Tag: Inkling

So Inkling has taken to watching a show in Netflix called Gabby’s Dollhouse, which is very much cats, cats cats! His favourite character is MerCat:

Yes, she’s a cat mermaid, or a purrmaid? He likes her best as she’s A) Pretty and B) a scientist like mummy. Too cute! So when he asked if I could make him one…how could I refuse? I modified the free pattern My Little Purrmaid by Myka Watson to create:

Inklings very own MerCat!

In other knitting news, the penguins are still matching in to 60 of them, and my other big project is in time out whilst I work out the maths for the border…

No spinning and not much else happening, lockdown is still on so between that and the poor weather, we’ve not managed much here other than some baking, kids craft and playing games of all descriptions! Oh, speaking of games, I now have two Cthulhu groups – double the death and double the insanity, loving it!

Till next week, stay safe!

Wool Count

Starting total – 897

Wool used – 13 (1 this week)
Wool bought – 0
Wool given to me – 0
Wool gifted to others – 0
Wool handspun – 4

Total – 888

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Remember how I mentioned that I was going to have to knit a few more Pokémon hats? Well the terrors took the decision out of my hands and demanded a set of hats that matched their cuddly Pokémon toys.

So without further ado I present…

We have Inklings Espeon on the left and Felix’s Umbreon on the right, with the matching hat/toy. These are two of the evolution choices for Eevee, which I knitted a hat version of previously…

With a bit of luck, that will be the last hat for a while. Unless I knit myself one. Still debating just which one mind…

It’s a short list this week as I have been really under the weather – it’s not the plague! But I have definitely lost my enthusiasm and energy this week. On top of finishing those hats off, I did manage to spin and ply the ball of wool I needed to keep working on my other big project – hopefully I can reveal that soon!

So until next week, keep safe!

Wool Count

Starting total – 897

Wool used – 12 (3 this week)
Wool bought – 0
Wool given to me – 0
Wool gifted to others – 0
Wool handspun – 4 (1 this week)

Total – 889 (Back to last week’s total!)

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Despite my best wishes and hopes, the start of 2021 was far more eventful than I wanted. That said, it wasn’t all bad!

The worst part was that, as I suspected, we’ve been put into lockdown again. So no school for the terrors, but unlike last time, I’m not on furlough. Cue many sleepless nights, much stressing and general feelings of despair. But, it all worked out. Both myself and Engel have been deemed as critical workers and we have secured places for both Terrors at school and nursery.

On a better, eventful note, I was surprised by a review video of my knitted Escher Ganger!

You can watch it here!

More eventful news, I won a toy pattern and two sweater patterns through the Wild Knitting challenge! I am really looking forward to doing some knitting for me, but I really need to reduce the stash before I can justify buying two sweater quantities of wool! I’m working on it, managed to burn through 6 balls this week!

In less eventful news, I have managed some spinning for one of my big projects, been plodding away at my year long project and finished a quick little one for Engel just last night which I will share now!

It’s Snorlax! Engel demanded that he get a Pokémon hat after Felix’s Eevee hat and Inklings Meowth hat, so I asked the kids what Pokémon I should knit for him and within three seconds, the answer was Snorlax!

Now the kids are demanding I should make one for me, but there are just so many choices… Gengar? Wooloo? Purrserker?

Till next week, stay safe!

Wool Count

Starting total – 897

Wool used – 6
Wool bought – 0
Wool given to me – 0
Wool gifted to others – 0
Wool handspun – 0

Total – 891

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Hello all, I hope you have had a fairly nice run up to the end of the year, regardless of what you cekebrate. Christmas here was surprisingly pleasant. I received some bad news at the very start of the morning, but other than that, it went smoothly.

Felix and Inkling are both at that age where they get swept up in Christmas and everything has that magic to it than only exists when you are small and young. And it was infectious. It was exactly what myself and Engel needed.

Because of all the changing rules and regulations, we kept it pretty simple, and have one set of friends over, and they too definitely needed the same dose of Christmas magic from the kids as we did!

It was one of their birthdays just a few days prior, so I knitted him up a little gift, which in my tired and exhausted brain from a last final push at work to complete a hell of a lot of work in a tiny time frame, may have drove my work colleagues mad…

Shark mittens!!! (Free pattern Puppet Mittens by Debbi Parker, there’s a bunch of animals so well worth a look) and because my brain was running on fumes, I did a tiny shark finger puppet.

Baby shark, doo doo de doo…baby shark doo doo de doo…and I have a mummy and daddy shark too so was giggling inanely to myself at my desk in work playing with them and breaking into song when people looked over at me…

I would like to point out that it wasn’t just me who was losing the plot completely, a lot of us where! They just didn’t see the brilliance of the shark mittens and song combined…

In other news, I had a chance to get my spinning wheel out and did a little bit of spinnjng. It had been too long since I managed to indulge myself with it! So one new ball of wool! But I also used a ball in my current project.

I’ll go into more detail in that at a later date, for now, I have festive chaos to return to!

Keep safe everyone!

Wool Count

Starting total – 704

Wool used – 156 (2 this week)
Wool bought – 28
Wool given to me – 318
Wool gifted to others – 8
Wool handspun – 17

Total – 898 

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O Christmas Wreath I never any to knit another…

Long story short: I don’t like Christmas cards, I feel they are a waste of perfectly good trees, and any parent who has had to try and get their child to write out thirty of the things for all their classmates knows, it’s hell.

So last year I knitted decorations for Felix’s class – there’s no bits of paper that’s just going to get tossed, there’s an actual keepsake, and no pain of writing the things out. Felix remembered and wanted to do it again this year.

And if Felix got it, Inkling wanted it to.

That’s 60 decorations. Ok. That’s doable. Kids settled on wreaths, not the quickest, lots of sewing, but doable.

Oh, wait, because of Covid all cards have to be handed in two weeks early. That’s 60 wreaths in under two weeks. And work has been hell. A couple of projects that due to things beyond my control, have to be done by Christmas. So that’s 60 wreaths, full time job, overtime, weekend work, running a house, looking after two terrors, trying to be full of Christmas spirit…

But on the flip side, I got to use up a lot of little nodes and ends of green which has made a nice dent on the stash, and they look cute, even if I was up until 11:30 the night before they got handed in sewing them all up…

Want to see all 60 ready for school?

Next year, I’m starting in November. Pattern btw is free, it’s Advent Garland 13, Wreath by Frankie Brown – if you haven’t checked out her patterns, I highly recommend it.

Now I’m off to enjoy my Sunday in peace. I have a house to put back together and terrors to entertain, but I’m happy with that!

Till next week, stay safe.

Wool Count

Starting total – 704

Wool used – 154 (3 this week)
Wool bought – 28
Wool given to me – 318
Wool gifted to others – 8
Wool handspun – 16

Total – 899

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A rare siting in my knitting repertoire – plain, basic, sensible knitting. With Inkling starting nursery, which attached to the school Felix goes to, he is required to wear the school uniform. Unfortunately he didn’t want to wear Felix’s old school cardigans, and didn’t want to wear the jumpers, so I knit him a pair of sweater vests in the correct bottle green…

(Made following the free pattern 6-Stitch Plait Unisex Vest For Kids by Ratchadawan Chambers)

I actually made three of these, the first one I somehow mucked up my gauge swatch (I suspect I used the wrong needle) and the whole thing was just too small…but attempts two and three are perfect – a good year or twos growing room in them!

And I can’t make for Inkling and not Felix. She thankfully didn’t want any new cardigans and instead pointed out a pattern she had previously spotted in my Revelry library:

Yep, an adorable snake cowl to match her snake hat! This pattern is Snake Coil Cowl by Ariel Woods and is currently free, so if you want it, grab it now before it becomes a paid for pattern!

I’ve got a few more knitting and spinning projects in the go right now, and hopefully I’ll focus on one and get something more fun done for next week. Seeing as we are in local lockdown, I imagine my distractions should be a bit less in the coming weeks…though I have been running Cthulhu Invictus on Skype and that’s been a lot of fun, but being GM takes a lot of time and prepwork! That reminds me, one of the gaming guys has given me a knitting challenge, so I’ll have to see how that goes…

And speaking of challenges, I joined in on the wild challenge on Instagram – first stop is Africa with a theme of flamingos! Now to decide just which flamingo themed thing to knit…

Till next week, stay safe!

Wool Count

Starting total – 704

Wool used – 122 (4 this week)
Wool bought – 28 (There was a ‘yarncident’ and I ‘accidentally’ bought an adorable hand dyed mini skeins set to make myself something cute! 10 mini skeins in total)
Wool given to me – 301
Wool gifted to others – 7
Wool handspun – 15 (4 have been used! 5 gifted)

Total – 913

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Cutting a long story short, two things have been on the cards for a while. A family friendly console that is fully supported (Curse you Wii!) and a birthday party for Felix. With the current situation regarding the plague, it as decided fairly early on that Felix would not be having her big class party. So what to do?

Rewind a few weeks when we were visiting family and Felix was introduced to her auntie and uncles Switch and promptly fell in love. Inkling, despite being 3, could even join in the games and play them (with all the baby settings on, but he didn’t need to know that). I had a go, Engel too, and yeah, it was pretty much decided that when we get a console, it would be the Switch.

Which brings me back to the present. The money saved on not having a big party paid for the majority of a Switch, and Felix quickly agreed to having one or two friends round for pizza and a Switch party. This is taking place next week, so if there’s no post, they’ve probably sacrificed me to an Eldritch Terror.

They grow up so fast…

But come on, it’s not a party organised by me without some cute knitted element! And so I took these Mario kart images:

And turned them into:

Mario Kart party bags! Each one unique with a variety of symbols! There is nowhere near that many invited, just so you all know, it’s to give the kids a choice so as to reduce the chance of a fight breaking out. And so the parents reminiscing of days long past can swipe one too…

If I haven’t been sacrificed to an Eldritch Terror, I’ll share my latest spinning triumph with you all next week. If not, Engel should have finished performing the necromancy ritual for the week after.

Until then, stay safe!

Wool Count

Starting total – 704

Wool used – 118 (3 this week)
Wool bought – 18
Wool given to me – 301
Wool gifted to others – 7
Wool handspun – 15 (4 have been used! 5 gifted)

Total – 907

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Which is your favourite? The Scottie or the Westie dog?

I think they themselves quite like the other!

These cuties are knit following the free pattern Tiny Scottie Dog by Sue Stratford. I am on a mission to reduce all my craft stashes in a bid to make room and get more organised. I had a set of 30 bone buttons and recorded they would look rather fetching on little dogs.

So there are 15 Westies and 15 Scottie dogs!

Now what to use up next in the stashes…

I am currently working on Felix’s birthday bags, and a school vest for Inkling. The bags are cute and will definitely make an appearance, the vests…we’ll see how slow a week we have when they’re done!

Wool Count

Starting total – 704

Wool used – 115 (8 this week)
Wool bought – 18
Wool given to me – 301
Wool gifted to others – 7
Wool handspun – 15 (4 have been used! 5 gifted)

Total – 910

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This week and last I have been knitting Christmas gifts. Yes. Christmas gifts. I always say I won’t do them then change my mind in December and rush, rush, rush. Seeing as I am in the limbo of lockdown, I figured I would start now.

There is one gift I can show you though…

Inklings birthday was on Monday, and like most three year old boys, he is obsessed with Paw Patrol, and Zuma is his favourite. So I knit him Zuma as part of his present. I used the free pattern Dexter the Labrador by Amanda Berry. The pup tag I just winged, but I feel it came out well!

It was a very quiet celebration this year, again because of lockdown, but at three he doesn’t understand what he missed, which was a blessing really. I suspect I was more upset than anyone else as I didn’t get to see my family from up North. Twice now this year and lockdown. Twice!

Anyhow, back to Christmas gift knitting – I’ll try and fit a few things in that I can show you or else it’ll be a rather dull couple of weeks blog post wise!

Wool Count

Starting total – 704

Wool used – 46 (7 this week!!!)
Wool bought – 7
Wool given – 8 (Engel brought two home today as a little pick me up as he noticed the home sickness was setting in)
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 672

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A short post today, for tomorrow we’re having a little party for Inkling who will be turning three on Monday. Engel couldn’t get the day off work so we moved his celebrations forward by a day – not that he’ll notice mind!

Its not going to be a big thing, we asked him what he wanted for a cake and what he would like for a special birthday dinner, and if he wanted to do anything in particular in the house. He wanted cupcakes (so he could lick off the frosting) Daddys pink roast beef (rare beef), and to play Paw Patrol. Oh, and balloons. But we can manage all that at least and still follow our lockdown procdures.

A lot of people gave mentioned lockdown fatigue, I certainly reached a point a few weeks ago where i just wanted life to go back to normal, this week though has been hard as I just want my family near me – I suspect its due in part to cancelling my Easter trip up North, and Inklings birthday when I would have them come visit.

Two missed chances. Two missed occasions.

All because of…

The Fearsome coronavirus ball (free pattern by Tamara Kulikova) I couldn’t resist knitting this cutie – though it has been getting thrown around the house far more than t has been admired! At least i dont have to worry abouyt the fishtank breaking when this bounces off it!

Alright, enough waffling, I have presents to get knitting – more on that next week!

Wool Count

Starting total – 704

Wool used – 39 (3 this week)
Wool bought – 7
Wool given – 8 (Engel brought two home today as a little pick me up as he noticed the home sickness was setting in)
Wool gifted – 0

Total – 679

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