april chalenge revisited

lets see how well i did on these, yellow ones I completed, green ones partially completed, white I didn't get near.


A is for allotment clearing. dig up bramble roots.
B is for baking bread at least once a week
C is for finishing christmas pressies from last year
D is for drive home from cornwall
E is for exercising for 20 mins per day
F is for finishing 3 other WIP
G is for tidying the garage
H is for clipping the hedge
I is for knitting an item using intarsia
J is for junk clearout, 1 box a week to charity shop
K is for knitting an item from handspun
L is for lawn clearing, mowing, weeding, regrowing grass
M is for making swatches for at least 3 pattern ideas.
N is for not buying any more yarn this month
O is for organising my kitchen shelves and cupboards.
P is for getting out my secret pal's final package.
Q is for 20 mins quiet time to read every day.
R is for cooking at least one new recipe every week.
S is for spinning at least 100g of the roving
T is for clearing the front room table
U is for undie and sock drawer clearout.
V is for cooking at least 3 veggies in each evening meal
W is for weeding the front garden
X is for eXperimenting with dyeing roving (ok I cheated badly there
Y is for yarn tidying, clear up the stash and sort the WIP.
Z is for finishing putting the stars on my daughter's ceiling above her bed- zzzzzzzz


I don't think that's a bad effort considering my late start and the enormity of some of the tasks I'd set myself.

However, I now need to set myself a challenge for May. The suggestion has been one for gardening, something outdoors to take advantage of the scrummy weather we've been having recently. I shall see what I can come up with for that.

knit a river

I know that many people donated squares towards the water aid knit a river project. This is nearly complete with the march through London to attempt to increase awareness about lack of clean water for so many people, happening on the 12th may.

I went along to one of the sewing up sessions today at water aid's London HQ. They have recieved 60,000 knitted and crocheted squares. When the project was first suggested they weren't expecting more than a few hundred and have been absolutely astounded by the response from around the world. I don't think they will underestimate the generosity and compassion of knitters again.

There are more pics on my flickr account, but I didn't want to stick up too many here and and make it unviewable for anyone on dialup.

thankyou

Firstly, a big thankyou to curlytop, who sent me this yarn to go to camp with me this summer. We've taught knitting on camp before, and it went down pretty well, but we don't have a lot of money to spent on craft materials, so your donation will be much appreciated.



Secondly, this is a selection from the squares I'm knitting towards the great blanket swap. I found that a search through the stash got me a LOT of yarns that will be suitable for this, probably enough for 6 blankets. I think my problem with this one will not be where to begin, but where to stop. I'm enjoying working with loads of colours, seeing how they go together, which si great for learning about colour before spending loads on expensive wools for garments and they are great mindless knitting for when I'm stressed about how much I have to do.

Thankyou secret pal

My knitty sp sent me a scrummy package with yarn, chocolate, gifts for the kiddies and a garden ornament.



this is some of the yarn she sent me. I'm taking part in a group project with my knit group. We're all knitting squares out of scrummy coloured wools that we will then swap with each other so we can all make really nice coloured blankets. Made one as a group project for a preggers friend as a baby blanket and decided it turned out so well that we all wanted one for ourselves. This yarn will be absolutely perfect towards my share of the project. I also got some really nice variegated cotton. Wish I could get cheap cotton in nice colours here, but a taster is certainly better than nothing.



Girlchild took great delight in finding play dough. She adores this stuff and will spend hours playing with it. The lad is rather impressed with it as well and has stuck his poster up on his wall.

So thank you sp. Can't wait for the next instalment.

more pictures

Firstly, girlchild enjoying her chocolate bunny.



Then sleeping it off later



Crockpot dyeing the sock yarn



Sock yarn drying on the radiator. I'll have to get a better picture of this later



Cozy from knitty. I didn't want to wait until I had the sock yarn dry to knit with nice green yarn. This is an alpaca that I bought at a show last march and couldn't think what to do with it. I'ts part of the first really massive stash enhancement I did. With the sari silk I couldn't use going partly to fee, partly to my mother, a pattern to use up the indigo denim, it seemed good to use this up at the same time. Plus its a cooler day today. I won't get many more days where I can knit alpaca during the day for a while so it's definitely a good time to start.

500 yards of sock yarn

I think I got a little enthusiastic this week with the spinning and I've estimated that this is 500 yards of handspun sock yarn, all ready to dye. I think it's gonna be a greenish colour. Definitely can't stay white if I'm going to wear it camping. anyway, it's about 130g of yarn there, so is not too far off the weight I would expect from a commercial sock yarn of about 200 yards per 50g. I'm feeling very pleased with myself atm for being able to get an even-ish yarn of the right weight on my first try spinning sock yarn.

and a start of the pix

Dorset yarn bought from my freind Cledry yarner



spun



plied



with a little bit leftover



and swatched on 2mm needles.



This yarn will soon be dyed and become warm socks I can wear to camp.

D is for

driving home from cornwall, well sort of.

I'm home now and I can finally start getting on with my challenge list properly. I think I'm going to have to work pretty hard to be able to do it within a month. particularly some of the bigger jobs like the gardening, the kitchen and the garage.

Going to do the front lawn today. It got half killed when the other half put down weed killer to kill off the thistles. I'm going to dig over the dead bits and seed. Not sure yet if I'm going to do it myself, or make himself do it. That shouldn't' take too long anyway. It's about the size of a postage stamp.

I'm going to show off some of my holiday pix and yarn pix and stuff later tonight. too nice a day to be doing it all now.

damn that car, damn that car

It's the gearbox gone on it, and I have no idea how long it will take to get fixed, therefore absolutely no idea how long it will take me to get back home.

On a slightly more cheerfull note, I took the dorset roving outside and took some pictures in the sun and I've been spinning more of it. it's taking a while, but I knew it would. I can understand why it was recomended for socks. I can feel that in the wool and in the small swatch I did. I hope, that by my first camp of the year, I shall be the proud owner of nice socks.

I'll post later with hopefully something more exciting. I think we may be going down to the lizard for ice cream later and go for a walk in the woods and see some dairy cows, which girlchild will love.

finished....

Finished the sock swatch and knit most of the swatch for the pattern last night. The knitting is moving far slower than I would like. Not sure I will be getting the knitting part of my challenge done at all with the rate I'm moving at. Guess I'm doing a lot of stuff other than knitting atm that is keeping me busy, but I'll have to do that at home as well to keep up with the resy of my challenge.

Went to a farm butcher today. Good, properly hung meat for less than I pay for cheap, crap with added water in London. So I just bought £50 worth to fill my freezer. I also bought a sack of potatoes and I'll get some other veg on my way home tomorrow.

Girlchild liked going to the butcher, because they keep peacocks there and it's mating season for them I guess, because there are males with the beautiful tails, trying to make friends with anything that moves.

Beach again this afternoon I think. It's a nice day, kids get a walk on the beach and to play in sand. I'll get my daily exercise trying to get them off the beach after an hour or so.

I shall spin some more of the sock yarn before lunch. I think I'll set myself a task to do a little each day. When I get home, and get to my dpn's, i'll start knitting them. I would love to start today, but I cannot justify buying more needles just to stary a day earlier. I'll show you pics when I get home as well.

April challenge

I know it's now day 2, but I'm going to recount my day 1 first.

A lot of my list is stuff that I need to do at home, so will have to wait until then. However, I have finished one of my WIP, for F, begun a swatch for a pattern idea for M, begun spinning roving for S and eaten loads of fresh veggies for V.

I've also put onions, carrots and muchrooms into the beef stew for tonight that will also be served with cabbage and peas. so a good start on day 2.

I'm off in a minute to take the daughter for a walk for my 20 minutes daily exercise and i'm declaring that chasing the girlchild about Cledry Yarner's party yesterday counted as my exercise for yesterday.

I'm still debating about whether buying roving off her yesterday was breaking the yarn diet. I say no, because I asked to get it over a month ago and it was just the luck of the draw that ment I didn't see her until the first day of my yarn diet. She says this stuff will be good for socks, so I'm going to see about spinning it up so I can make thick socks for camping. I think I'll spin, then ply, then dye with food colourings, a nice dark green. I'll use something simple, probably the silver's sock class pattern I used for my opal socks. I know it works and makes nice shaped socks.

Today's plan is to finish the swatch, go into truro this afternoon to visit the yarn shop there, to buy some embroidery thread to stitch onto the swatch, spin a bit more of this yarn and ply enough to do a guage swatch and sew up a knit toy for another finished WIP.