Ishbel

First of all may I say a huge thank you to everyone who bid recently for Happy. He is on his way to a new home for the princely sum of £35:00 which is wonderful. Thank you very much to Kathryn who placed the winning bid.

Now then here is Ishbel. Knitted using Baby Camel and Silk from Knitwitches, I am really pleased with how this little shoulder shawl has turned out. I bought the yarn at last year's Wonderwool Wales. It is incredibly soft and drapes beautifully, with a lovely sheen.

I used 4.5mm needles, and although I knitted the smaller version of the two shawls I knitted an extra repeat of Sections A and B. I had 10g of yarn left over.

This yarn isn't called Seriously Gorgeous for nothing!

Down Wembley Way

I'm sure you all know by now what an avid Liverpool supporter I am, and while DD has followed in my footsteps, DS2 has followed Mr A and become a Shrewsbury Town supporter. Ah well, you can't win them all ;-)

Mr A has followed Shrewsbury for ever, and has seen some wonderful matches at their old ground, The Gay Meadow, most notably FA Cup defeats of Manchester City and Everton. The Shrews have moved out of the town centre to the wonderful Pro-Star Stadium, but memories of The Meadow will linger on for ever. I've spent many a cold, wet miserable evening on the terraces wishing I was somewhere else ........... ;-)

Each season has it's ups and downs, this season saw Shrewsbury claim victory in a dramatic penalty shoot out win in the play off semi-final against Bury leading to a place in the final.

Now then, love them or hate them, the play offs are here to stay. Saturday last saw the League 2 Play Off Final at Wembley, between Gillingham and Shrewsbury Town, and what a wonderful day out it was. I have only ever been to Wembley once ( and that was to a Rolling Stones gig ) so it was a real treat.

Sadly the match ended with a loss for The Shrews but here a few photos of the day. There's always next season ;-)

A Binty Bear for Race For Life

When I can work out how to download photos from Picasa3 onto my blog I'll tell you all about my recent holiday in The Moselle Valley.

In the mean time I am having a very special auction for Race for Life over on Crafty Threads n Yarns for a Binty Bear - his name is Happy and isn't he just GORGEOUS :-)

You can read about the auction here and if you would like to place a bid please let me know in the comments box and I will update the forum. The auction closes on 31/05/2009 at 7:00pm and the winner will donate directly to Race for Life via the widget in my sidebar. I'll update this post when the bid total changes for non-forum members.

Bidding currently stands at £35:00

Hopsox

Technically speaking this should be Hopsock because so far there is only the one ;-)

You might remember that this is the Year of the Workshop. Last month I attended a workshop at Socktopus in London, with Cookie A. Cookie helped me to understand that I could in fact "do" charts and graph paper and maths and stuff, because let me tell you C.S.E Grade 3 is a dim and distant memory ;-) I like to be told what to do, not work it out for myself!!!!!!

I chose my stitch pattern, I have been plotting and graphing and working out the rib and counting stitches and this is the result.

Knitted using Yarn Yard Bonny in the colourway dyed for last Year's Tour de France. I used 2 2.5mm circular needles, and am going to write the pattern up tonight. I have two test knitters, and if the pattern stands up then I am hoping it will become a p/hop pattern.

A Marathon Weekend

I have had simply the best weekend ever. After briefly flirting with the idea of cloning myself so that I could go to Wonderwool Wales let me tell you I wouldn't have swapped the London Marathon for anything.

Mr A and I left for London just after lunchtime on Friday and arrived at Paddington at 4:30. We were staying at Passfield Hall which is LSE student accommodation and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. We have stayed in student accommodation in London for years, long before Robert went off to university there, it's basic but clean and comfortable and excellent value for money.

Friday evening was lovely, we went for a meal in our favourite bistro, Savoir Faire in New Oxford Street, and then spent a wonderful couple of hours at the theatre with Haispray.

Saturday was my birthday - I've been 27 for some 26 years now ;-) and after a lovely breakfast we headed for Russell Square tube and then Covent Garden. On the way to the tube I had a deja vu moment when we walked passed the hotel which was the venue for the first iKnit day.

When we arrived at Covent Garden we spent a wonderful couple of hours at the Transport Museum.

I may be a year older, but that doesn't stop me behaving like a child sometimes ;-)

Lunch was a M&S sandwich on the steps of St Martin in the Fields - what a view :-)

What we did next requires no explanation. Not for the easily offended, Priscilla Queen of the Desert was just wonderful, although there is something faintly disturbing about Jason Donovan in a corset ....................

The theatre was followed by a lovely meal out with our eldest son, Robert, who was due to run in the Marathon the following day and needed some winding down and ego boosting. Bless him, he had been into IKnit and bought me a voucher, with no prompting whatsoever.

Sunday dawned a beautiful sunny day. Mr A and I headed for Canada Water on the Jubilee Line. Surrey Quays, the 9 mile marker was our destination, and we found a viewing spot and waited. We saw the elite men go past.....

....followed by the pack. How one is supposed to spot anyone is a mystery to me. We did, we sw him and he saw us, but all we managed to photograph was a waving arm.

So then it was off to Canary Wharf, where we waited at the 30km stage, somewhere between 18 and 19 miles. We saw Nell Mcandrew go past loking very fresh and full of running.

Robert is the runner all in black on the right hand side.

Back on the tube again to Westminster.

Sorry about the blurry photo.

And there he goes, almost there. I can't tell you how emotional it is to see someone you love as they make their way around the course.

Then it was off to St James park to be reunited.

And there he was, as fresh as a daisy! he had just run 26 miles, 385 yards in a time of 3h:07m:48secs and he looked better than I did. He finished overall in a position of 1401! Amazing. There were tears!

And here are my two favourite boys :-)

We were soon joined by Robert's friends, and we made our ways out and into the crowds. Amazingly we bumped straight ino an old school friend of Robert's who was working as a volunteer for Shelter. What a small world.

Sadly Mr A and I had to leave to catch our train home. It was back to Passfield to collect our luggage, we had time for a sandwich in Gordon Square which is adjascent to Passfield, and was a lovely place to sit before returning home.

It was quite simply a wonderful, wonderful weekend.

More Socks!

More socks! Whatever has happened to me? This is another pair for Mr A and he chose the yarn himself while I was rummaging through my couple of stashed skeins of sock yarn ;-)

I bought the yarn last year when I visited the I Knit Shop, it is from the Kaffe Fasset Design Line range and the colourway is Landscape Fog. Mr A has size 10 feet, and I only had 2 marble sized balls of yarn left over, so if you want a larger pair out of two balls it might be an idea to knit a shorter cuff than the 20cm I knitted.

This is the first time I have used Regia yarn, and I really like the way it has knitted up. I have also used two circular needles as opposed to my usual dpns, and I think this will soon become my preferred method.

Never Say never Again ...........

Sometimes you just have to scratch an itch :lol:

This FCS was knitted using yarn from The Knittery. It is a merino/cashmere/nylon blend and it is quite the nicest yarn I have ever knitted with - and that includes DIC Smooshy. I bought it off Alice at the I Knit Stich'n'Bitch day in 2007, and have another identical skein here waiting to be knitted.

Sad to say The Knittery is not dyeing at present and the shop is closed. At some stage it may return on Etsy, but I would urge anyone who wanted some to try to nab some from Alice before it's all gone.

Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl

Yarn: Merino/Cashmere from The Knittery

Needles 5mm Aero Straights

There are 2 extra pattern repeats and 12 border rows. It was a gift for a friend.