwards. Normally I have her parties at home, but it always ends up so exhausting, so this should be easier. She is so excited, and I am hoping that her two loose teeth at the front will hang in there until after her party on Sunday. We are just having a lunch with family on Sunday which is her actual birthday, and Isabelle will be able to play with her cousins. I hope that the weather will be nice for both days. So that is all for now, and I am off to finish some housework which I am slowly catching up on since being sick. I am hoping that this cough is gone by Friday. I hope that you all have a lovely day too whether you are basking in the sunshine, or snuggled up inside in the freezing cold like me.