Mug Hug Reveal!

I got bored with writing reports quite quickly.

So this happened:

Which in turn led to this:

Then this:

I thought it looked fab so I tried it on a mug just to make sure:

And here it is....................

I love it. And if you've been to my house and seen that particular mug you'll know its a massive improvement.

I now feel the urge to make a whole set in a variation of the pastel colours.

Oh, and yesterday I also found myself stumbling into the wool shop, Rainbow Silks http://www.rainbowsilks.co.uk/index.cfm 

It's about 8 miles away so I'm not really sure how it happened, or how I walked away with 3 new yarns. 

One of the balls was sock yarn. I've never made socks so I havent got a clue what to do with it yet so any hints and tips gratefully received. But it was beautiful and was calling to me, urging me to buy it, It would have been rude not to.

But that's another post. ;)

Report season

:(
I've just started writing the end of year reports for the children in my class. It's a long and arduous task that is the bane of all teachers' lives. So knitting will be taking the back burner again and will now become a guilty pleasure. Every time I knit I'll just feel guilty that I'm not working on my reports. 
:(

Mug Hug

Needless to say, I havent finished my Mug hug or my baby blanket. I've been far too busy watching the Royal Wedding and baking Union Flag and birthday cupcakes for My Scott :)  - Do they count as 'oven cleaning activities'??

Knitted WAGs

After Cyril came this:

But she doesnt have a name. I never was any good at naming my dolls. 
All suggestions gratefully received. 

She's made from double knit, most of which came from the local pound shop. They seem to have a good range of colours and it's cheap so I can feed my addiction for just a few pounds. 

The skirt came from my friend Ellie who makes all sorts of impressive things out of ribbon and lace and had some spare net stuff she said I could have. I think she was a little more excited about dressing the doll than I was.

This is her Facebook page. Have a look at the stuff she makes. It's far more creative than Knitting. I think the science geek side of my brain likes mathematical nature of a knitting pattern. Ellie's stuff clearly comes from the other side of her brain.
https://www.facebook.com/#!/petillant.gifts

The pattern for the doll came from the same book as Cyril and again, was easy to follow. I was surprised how like the picture in the book my creation was!

But, like an exhausting child I wasnt satisfied with that.

Friends of ours had had a baby in March and my knitting wasnt up to much then. But by the summer when i made the doll I was feeling a litte more confident.

So between my boyfriend and I, (I was a little surprised at how interested he was!) we adapted the pattern in the book to create this:

I'm sure you can tell, but if not, it's a Plymouth Argyle football player. Our friend is from Plymouth and a die hard fan so we thought his little boy would like this. Maybe I should give him the doll too and she can become a WAG. She looks like she'd enjoy that.

The hair was a nightmare and I cant remember now how I did it - clearly blocked it from my mind - but I wanted to make it attached so that we could give it to a 3 month old without worrying about him sucking it all off. I was relieved when this one was finished but still quite pleased with the result. Having said that, I think that next time I feel the urge to knit a person (?!?!) I will use one of the Jean Greenhowe patterns because they are SUPER cute!

I think that's that first 6 months of my knitting logged. I knit really slowly and, as I'm a teacher, always have other, far more important things to be doing than knitting, like marking or planning lessons so I dont get much time to knit.

My friend Dr Lucy's mum (who laughed at my first knitting attempt) calls those things you do when you have a MILLION more important things to do, oven cleaning activities. When you have loads to do, you find something really unimportant to do to convince yourself you're busy. I think that's how I am with knitting. But who wants to clean the oven?? particularly when you can knit and create all sorts of odd things to fill your house with.

Oooops!

I just started another new project :(

because clearly my life wouldnt be the same without another knitted mug cosy.

Cyril.

My next project came from here:

It was the snake featured on the front. He took me months and I had to learn how to increase and decrease but it was worth it. It was just a row of knit then a row of purl and apart from the head and the tail that was it.
I was really pleased with the finished product and he still has pride of place on the back of the sofa.
I used buttons from my Nana for the eyes and ribbon for the tongue from my friend Dr Lucy.
And here he is:

I LOVE him!

I've only made one other pattern from the book (more about that later) but it was really easy to follow. Considering it was the first pattern I'd ever read I was pleasantly surprised at how well he turned out.



I drink too much coffee

I couldnt believe how much knitting 'stuff' there was on the internet. I had bought a book with the needles but wasnt entirely sure I was doing what they said. So I Googled it.

There are so many You Tube videos about knitting, all the stitches and their variations that I was soon able to knit, purl, increase and decrease.

I bought some fluffy wool to make myself a scarf and worked for weeks on it but soon got bored.

I can't remember where the inspiration for these came from other than the inordinate amount of coffee my colleagues and I drink and the fact that it had hit minus temperatures but these were my next little project. 

I made up the patterns as I went. I'll try to write them one day and add them on here if I ever work out how.

I made the dark purple one for myself and my friend wanted a yellow one. I didnt think a completely yellow one would look so nice covered in coffee stains, hence the blue bits.

They were very popular at work and I got loads of requests but after 3 I was bored and onto my next project ....