How do you spell veriagated?

So, I'm knitting away on a sweet little varigated cardigan for aforementioned baby. And I am a slow knitter, I'll gladly admit that, and its not helped by the complete lack of time I seem to have, but this is turning into a black hole of yarn.

I just seems to keep going, and I measured and knitted and measured and knitted and measured, and it never seemed to reach that 16cms I needed. Finally, I got onto the raglan sleeves. And its doing the same old thing again. But, I can finish this tonight. It doesn't matter that I have plenty of train knitting time tomorrow, or plenty of coffee knitting time, or that tomorrow is my only day off before I leave, or that I have a plane trip to knit on, or that this baby doesn't come until June, or that I'm exhausted, I HAVE to finish the back tonight.

I don't need to sleep, or to worry about the fact that I'm falling asleep at my laptop, I WILL finish, I HAVE to, and to be honest I am getting wholly sick of this pastel verigated colour, and starting to seriously wonder whether pink patches make it inappropriate for a possible boy baby, but after all the work and prac and packing, I think I'm allowed a little insanity.

Stop the press

Everything kitterly happening here has been put on hold. There's a baby coming. My boss at Oxfam is 3 months pregnant, so I need to get knitting. Having only finished 25 hexipuffs, it may take some time for that particular project to get moving. Twilight sparkle has a body and a nose, but again may be sleeping for a little while. My family and I are however going to the UK for a month, meaning that there will be long flights, midnight stopovers, train rides and taxis and cold nights in a hotel room. Viz, lots of knitting time! I'll take some twilight with me, seeing as I'm likely to go insane after trying to use so much tiny tiny yarn to make tiny tiny clothes for a tiny tiny human. I'm starting with a boring basic raglan sweater, just to get me used to the tiny tiny again.

In other news, I feel I should mention to the world that I'm studying nursing. This means that I'm interested in medical interesting things, and I have to say that necrotic pressure ulcers are pretty awesomely amazing. A friend of mine is in America at the moment, and is alive and well after flying out of New York just before the storms hit. As well as very overly excited about the new babies. I may've gone completly insane from lack of sleep occuring during prac, but I think its not too bad, I've just gone insane with the christmas baking and cleaning. Also this may be due to a medication change. From Fluoxetine (Prozac) to Escitalopram (Lexapro). This means I may be a little bit manic... However, it will hopefully end well :)

There is one project (a surprise for someone who might be reading this blog) who is not yet shelved, however there are only ends to weave in. Hopefully there will be photos when I get to see this special person on Thursday.

Quick Succession

Its been a busy week, I've cast on a few things for gifts (christmas is coming, afterall!) And I've been packing, because we're heading off to the UK in 2 weeks. eep! I need to do some catching up with photos, and explain the twilight sparkle some I think.

Well, an old friend of mine, who is now a renewed relationship, has a number of friends (~21 year old males) who are BIG fans of My little pony - Friendship is Magic. Kinda creepy, but each to their own I guess. When a birthday came around, this friend needed a dice bag for his weekly dungeons and dragons games. After a guage failure and a very, very small Dice bag of doom, I sewed a very plain and boring black one. This meant a realisation that I was crafty, and a discussion about the costs associated with buying online plushies (up to 250AUD). Hence, when the next birthday came, I said I'd make one for Ben. As such, I fished out an old book I had, Huggable Crochet, and tried a few of those patterns to see how my crochet skills were (I haven't croched since I was about 10, and I just couldn't face doing sooo many ponies with all that knitting, so a quick one was prefered). This produced:

Both of which have now gone to good homes, Byron on the left and Frankfurt on the right. There is a camera shy octopus, and a special present for a special lady as well. It was a good little book, gave me a chance to really practice reading crochet patterns and get used to a hook instead of needles again.. I picked it up for $20, and I've made 4 animals, failed at about 3, and have used a lot of what Lucas says to help with my new pony.

Speaking of, I changed my pattern slightly from last time, I crocheted 18 rnds straight, then reversed my increases, full body pattern here:

Rnd 1: Ch 4 and connect to form a loop. 10 hdc in centre of loop.

Rnd 2: Ch 2, 2 hdc in each st to end of rnd (20 sts)

Rnd 3: Ch 2, 2 hdc in every 2nd st to end of rnd

Rnd 4: Ch 2, 2 hdc in every 4th st to end of rnd

Rnd 5-22: Ch 2, 1 hdc in every st to end of rnd. Repeat 18 times. (36 sts)

Rnd 23: Ch 2, 4hdc, hdc 2tog* rep to end of rnd
    (I stuff around here)
Rnd 24: Ch 2, 3hdc, hdc 2tog* rep to end of rnd

Rnd 25: Ch 2, hdc 2tog to end of rnd. Run yarn through remaining sts, pulling tight.

Good luck!

And finially, awhile ago I started the Holden Shawlette, for my sister. Its now finished and blocked, with a Jenny Cloche done with my leftovers, which actually fits her head, which is a bit exciting :)

Delayed..

Sorry everybody! I've been a little flat out of late. I have finished my body, as you can see below.

Ignoring my mess behind that...

However, I've been having a lot of issues with the head. And while this was happening, pattern drafting was not.

Nothing tooo serious, just a little hospital excursion to work out my medication and fainting episodes.

THIS was.

As you can probably tell, that is an IV line in my arm, injecting iron. I've had a lot of medication changes and the stress of trying to work part time, do prac placements for 2 week lots that are all assessed and do assignments, catch up with friends, clean and cook and organise, my knitting has been falling slightly by the wayside. In response, I started a ferocious knitting job on my hexipuffs for The beekeepers quilt. Its a fun adventure, the quilt is fun to knit because you don't suffer the horror of never ending knitting and you also get an exciting chance to think about what colours go best together while you make them :) I've got about 20 so far, and wanted about 400, so it will be awhile until it starts to look like a quilt...

I've been doing some sewing as well, after my sister recently get an overlocker, our lives in the sewing world have improved so much!

 

Witches! in ORANGE!!

This magnificent fabric was $3 a metre, preparing for Halloween. So naturally I bought 4 metres and am going to make a rockabilly dress!! I'm using the Katjusha pattern from Burda, and after a quick redraft for girls with a bust, its looking ready to start! :)

 

Le body

This is a Twilight Sparkle butt. I've started with the easiest part of it, pattern as follows;
Ch 4 and connect to form a loop. 10 hdc in centre of loop.
Ch 2, 2 hdc in each st to end of rnd (20 sts)
Ch 2, 2 hdc in every 2nd st to end of rnd
Ch 2, 2 hdc in every 4th st to end of rnd
Ch 2, 1 hdc in every st to end of rnd. Repeat 12 times. (36 sts)

More will come later, but this is all I have so far. Apologies for any errata, and please have a go if you want to try it!

Step 1

Yarn!

This is my pile of 100% acrylic marvel yarn. Hot pink (1011), mauve (1047) and purple (1025). I'm going to be working this double stranded, because my past experience is that softies need a very small gauge. I also think I'll have to do the eyes in felt. Knitting them would just be too hard...

My Little Pony

So, after a bit of an absence again (involving an awful lot of uni and work), I'm working on making a my little pony plushie.

Specifically, Twilight Sparkle.

As I have no pattern, I will be making her up as I go along. It could end badly, but lets hope not!

I'm also making a squirrel girl costume for a friend's 21st.


Sparkle will be done as a sort of knit along, mostly because I need a record of what I'm doing here :s

Hello My loves!!!

So, its been awhile... Unfortunately what with uni and work and a few relationship catastrophes and a friend being in hospital, the blog has somewhat fallen by the wayside... I'm sorry to say that I was also a little scared to come back, it was so long after awhile, and then it just got longer and longer... So, as an apology, I send you a picture montage of my life in of late...

A teeny weeny blanket for a little girl, because he teddy was getting cold at night, and so clearly had to get her blanket... Its a very basic design, just basket weave with coloured rows, but it makes it interesting and used up a bit of the stash :)

The start of a shawl for my sister. I used the Holden Shawlette pattern, which was a nice started and suited the yarn quite well :)

These are some very sweet crocheted snowflakes. I made them to put on top of all of the Christmas brownies, just for something a little extra. I also put on each in all of the special cards :)

The brownies themselves, mostly all gone... With about 2 blocks of dark chocolate in them these brownies were like heaven, in a very heart attack inducing way... There were brownies and peppermint bark and caramels, and it was an amazing time to be living alone...