Another gift, for a friend who is a coffee obsessed GM! The pattern is based on a free hat pattern Coffee or Death Beanie by Maria Teresa Trujillo, I just combined it with my now memorised every day dice bag pattern and voila!
We’re still in lockdown, and slowly the garden is being ripped up and redone. There’s only so fast I can go by myself whilst juggling childcare, homeschooling, cooking, cleaning and playing with cats and tiny kittens!
Knitting has, understandably, slowed down a fair bit – mostly due to lack of time, energy, or having knackered my fingers whilst gardening… But it’s ticking away in the background, don’t you all worry!
Just another short post this week – Felix is wanting me to help her play Slime Rancher on the computer and Inkling is saving Octonaut toys in a somewhat hopeful manner!
Ok, not quite, but I couldn’t resist. Something did happen yesterday, on a bright cold day in April, which was the addition of two new members to the family.
Please all say hello to Lockdown and Outbreak! They are 8 weeks old and adorable. Outbreak is very outgoing, into everything and itching to explore. Lockdown just wants quiet and cuddles. I feel they suit their names well!
I imagine all of us in lock down by now have hit that point where what patience and resilience they felt they had suddenly crumbled. It could of been a casual remark, a glimpse of a news article, unwashed dishes or the expectation to just keep on smiling despite the rising panic and fear inside.
I hit the wall. Hard. Having a shower in the middle of the day so the kids wouldn’t see me cry, hard. As such, I have banned myself from the news and severely restricted my social media to knitted toys and kitty beans.
Ignorance is strength. How the echoes of 1984 seem to be following me… (last week’s blog post ‘sanity is not statictical’ was both a Fallout 3 and 1984 reference.
Anyhow, I normally keep my blog posts light hearted, and fairly impersonal, but I feel that in these times I was going to have to take that wall away. We are all sadly human, capable of love, of friendship, of joy of living, of laughter, of curiosity, of courage, of integrity. We are not hollow. But we are vulnerable.
If I go AWOL in the next few weeks, months, whatever lays ahead with lockdown, it will be because I have decided to further hide in my cocoon with my little family and wait for all this to be over with some form of sanity intact.
That was a somewhat heavy start, so let’s move on to the more light hearted nature of my blog posts – knitting! I have been making gifts, marrying to put forward some good karma. Two more hooded cowls, the Fallout pattern from last week, have fallen off my needles. Some arm warmers too.
Pattern details are again in last week’s post.
Lastly, I made these a good few weeks ago as a present for my nephew’s hamster, he should have been given them this weekend, but the trip to visit my family up north never happened, but I still want to share it.
Little hamster houses! Well, they’re supposed to be for rats so I scaled it down a bit, but still. Free pattern Cosmic Cozy by Susie Gourlay – dead cute and fantastic for using up odds and ends!
As such, with all of the above, I have used a fair bit of wool this week!
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 32 (5 this week) Wool bought – 7 Wool given – 6 Wool gifted – 0
Lockdown is getting to me. I keep swaying between the world having turned into some dystopian future, or a strange post apocalyptic landscape, but without the zombies or rad scorpions…
I had best be appropriately attired for when venturing out to the shops then.
The pattern is “Fallout” from the book “Doomsday knits”. Seems apt for the times we live in. (Been asked by two friends to make them one each, good thing it’s a nice easy knit with an interesting construction!)
In marginally more same knitting news, I have been knitting presents!
To complete the Nerfys Law Set theres a Nerf Bag for BIL, and a hat and armwarmers for Rabbie, as she feels the cold real bad. Nerf bag is my standard pattern, the hat is my own concoction and the arm warmers are Girl Gift Mitts by Debbie Meiklejohn.
In non knitting news I have been kept busy with Felix’s homeschooling and child wrangling in general. There’s been lots of baking, carding, painting, playing and also teaching Felix to rollerblade!
Busy but fun, which is what I am focusing on rather than the scary apocalypse happening outside in the real world…
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 27 (2 this week) Wool bought – 7 Wool given – 6 (was given three balls yesterday as a little ‘saw these and thought of you’ gift from a friend. I really needed it! Wool gifted – 0
So, last post I mentioned that we live in interesting times. Since then interesting has moved on to insane. We’re in lock down, not allowed out the house more than once a day, no work myself (unless there’s an emergency lab sample) Engel working from home, Felix is now being homeschooled as the schools are closed…
Its…strange. I’ve managed a surprising amount between home schooling Felix and wrangling Inkling – gutted the conservatory, started a sour dough culture, lots of carding my sheep fleece, a handful of odd jobs that were being left until I had ‘5 minutes spare’…
I have also managed some knitting too!
This is Morris. He’s a combination of two patterns – Alley Cat and Ginger Tom both by Sue Stratford from her book ‘Knitted Cats and Kittens’. Morris happens to be Engels Pathfinder character – he’s a Cat-folk engineer. (I keep calling him a technomage and keep getting told no). Much like my Kobold Barbarian Reyth, I will get round to making some clothing for this guy. Just not sure quite what yet…
And a nice one of his back as I just winged the striping!
In other knitting news, I have finished off a lot of little bits, which I will post next week/later. No wool in or out so will skip the wool count this week, again.
And in non knitting news, the world has gone mad, I’m just staying inside and following the rules to do my bit, but otherwise avoiding all the crazy I can. The terrors are loving having all the mummy attention but not sure when novelty will turn into annoyance…
Felix’s school run a variety of things throughout the year to raise money, some gets used for new school equipment and the bulk goes into paying towards school trips so parents don’t have to pay as much. As a kid, I didn’t get to go on many school trips as they were too expensive and my mother was doing as good as she could just to make sure we had dinner on the table.
Free pattern Hearts in a Hurry by Frankie Brown– I just braided some wool into the end to turn them into bookmarks.
When I was asked to knit a few contributions for mother Day gifts, I couldn’t refuse. They gave me the wool, and I knit, and knit, and knit quite a little bundle of gifts. I was working on these last week in Disneyland – note the much smaller heart coaster that I made after going on the Tower of Terror. Clearly fear induced adrenaline affects my guage!
Yesterday was the last day Felix’s school was open, as with all schools in the UK it was to be closed in a bid to slow down the coronavirus, but they were still able to sell the hearts and raise funds.
It’s been a very long, very odd and very stressful week, so i’m leaving today’s post there.
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 25 (0 this week – not had the urge to work on much) Wool bought – 7 Wool given – 6 (was given three balls yesterday as a little ‘saw these and thought of you’ gift from a friend. I really needed it! Wool gifted – 0
Well, I finished one of my big projects, or three you could argue…
It’s a bit of a joke, but my sister, her husband and I have formed a Nerf Team called ‘Nerfys Law’ (it’s a pun on Murphy’s Law, which just about sums up our luck at nerfing!)
There’s also an awesome TV show called Milo Murphys Law, and in it the main character Milo wears a striped sweater vest. So I doubled down on the geekery and made us all matching sweater vests in Nerf colours…
I’ve made one male vest following the free pattern Peter Easy by Berroco Design Team, except in the round to save on sewing, and two female vests following the free pattern Prudence Easy by Berroco Design Team, again in the round.
I love them, they are obnoxiously bright, but surprisingly warm and cosy and i’m hoping my sis and brother in law like them too!
In non knitting news, I’m just back from a sneaky girls trip to Disneyland Paris – no kids, no husband, just lots of fun and chaos. I had a ball, but I missed my terrors so badly, so pleased to be home with them. Also, as much fun as I was having, it was unnerving watching the park slowly go into lock down over Covid-19. We all left at the right time, but I know of a number of people who just arrived as we left who are in an awkward situation as the parks are now closed for the foreseeable future…
Last but not least: wool count is unchanged, haven’t done much knitting this week but haven’t bought any more wool either!
Not sure what happened, but the past I wrote on Saturday doesn’t seem to have published… so going to write it up again super quick!
Another “pattern” from a 6 yo – so cute! Used the free Turtle II chart by Sandra Jäger and my now standard cobbled together hat pattern.
In other news, I kind of fell off my resolution of using only wool from the stash…
Monday – I needed about 50g of a specific colour for a requested knit, and wound up coming home with the correct colour, just 3x100g worth…
Tuesday – was having a bit of a bad day and when I got home, found two balls of ‘pick-me-up’ wool from Engel. (He’s a sweetie, they’re a good colour and the correct weight and type as the majority not my stash)
Thursday – I was given a 300g ball of wool for another project to help raise funds for Felix’s school.
Friday – bobbed into the shops to get a little something sweet and walked out with 4 more balls of wool…it was a lovely colour!
So my wool count now looks like this:
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 25 (5 this week!) Wool bought – 7 Wool given – 3 Wool gifted – 0
A friend of mine needed a bit of a pick me up, and he had mentioned previously that he would like Rammy, a character from a game called Castle Crashers.
How could I say no?
He is made from combining the free pattern Oh Balls! by Marcie Nishioka (which I used last week to make Inklings blaster ammo) and Skull by Vanessa Mooncie from the book ‘Monster hats’ (another pattern I’ve used, though that was for the matching family cultist hats!)
Funny how two patterns can make something completely different!
In other knitting news, I’ve nearly finished one of the big projects I’ve been doing – with luck, I’ll be able to post about that next week!
In non knitting news, not much to report. Works been busy, kids have been happy, and other than an incident involving them sneaking downstairs in the morning to eat a tin of homemade shortbread destined for my work, there’s not much to tell.
But no news is often good news, and with things the way they are in the news lately, I’m going to keep hoping for quiet times!
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 20 (3 this week!) Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
inkling has been wanting to join in with our little Nerf wars in the house, only he can’t prime a standard blaster, and the flywheel ones are too heavy for him to carry and aim at the same time. A solution has been found, in the form of a “Little Tikes blaster”.
Inkling adores it. He can load it, shoot it, and run around all at the same time. Only issue is that it came with just three balls for ammo, and that lasts all of four seconds.
So I have been knitting balls. Bright, multicoloured, balls.
And a Nerf bag for them to go in, that match his blaster, so he can join in with the rest of us when dart sweeping.
The pattern used for the balls is a free one called ‘Oh Balls!‘ by Marcie Nishioka. It’s a great pattern for using up little scraps, or in my case, wool that’s so bright and obnoxious I’m not too sure what to make with it!
Not much else to say really for this week – it’s been busy, like really busy, but not a lot to talk about it…oh! I got to play my new game, Llamas unleashed, and am now resisting the urge to knit an army of llamas, alpacas, goats and rams to match all the different artwork! So cute! Fun to play too…
Wool Count
Starting total – 704
Wool used – 17 (2 this week!) Wool bought – 0 Wool given – 0 Wool gifted – 0
