Jada from Rowan's Lenpur Linen Collection

After having finished the toe-up socks for my mum last week, I could no longer resist JADA from Rowan's Lenpur Linen Collection book I'd bought in December at Ribbels last year while I was stopping over in Holland. While I was in Australia I wrote the owner an email requesting the book and the yarn in the green colour as shown in the picture and in Lagoon (balls of yarn shown in photo). When I finally got to the shop on the 4th of December, I didn't like the green colour (might have something to do with the poor lighting due to the bad weather outside), so instead I bought Laggon which is a gorgeous colour. I'm about halfway through knitting this piece. The Lenpur Linen yarn is lovely to knit with, really soft and easy to handle and glide off the needles (50g = 115m/126yards and is made from 75% Viscose Lenpur 25% Linen), I'm using 4mm circular needles and then the pattern calls for 3.25mm needles also, but as I don't have those in circular I'll either be using a 3mm or a 3.5mm circular needle (any ideas/advice on which I should use will be welcome). I'm hoping to have it finished in another week or so, and who knows I might be able to start using it shortly as the weather seems to warming up finally.

There's plenty more patterns in the book I want to make, but I'm going to probably substitute the yarn for some other Rowan yarn as my LNS doesn't stock the Lenpur Linen (yet).

Sock Workshop at Ovelha Negra

As mentioned in my previous post I went to a workshop at my LNS - Ovelha Negra to learn how to knit a sock properly. Well Xana, our teacher, had gone to a lot of trouble to prepare the workshop. She'd made little books with the pattern we would be knitting during the workshop (the paper in the background); she'd cut all the sheep shaped yarn holder out of pretty tough cardboard and wound all the yarn on it (don't you just love the green colour, will need to ask if there is any more of this yarn available); then out of MDF type wood she cut out a foot/leg shape and added a coat of varnish so that we can use it to dry our socks on for them to retain their shape (not in the photos); she also made the goody bag (photo below) from scratch including the embroidery on the front and Ovelha Negra donated the contents.

So I arrived at about 14.45, only 15 minutes before we were supposed to start and as I walk in, the lights go out, luckily it wasn't too dark a day, but we ended up getting candles and lighthing them as the afternoon wore on.

Well the goodies in the bag were two balls of Regia 6-ply sock yarn, colour shade Nordic, a set of 5 Addi DPNs in wood (lovely and soft, fantastic to work with) and of course a pattern for a medium sized woman's foot. I promised myself not to start it yet as I still have so much stuff to finish, but I just couldn't help myself, and so now it's been delegated to lunchtime knitting, in other words it only comes out at lunch time at the office. Having only started it yesterday, I've already managed to reach the part of the heel flap on the first sock, that's how quickly the yarn knits up, and the needles really help a lot also.

The sock we knitted in the workshop won't actually fit my foot as I was running out of yarn and we were all running out of light (the lights eventually came on around 19.00 when we were just about to leave). It's a cute little sock though, and I'll probably hang it up somewhere around the house as a reminder of the workshop. Xana was a great teacher, and trust me seeing as the instructions are all in Portuguese I really needed her help as I don't read patterns in any language other than English. Ovelha Negra also deserves a big thank you for hosting this workshop and giving us this lovely yarn and needles to make our first pair of socks. I learned a lot, loads of neat little tricks and from now on I won't be afraid of knitting socks, and I'll get them to look like socks and not deformed things like my first attempt.

Toe-Up Socks

This is the first ever toe-up sock pattern I tried (freebie from internet - http://wendyjohnson.net/blog - generic toe-up pattern). I knit the first up in an afternoon and the matching pair in two evenings. I made them from some wool I'd bought in a flea market/yard sale years ago in Holland (I believe it was at a old people's home in Leiden), and it was a whole box full of this yarn in several colours. Each "ball" is approximately 100g and it was enough for me to make 1 pair of socks and still have some left over. I used Pony size 3mm Bamboo needles which were lovely to use. My mum was the lucky recipient of these socks as she had a hysterectomy at the beginning of March and was stuck at the hospital for 4 days. She didn't use them in the hospital though because she didn't want to get them dirty, however, she's been using them ever since she's been home, and now of course I need to make a lot more. I offered to make some for my gran, but she said she had so many socks still to be used at home that it really wasn't worth it. My aunt, however, didn't have any such problems in saying that yes she definitely wants a pair also. However much I loved knitting these though, I really wanted to try knitting a sock that didn't come out looking deformed like my Kuogi sock, and so I decided to go to a workshop at a LNS (but more on that in another post). Well I'll be at the farm again this weekend and I'll be bringing some more of this yarn home with me to start on knitting some more socks.

VW Beetle

This is my favorite car. I have an every day car, but this is definitely the one I enjoy driving the most. Sure it has no power steering, no radio, is really heavy to drive and makes a hell of a lot of noice, but I just love it. This car is from October 1968 and used to belong to my maternal grandfather. When he was no longer allowed to drive he mentioned selling it, but I told him that no way was he allowed to sell it, because I wanted it, hey I grew up watching Herbie movies. My granddad never did sell it, and it sat in a garage gathering dust and rust. When I started working I started saving up for two things, buying a house and totally renovating my little VW Bug. Well we housed the car at one mechanic, but he ended up ripping me off and stealing parts I'd bought (well my dad had bought for me). So then my godfather mentioned to his mechanic (who is a strictly MG guy) that I had this little Bug that needed a lot of TLC, and he said he'd do it for me. At first though he was like "What's a young girl like you want with this old falling to pieces car". My response, I love it and it belonged to my granddad (he'd sadly passed away in 2001 and never saw the car the way it is now). Well, after 2 years of working on this car, he finally asked me when I wanted the car back because he needed the space in his garage as he'd just bought a whole load of old MG's he was going to be fixing up. So he finished it for me and then I got to drive it while I was on vacation in Portugal. Now I'm here permanently and every time there is a sunny day (it doesn't do to good with wet roads), I take the Bug out for a spin. I get compliments from everyone, young and old. Actually a neighbour of my gran's who remembers the car the way it used to be (beige/grey color) commented on it to my gran one time I was visiting her, and she's like, yep it's my car, and then corrected herself saying that it's really my car.

Believe it or not, but the car is about 95% in it's original condition, there's a back piece over the wheel that had to be replaced because when my granddad bought the car it was already secondhand and the previous owner forgot to mention he'd crashed into something or other and had the dent fixed, but this made the metal weaker and over the years rust completely ruined the rest of it. The engine is 100% genuine except for the springs, they also disintegrated due to rust. I chose the color, because I love blue and I think it's just perfect. I'm hoping to join the "Circuito da Boavista" Oldtimers next year, now that I've finally registered the car as a classic/oldtimer. (www.circuitodaboavista.com - for info)

Kuogi Socks - Finished

I've heard all sorts of comments about how disproportionate this sock looks, but I guarantee you, it fits perfectly. I'm just finishing off the second sock, just the toe decreases to go and then I'll try take a photo of the socks on my feet so you can see that they do really fit perfectly well.

Actually despite the looks, I've already had requests from my aunt and mum to make them some, although they think that it's a lot of work, actually I averaged 1 week for the first sock, and am doing the same for the second sock. So for a pair of socks, I guess it's just two weeks total.

Well I'm off for a long weekend (4 whole days) at my parents farm. It's carnaval on Tuesday next week, and we've closed the office on monday, so no getting up early for 4 days, woohooo. Also I get a lot of time to finish off the second sock, project 128 and I've already started knitting the Bernat Mystery Afghan KAL (freebie on the bernat blog - www.bernat.com/blog), so I'll be working on that and I'll have some progress shots for you next week.

Have a great weekend everyone

Project 128 - Update 3

So this is as far as I got yesterday evening, after working on it for part of Saturday and Sunday. Had to help my grandma most of the time walking around. She had a nasty fall at the market on Saturday, and pulled a muscle in her upper leg, and now she's having a hard time walking around. Of course I also played with my dogs, and my aunt came over on Saturday to check on my gran and she brought Lara along who got to meet all our dogs. We were worried about Jojo as she's usually quite nasty around other dogs and people she doesn't know, but she sniffed Lara and then ignored her the rest of the time. Dakota on the other hand wouldn't leave Lara alone, she kept sniffing her and she was constantly drooling, she wasn't looking at Lara as food, but she wanted to take care of her, it was really cute.

Ok, it's late, I need to go to bed and get some beauty sleep, another full week ahead of me. bye for now

Kuogi Sock Update

Again, excuse the quality of the photos, just literally took it about 5 minutes ago to show the progress. I still have another 4cm to knit before doing the toe decreases, but I should be able to do that tonight I think.

Will have a progress photo again shortly.

Project 128 - Update 2

Please excuse the poor lighting of the photo, but I get home too late to take a photo during day time and I have to use my lamp, and then it comes out looking like this.

Anyway, this is the update on this project. I worked on it during the evening of Saturday and then the afternoon of Sunday, completing the first carriage of the train. Now I have another carriage to do with another cute little bear in it and a tree. To complete this page though I need to add some little clouds coming out of the engine. Will be doing that next weekend. So this is my weekend project until I've finished the first sock, then I'll focus all my attention on this again, I think.

Sock Knitting Part 2

Just a quick update of where I left off yesterday, when I finally decided to put the needles down that is. If I didn't have to go to work today, I would definitely have stayed up way later to try get a lot more done on the sock. Instead I went to bed at midnight and got up at 6.30 to go to the office and took my sock with me so I could do some more knitting during my lunch hour.

Just in case anyone is wondering, this pattern really is simple to follow and I'm not having any problems with it at all, other than getting used to using dpn's again, as I've been knitting on straight needles to finish off some projects I've recently finished.

Sock Knitting

I really should be focusing on finishing my cross stitch project no. 128 (shown in my previous post), but when browsing the web yesterday I came across a simple sock pattern on Andrea Wong's blog (www.andreawongknits.com then follow the link to the blog at the bottom of the page). Seeing as I've been meaning to try knitting socks for some time now, I decides that this was as good a time as any. While in Australia I bought Patons Big Baby 4ply yarn (60% acrylic, 40% nylon 100g/420m) in this variegated color (picture above) which according to the label is Color 3910 dye lot 763786. It's really thin yarn and even though the label says to use 3.25mm needles I don't have any double pointed needles in that size, so I decided to go for 2mm needles instead. I'm still on the ribbing, but I've decided to only do 3 inches of ribbing as I prefer short socks, but if these work out fine, I might just make another pair where the leg part is longer all the way up to my knees. Anyway, the photo below shows the ribbing at about 1.75 inches which is where I got to yesterday. During my lunch hours I managed to add another inch or so of knitting in between beeing interrupted every now and then. So tonight I'm going to finish the ribbing part and carry on with the pattern. Will show updates shortly.

Lara - New Canine Family Member

Now I know what you're thinking, not another dog, doesn't she have enough of them already. Well you're right, but this dog is not mine. Lara belongs to my youngest cousin. She came home on Sunday with my Aunt who went all the way to Lisboa to go get her. She's a 2-month old Pug puppy and she's tiny. Seriously she's just a little bit bigger than my hand (18cm/6.25 inches more or less). She's really cute though. The little shirt/jacket she's wearing belonged to Zara (my mum's little Yorkie pup) several months ago, but our puppies have grown so much that it no longer fits her, so we gave it to my aunt to keep the little one warm, little did we know how small she was.

We've had to resort to taking jumpers of our smaller teddies because all the other jumpers we have are too big for Lara. I'll be knitting her some new ones shortly though, will need to get her measurements first.

Project 128 - Update 1

Well this is the update of my new cross stitch project. This is the process so far after 2.5 days of working on it. Since Sunday I've not been able to pick up a needle and thread having other things to do. Tonight is going to be another stitchless night as I have a lot of catching up to do on emails and some other reading to do.

New update after the weekend.

Cross Stitch Project 128

I was going to start on a new cross stitch project yesterday after having posted, but I'd completely forgotten about the Annual Home Owners Association Meeting. Luckily my mum phoned to ask me something and then mentioned for me not to forget to go. As usual these things drag on and on and on and on. It's also a little bit to do with the Portuguese mentality. Even though it said that the meeting was to start at 21.00 it doesn't necessarily mean that people actually show up at that time. Having been raised in Holland I'm always punctual and if I know I'm going to be late I always let people know, however, the Portuguese mentality is more like, sure make an appointment but I'll only get there an hour or two later. So even though the meeting was supposed to start at 21.00 I didn't actually go down until 21.30 remembering the same thing had happened last year. When I got there we waited another 45 minutes before actually starting the meeting and then it dragged on until about 23.45. There were people who only showed up at 23.00.

Anyway, because I was down at the meeting all evening long, I didn't get around to starting anything. So now I'm going to finish this post and get started, hopefully this little project won't take me too long to make and who knows I might have something to show by the end of the weekend.

Speaking of weekend, have a happy weekend everyone, I'm off to spend some time with my parents and gran at my parents' farm, so a chance to take loads of photos of the dogs and maybe I'll for another one of my nature walks.

Ribbit by Spud and Chloe

This is RIBBIT designed by Susan from Spud and Chloe (http://www.spudandchloe.com/). I came across this website while I was vacationing in Australia, but at the time I didn't have the patience to sit behind the computer for too long as it was such nice weather outside. Well this past weekend after doing some regular housework which really needed to be done, I decided to visit the blog and start at the beginning. Well there's plenty of patterns I've added to my knitting list and having just finished the two Best Friends Cats for the two little boys, and not wanting to start on my cross stitch project (I'm starting that as soon as I finish writing here), I decided to try this little fellow out. Of course I didn't have the suggested yarn, but I went through my stash and found some left over green, black and red from a jacket I knit for my cousin two years ago (he wanted a Jamaican flag on it), I just started it. I wasn't sure I had enough, but low and behold I had plenty, because I still have plenty left over. So anyway,the only things I changed were that I didn't add the tennis ball for the body (didn't have one at hand), and I didn't cast off where I was supposed to for the body, but just continued on with the head which worked out quite nicely. The hands and feet were a bit trickier, but after I got the hang of the first one, it was clear sailing the rest of the way. The arms and legs are done in I-Cord, but I'd never done that, but I liked it so much that I even made Ribbit a little red I-Cord scarf. I'm not sure which Spud and Chloe project I'm going to make next, it could be the turkey, rabbit, elf, hats one of the many other projects. They're regularly adding new posts and patterns, so if you're a knitting fan and liked Ribbit here, definitely go check out their site. Actually I'm thinking I'm going to get a request as soon as a friend of mine sees this little guy, because she loves frogs.

Hats and a Scarf

I normally don't show presents until I've sent them, but seeing as I was asked to make these, and the recipients know that they're coming I'll make an exception. I've now made 9 of these hats in different sizes, yarns and colours. The boys chose their own colours while we were shopping at K-mart in Australia, as did the mother of the two boys. With the left over yarn I ended up making the scarf for the mum. I didn't have enough of the white to make a long scarf, so I ended up incorporating the left over yarn from the boys' hats as well. I started with the blue one and then switched to the white and finished with the red. The red and blue I put a pattern in, but i decided to leave the white plain. Seeing as my friend is Dutch and her boys are half Dutch, I thought it was appropriate to create the Dutch flag in the scarf. This pattern is so simple to make and I'll definitely be making it more in the future. If you're interested in the pattern check out http://www.coatsandclark.com/ look for project LW1268. Enjoy

Best Friends - Cats

These two little cats will eventually find their way to Australia, but first I need to make their little clothes and finish all the other things that I promised to make and send. I've basically got just the cross stitching things to finish, the knitting part is all done. These two took about a day each to knit up, and another day to sew together. I just finished them yesterday, as you can see they're not quite identical, because I used several different knitting techniques and sewing techniques. I hope the little boys I made them for will like them though.

My Co-Workers

These darling puppies of mine are also my co-workers, as in they're at the office with me all day long. Rusty (the small hairy one) is usually the only one that sleeps on my desk, but Dakota (the black one) decided last week that she also wanted to sleep on the desk, and so i had to put a blanket on my desk and here you have both of them half sleeping. Actually Rusty even helps me move the mouse around and on ocassion even helps me typing, although it's not really typing, he just decides he wants attention so he sits on my keyboard. Luckily he's not done any damage to anything i've been doing. And my desk is also large enough to house both dogs, my PC and my work, so they dont bother me too much. I love having them there with me and it gives me an excuse to go outside and take them for a walk, otherwise i'd spend all my time cooped up inside. This way i get some fresh air every two hours and I get away from my computer which is always good also.

Baby Presents

My friend in South Africa had her 1st baby, a little boy, last November and I made him a whole bunch of little gift, which I still need to send, but what with all the holidays I haven't gotten around to it, also the mail here is extremely slow due to all the gift people send over Christmas, so to be on the safe side I'm waiting till next week to send her everything. I hope she likes. I sure loved making these little gifts.

Christmas Presents Part 2 - Cross Stitched Gifts

So here are the other gifts I made. I think I showed progress photos of these while I was in Australia as that's where i stitched them all. I just finished them off when I came to Portugal because that's where i'd left my ribbon and stuffing. The little tins I bought in Australia at Lincraft (really fantastic hobby shop, wish we had something like that here in Portugal). So here you can see the front and backs of each item. The top one I made for my gran, the middle one I made for my aunt and the bottom one on the right i made for my mum as her star sign is a ram and she loves sheep, so i thought it very fitting. Actually the tin is really appropriate for my gran, as she actually has one of the original Singer sewing machines depicted on the tin. She got it when she was 12 years old and went into apprenticeship as a seamstress. It still works and it's well over 60 years old. I'm definitely keeping it, or my mum is anyway. I love working on that one as you have to peddle to get it to work, seeing as i'm still a novice at a sewing machine (my mum usually does all that for me), this one is great because i can decide the speed I'm going to go at.

Christmas Presents Part 1 - Knitted Gifts

First of all let me start by wishing everyone a very Happy New Year. These are the knitted gifts I gave away at Christmas in 2009. The first picture shows a Cuddle Bunny which is a freebie from Lincraft Australia, the yarn I used is something I had in my stash and that I'd bought years ago in Holland, it's really cuddly and soft. I've actually made this one twice. This one in blue and then one in a dark purple which I made for a baptism. The second photo shows the finished Best Friend kit I'd bought in Australia (i showed the progress in a previous post), and this is the finished and sewn together item. I made this one for myself but my mum liked it so much that I'll be making one for her as well. The only thing I have to do still to make it 100% complete is make the clothes, but I'll be doing that with the help of my mum and gran when I've finished the two cats I'm currently making which will then be shipped back to Australia for the little boys of the friend I stayed with as they begged me to make them for them while I was there. The two Christmas Stockings were Kits I bought at K-mart Australia and they're by Palette Collection. They were both really simple to make and I managed to complete them in a day each. These I gave to my two close work colleagues here in Portugal as we always exchange presents at Christmas time. I got a lovely necklace and some scented candles on a little plate, which I've already used and they smell really nice. The little heart to the bottom was just a pattern I found on the internet (mochimochiland) and I had to try it out. Since then I've already made one using double pointed needles to create a seemless heart and that worked out really well, so I'll be creating a whole lot more over the next year.