Even more finished items and CHALLENGE COMPLETED!

I seem to be on a bit of a roll with finished items at the moment, although most of them are small projects, it's not that I've suddenly become Speed Knitter.

I finally finished the fourth of my challenge projects this year (four adult-sized garments in a year, in 4ply, dk, aran and chunky). This is the Garter Yoke Cardi finished and blocked, although I haven't yet sewn any buttons on it, as I can't decide whether just to go for one at the top or all the way down. I think I should have made the next size up, as I can get into it and it's not tight, but it doesn't do up at the front. I hadn't intended to wear it done up so that isn't the end of the world, but it does affect what I decide to do about buttons.

At the last minute I made a load of mini Christmas stockings to go on a friend's stall at the church craft fayre. Almost all of them sold really quickly, at £2.50 each. These were a good way of using up oddments of sock yarn, and the free pattern is Mini Christmas Stocking Ornaments by Julie Williams.

I used the Knitting Goddess pack of sock yarn I bought at Yarndale to make the OH a hat for Christmas (don't worry, although he reads this blog, he's seen me making it as I kept trying it on him!). I chose the Mini Roni Hat pattern as it comes in such a wide range of sizes. I used about 5 mini skeins for the hat, so still have a couple of the lightest colours to use up.

And I've been knitting another Puerperium, this time for a friend who is expecting a little girl (actually, I know she went into hospital to have a caesarean a couple of days ago but isn't home yet, so I should get this in the post fairly soon!). I used the lime green RYC cashsoft 4 ply I dyed in the summer, with some careful measuring for the sleeves to make sure I used it all up.

Once it was finished though I wasn't so keen on the colour. It had dyed a bit splodgy in places and was a bit pale for a baby. So I got out the Kool aid and did a bit of dyeing again. I used some sachets of black grape flavour, and the microwave technique. This looks more like it! It was actually a lot easier dyeing the finished garment than the yarn-in-a-skein had been back in the summer. It turned out my skein winding was dreadful, so it took forever to disentangle the yarn and turn it into a ball the first time I dyed it.

When I blocked it (do you like my blocking mats? The OH gave me them for my birthday!) it looked a bit disturbingly in your face red, but I think that just the light then.

This is more like the real colour - a kind of deep pinky/purple, which is much more what I was aiming at. The buttons are little pandas, which I think I got free with a knitting magazine a while ago.

I'm pleased with how that has turned out. There are a few other things on the needles/sewing machine at the moment, but they're all Christmas presents so I can't reveal them on here.

Norwich

I don't know where the time has gone, but the end of October and first half of November were incredibly busy and I simply didn't get time to blog.  At the end of October I went for another meet up of the knitting librarians (we met up once before), this time to Norwich, and took advantage of needing to be over that way to visit Cambridge and stay with Knitting on the Green again. I had a fun day in Cambridge, mooching around the shops and visiting the marvellous new Incunabula Exhibition ("Private lives of print") at the University Library.

The next day we headed off early on the train to Norwich to meet the other librarians. It was good to explore Norwich again, after going on holiday there four years ago. We walked along the river from the station, and explored shops in the Lanes area, including a lovely bookshop, the market and two yarn shops, Norfolk Yarn (which I visited on our holiday in its previous location) and the Crafty Ewe.
I'm still amazed at how much yarn shops have improved in the 9 or 10 years that I've been knitting. Remember the days when you didn't see sock yarn in a shop, let alone lace weight? We see to be well and truly past that now. It's also good to see shops selling a variety of cheaper and more expensive yarns.

Window of Norfolk Yarn

Window of the Crafty Ewe

 We went over to the Forum to have lunch, partly because there was a lot of space for knitters to sit and knit and chat, and also because it's home of Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library. It's an impressive building.

After lunch, I decided to head back to the Crafty Ewe to make a yarn purchase (how did we buy yarn in the days before being able to check yardage on Ravelry on your phone?!) before heading back to the station.

I bought six balls of the very reasonably priced Sweet Briar Chunky in a sort of tealy/greeny/bluey shade. This is intended for a Bulky Brioche Raglan, which was in one of the first issues of Interweave Knits I ever bought, and which I've wanted to make ever since!

Garden at the beginning of November 2014

Last week was busy so I'm only just getting round to posting this now. The sun is getting low in the sky these days, as you can see from the first picture! The first weekend of November was disturbingly warm, despite the low sun, and we had temperatures in the high teens, which made for very pleasant gardening. It has dipped since though, and it was 9° out in the garden today!

These are a few plants we bought on my birthday weekend (no, I haven't bloggged about that yet!). This is a replacement for "Spiky bush", who was purchased a year ago to go under the bird feeder to stop the pigeons being a nuisance down there. I don't think its roots took as it was fine whilst the weather was wet, but as soon as the weather turned warm it turned brown and died. This new one is smaller (but will grow bigger over the next ten years) and it's called Picea Glauca Globe. I've also moved the bird feeder back a bit so it's now in the middle of a bush, which should stop the pigeons compacting all the soil round the base of it.

This is part of a bed in the front garden, which had some older plants in it that weren't doing well, their leaves went all mottled and  unhealthy looking. So I dug them up, and we bought a couple of new plants. The left hand one is another Abelia Grandiflora, which was in a new section of the garden centre where they had smaller versions of many plants which were a lot cheaper (and it'll grow!). The right hand one is a Choisya ternata Sundance (Golden Mexian Orange Blossom), which has lovely bright green/golden leaves, hopefully making that corner look lighter.

These Hellebores are also newly planted, but they're ones I've grown from seed from a Hellebore given to us by a neighbour. They are showing lots of new leaves and I'm hopeful that they'll flower early next year. The Daphne has also got buds forming on it.

My newly planted up containers are looking good, and the pansies will hopefully flower through the winter. The Hellebore in the middle is from the bargain shelf at the garden centre.

Newly potted up cyclamen - this has been on the go for a couple of years now, and I keep thinking it's died each summer, but it comes back each year.

We've done some clearing up and tidying up ready for winter. The half-hardy fuchsias and the Alstroemeria have been tucked up in the cold frame to protect them from the worst of the weather (don't know whether there will be a 'worst of the weather' this year - last year I think we only had one frost).

We tidied up the patio, and I've put the herbs in pots in a line to make them easy to find for evening cooking sessions - picking herbs by the light from the security light! The wooden bench has been moved further away from the shed, as that area floods very easily (the drainage is really poor - we're saving up for a new patio) and I don't want the bench to be stood in water over the winter.

This is a couple of plants that I've had for several years, but their leaves look so pretty in Autumn I couldn't resist taking a picture. They are both Heucheras (one of my favourite plants). The back one is "Ebony and Ivory", which my Mum brought with her one time she visited. The one in the front is "Georgia Peach", which I bought with a garden gift voucher received when I left a job a few years ago. Georgia Peach has been planted in various spots around the garden, and in a container, and wasn't very happy, but it seems to be thriving in this spot.

It's been so mild up until now there are already signs of bulb foliage appearing above the soil, although the new cold weather will slow them down a bit. I love the signs of next year's flowers already appearing too - something to look forward to over the Winter! The Camellia is covered in buds and should look really pretty early next year.

And these are just three of the many buds that have formed on the winter-flowering Clematis "Wisley Cream". This is really pretty, and lovely to see flowers in the depths of the winter. I'm hoping this will be the year that I achieve my aim of having something in flower in the garden every month of the year!

Think that's all for now!

Finished items

I've been on a bit of a knitting roll recently. I took the socks that I was knitting in Swansea in August away with me to Yorkshire and Yarndale, as a straightforward portable project. And they were perfect for this. The pattern is Basic Ribbed Socks by Kate Atherley, and they fit really well. The yarn is Bergère de France Opal, which is lovely and thick knitted on 2.5mm needles.

Then last week I finished my not nautical or striped, but now with stripes, nautical striped sweater. This used almost all of the 15 balls of the Debbie Bliss Cotton Denim Aran yarn I had in my stash. I'm really pleased with this. Despite not getting gauge and deciding to wing it a bit (I knitted the smallest size, and made the body longer than in the pattern), this fits really well. The "design feature" of stripes on the upper body when I realised I had two slightly different colourways in my stash, rather than 15 balls of one, also seems to have worked. There is also one sleeve each in the different colourways.

 This means I'm doing really well on my four-garments-in-different-yarn-weights-in-a-year challenge. That's chunky, 4ply and aran all completed. The DK one, the Garter Yoke Cardigan is coming along well, and I just have one sleeve now to finish on this.

As the number of projects I've got on the go was getting worryingly low(!), I thought it wise to cast on for something else. I always like to have a smaller, more portable, project on the go for things like taking to knitting group or travelling by train. I couldn't resist winding up the set of Knitting Goddess mini skeins I bought at Yarndale, and casting on for a hat for the OH. I decided on the Mini Roni hat, which comes in all sizes from premature baby to absolutely huge adult. It turns out the OH has an absolutely huge head so I hope it's going to fit.

I love the colour of these mini skeins

And don't they look cute wound into little balls?!

Of course, those projects aren't going to keep me busy for long, so I'd better get deciding what to make next.