Time to draw a breath..

Progress is the name of the game.

I made the landing curtains on Friday and hung them at 11:25pm that night. Today we stripped the wallpaper from the lounge after taking the girls to see "The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 3-D" today at the cinema! It's a great kids film BTW. :-)

And I've had time to knit too! The left front of the Textured Cardigan is now finished. Tomorrow night I'll seam the left shoulder and then start on the sleeve.

My youngest is not too good - very wheezy and on her blue inhaler several times a day atm. She's sleeping more peacefully so far tonight - she's in with me for now and last night it was like sleeping next to a heavily congested snoring Darth Vader.

Better go and tackle some of the huge mountains of ironing that are threatening to take over my kitchen. ;-)

Chaos rules

Alert! The back of the Textured Cardigan is complete and the correct size! (Stadium-type roar of applause and cheering here please.) Phew, that's the biggest piece out of the way. I'm now working on the left front, which is going quickly - when I get chance to work on it.

You see we're in rather a chaotic state here; the picture is part of my lounge wall in it's current state.
The decorating has reached new heights, as we've (well actually my FIL has) now removed the "decorative" brick wall which formed half of the longest wall of our lounge. It also made the room extremely dark.
The wall now needs to be plastered on the bottom half and the wallpaper removed from the top half before it can be painted in it's intended shade of "bisque".
Plus.. the plans seem to have crept to include basically the entire house, apart from the bathroom which we did 2 years ago. Oops! (Hee hee my secret plan worked..) It will all be soooo worth it when it's finally finished..

I'm also still plodding through my unwanted stash and selling it on ebay; I'm trying to add a couple of items per evening so keep checking if you're interested!
Last night as I was preparing to add this cotton/linen blend yarn to my list of auctions, I got that "Don't do it" feeling. I've had that every time I've contemplated selling this yarn, so I finally gave in. I've decided I'm going to use it to give the infamous Kiri a try. That's at some undetermined point in the future when all other higher priorities are done. Hopefully before I get my free bus pass.

Anyway, must fly - I have to make new curtains for the landing window and start to strip that wallpaper in the lounge - oh and pick up my youngest from nursery in less than 1 hour. Just call me Superwoman. ;-)

Busy times

Well it's been a busy weekend. We visited my nephew James as we haven't seen him for 3 weeks. Boy has he filled out! He's keeping his mum busy by demanding feeds every 2 hours and is certainly making good use of all that good food. He's doing his party trick in this shot - he doesn't usually move his eyes independently, honest!

My girls had to get a cuddle with their nephew too - here's my eldest with her wild hair (we plaited it before bedtime a couple of nights ago) but James wasn't happy about having this photo taken.






After having very little knitting time during the week, I made up for it yesterday. 2 hours at the Beatties Knit Chat and another 2 hours whilst watching a film last night got me to the last stretch before the casting off for the back. It's measuring a more reasonable size this time, and it's stretchy too, so I'm much happier with it.

DH has been busy too - he's laid us a beautiful new Amtico laminate floor in our porch! It's so fab I have to keep going to look at it. :-)

Tomorrow is a "me" day for a change; I've booked the day off work but my MIL is doing the school runs as per a normal work day for me, as I'm off to Merry Hill for a day's shopping with my mum! Hopefully I'll have some new purchase pics to show tomorrow. :-)

9 years today!

No knitting this evening as we've been out for a meal to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary.
Both of us are carrying more weight, have more wrinkles, and shorter hair, but we're still together and happy, and now have our beautiful daughters too. I reckon we're pretty lucky. :-)

The chef is in the kitchen

Yep, it was DH's turn to make the dinner tonight, and we'd pre-arranged a warm chicken salad type recipe.
I bought a bag of fresh leafy salad with tatsoi today and DH made a yummy balsamic dressing to adorn it and then pan-fried the chicken in strips with a herby tomato puree marinade. Together with cherry toms, sweet red pepper slices, and green seedless grapes, it made the most deeee-licious healthy dinner! That one is definately on the list of regulars. ;-)

I'm doing battle with my thick curly hair every day atm - I've had it cut and the bulk taken out a little but it stills just wants to frizz! Must be the weather; not that that knowledge helps when I look in the mirror. I'm using the hair products I've currently got about 3 times a day right now, and I'm thinking of investing in a set of GHD hair irons as I've had recommendations from 2 friends. Any suggestions for great calming hair products?

The Textured Cardigan is now progressing nicely once again; I've found that switching to aluminium needles makes life much easier with this fluffy yarn - much less grabby. Better get on with it!

Parcel time

My girls got me up this morning just in time for the postie to arrive with 2 fab parcels.
First up was this Wendy Supreme cotton in variegated purples; I couldn't resist it when I saw it up for grabs on eBay as I've been meaning to get some for a while.

Then there was my second parcel from my SP5 pal - Sandra in Croatia!
There was a veritable feast of goodies included. First, for me - 8 balls of fine cotton in a rich terracotta shade, 2 packs of snacks, a bar of Aloe Vera soap, a lavender bag, 2 apple fragrance candles, and a big box of Bajadera chocolates - yum!

And then there were even more goodies for my girls; a lovely knitted heart scarf, a little bag with cute buttons (and extra ones the same for me to use), a pack of coloured pencils, an animal storage tin, and finally 2 little tops for my baby nephew James. Thanks Sandra!

On the knitting front, I have good news and bad. First the good news - I finished the back of the Luxury Tweed textured cardigan. And the bad - it will probably end up as a little cushion cover as it's too small! I must have mis-counted my tension swatch as it's measuring 32" across the bust when it should be 39". Let me count to ten....

I discovered this last night, and after sleeping on it I decided to go up to 4.5mm needles (go up a size? Unheard of for me!) and this swatch seems to measure correctly after checking and re-checking. So I've started again. I could still be on this project in the New Year at this rate..

Busy selling

Well the girls are back at school, which means I don't get a lie-in but I do get some knitting time on Thursday and Friday mornings (my non-working-outside-the-home days!). A fair trade-off I think. :-) From January my youngest will be in school all day too, so I'll get 5 hours of time to myself - wow!!

Not much knitting going on tonight as I'm busy taking advantage of the 5p Listing Day on eBay UK - so go have a look at the knitting and crochet items I'm selling. Oh and feel free to bid on any of them. :-)

Good to be home

I love holidays, and I love coming home afterwards. We did have a good break in Tenby last week; thanks for your good wishes. We had wonderful weather most of the time and have all managed to get tans by spending hours on the fab Tenby South Beach! Not bad going for 5 days in Wales.

Coming home was great - it smells of gloss paint as my magnanimous in-laws spent 3 days here whilst we were away re-decorating for us. They are such gems! We are currently tackling the lounge/stairs/landing - all in one as we have no separate hallway. It was covered in original 70's woodchip and many layers of yellowing paint; the painted areas now look like part of a newly-built house! It's all very inspiring, and my yarn budget is well on it's way to being blown on new curtains, cushions, and lighting. BTW have you seen that Crown suede-look paint...? Yummy!

AFA yarn goes, the holiday was unfruitful. I visited Colourway twice it was shut first time, and just about to shut for half-day closing the second time! I did manage to get 10 minutes to look around, but they still hadn't received the Jaeger JB38 magazine. I had intended to buy that and maybe some yarn for one of the projects, but it was not to be. Nor could I find any kind of sale section either, so no Welsh yarn bargains for me this time. It's a very lovely shop though. They had a cardigan knitted up in green Rowan Cotton Braid which looked totally fab (very different to on the ball as the binder disappears to the back and the coloured loops show up much better). I also spied some Rowan Plaid which looked yummy too but I was a little scared off by the £8.50 per ball price tag!

We didn't get to Colinette as turned out to be too far off route - that's a trip for another day.

We did stop for food at a fab place on the way back called Garth Mill - they have llamas in one of their fields! We bought some of their gorgeous dry cured bacon and home-made sausages - 6 of the pork and apricot, and 6 of the pork, mustard, and herbs. The mustardy ones went to my in-laws as a little thank-you for the decorating and were thoroughly enjoyed.

I did manage to knit every evening and finished the first ball of Jaeger Luxury Tweed on my textured cardigan - all 185m of it! It sure goes a long way. I'm loving the stitch pattern now that I've got used to it.

I also did some of the dreaded Fizz scarf, and I'm now on the second (and last) ball of that. I don't think it's going as far as the previous version of this yarn, but it doesn't matter.

Confession time! Just before we went on holiday I did succumb to 2 packs of Rowan Cork in the shade Chilly which the fab ebay seller 4to4 was selling for less than half price! The pattern book came along too as a freebie.

The intention was to make Carmel from Rowan 34 which I've been contemplating for almost 12 months now. BUT, having looked through the pattern book, I think I may change my plans to make Kathy and Bless as I can squeeze them both out of the 2 packs. Bargain!