Budding lace repeats finished!

My Swallowtail's grown even more now!


195 stitches on the needles, 14 budding lace repeats finished and I've swapped over to my 80cm long knitpro circular. :D

See how pretty it looks close up?

The next adventure is the Lily of the Valley Border and beading. :D :D :D

Rosebuds

My little Swallowtail Shawl is growing up. *sniff* Look at how big she is getting!!!


I am almost done with the budding lace repeats, it's so pretty. It reminds me of rosebuds. :)

Next part is the Lily of the Valley border and the beading. I'm really looking forward to putting the beads on. I've found that this pattern isn't really hard, it just requires all of my attention.

Pizza!

I've been rather inspired lately by Masterchef, so I decided I would make a pizza that was featured on Friday nights Masterclass. Here is my edited version of the recipe.

Pizza Dough:

15g yeast
20g sugar
20g salt
20ml oil
250ml Water
425g flour

Sauce:
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp garlic
salt and pepper

Toppings:

Finely chopped Flat Leaf Parsley
Hungarian Salami
Pepperoni
Shredded Mozzarella
Baby Mozzarella balls

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius and put pizza stone in oven to heat up.
2. Combine yeast, sugar, salt, oil and water and put in a warm place to activate the yeast. It was pretty cold on the day that I did this, so I put it next to the heater. :)
3. After yeast has activated, tip in the flour and stir until combined.
4. Knead the dough until silky smooth.
5. Place dough back into bowl, cover with cling wrap and put into a warm place to prove until the dough has doubled in size.
6. Open tin of tomatoes and tip into a saucepan with the oregano, basil, garlic, salt and pepper. Puree with hand held mixer, then simmer the sauce down until it is a nice consistency (about 15 minutes).
7. Knock back the pizza dough and divide into 2 portions. Roll out dough to a nice round shape. Place onto the hot pizza stone.
8. Dock the base with a fork all over.
9. Spread pizza sauce onto the base.
10. Sprinkle the parsley all over the base.
11. Add the other toppings to the base except for the baby mozzarella.
12. Put into oven for about 8-10 minutes or until cheese is melted and golden delicious. Mmmmm.
13. Decorate with baby mozzarella.
14. Eat with friends. :)
15. Make another pizza with second portion of dough, you will need it.

Meet Winona!

This is Winona, isn't she cute?

I had some leftover sock yarn from my Monkey socks, and I have seen a few of these "String Gang" girls around lately, so I thought I would make one for myself. She is just made from 2 paperclips and sock yarn and a dab of glue.

In other crafty news, my Swallowtail Shawl is growing quite nicely. I finally understand how shawls work, how the increases in lace shape the shawl, the "centre stitch" dealy and how to read the pattern!




I am also making good headway with my Baudelaire sock: "The flowers of evil". It's not so hard, but boy is it pretty.





I thought I would also show off my lovely present from Kylie's competition at her blog; a socky-boxy, a needle case and a tiny little bag for stitch markers. I love love love the material that this is made of, it's so pretty.



My socky-boxy is getting good use. It's the perfect size for a small project and pattern. It goes everywhere with me. Thank you again Kylie. :D
Isn't she clever?

Post #50

I've been working really hard on the Swallowtail Shawl. I have frogged this poor baby no less than 10 times now, simply because I keep stuffing it up. Oh well. Here is the latest incarnation.

Here's a little something to make you laugh. Jayden was helping me make dinner tonight, when I turned around and saw this:



Sometimes there is just no use in fighting genetics. Lol!

WIP update!

I have finally started the Swallowtail Shawl! It was really sketchy to start with, resulting in me frogging it no less than 9 times, but thanks to Mamasue and her edited pattern, I am off to a flying start! The pattern finally makes more sense to me. I can easily see myself knitting this pattern in the future, with less tears.


I bought myself a pair of circular knitpro needles for this one and they are divine!!! The point is nice and sharp and it holds onto the seasilk so well. Yummy! The seasilk is such a pleasure to work with, so silky and soft. I can't wait to finish it and wear this shawl.

I have also started knitting a little car vest for Jayden's 2nd birthday. It is very repeatitive at the moment, round and round in knit, but when I get to the intarsia cars, it will be a lot of fun. I'm being very good and only using yarn from my stash for this project: 1 ginormous ball of Bendigo Woollen Mills 5 ply for the body as well as a few little bits of colour for the cars.


Again, it will look very smart when finished. I've been getting a lot of this done while watching TV.

Silk Garden Gloves

I finally got around to knitting the second Silk Garden Glove!

Pattern: Noro Fingerless Mitts
Needles: 2x 40cm long 4.5mm Addi Turbo's
Yarn: 1 50 gram skein Noro Silk garden (3 grams left over)
Time: About 6 hours all together.

The first one took 3.5 hours to do. I knit it in 2 big time chunks: 1 while out with Kate for coffee and gelati, the second time chunk was while literally chasing the toddler-saurus around the house!

The second glove one I did today all in a 2.5 hour chunk while he had his nap. I put this down to practice and coffee.




I love that they are both different, but they both have the same pretty colours. My absolute favourite colour is the light pink colour on the thumb. :D

Les Fleurs Du Mal: Flowers Of Evil

I've started a new project - it's Baudelaire by Cookie A. It's a toe up sock with cables and lace.

I am knitting it up using 2x 2.5mm Addi Turbo's and 2 skeins of Lorna's Laces sock yarn in the Valentine colourway. I love this yarn, it reminds me of roses, so I thought it would be perfect for an evil flower sock. ^_^ Did I mention that the lace pattern is in graph form? Yes, it is.

To the Beach!

Pattern: Cable Vest
Needles: 5mm
Yarn: Knitspirations Machine Wash 12 ply in "Beachcomber" colourway
Modifications: Double crochet for V-neck and arm holes instead of ribbing

Was supposed to be for his 2nd birthday, but it was too cute to resist. I guess I could always knit him something else for his birthday. :D

My WWKIP day!

We had a great turnout for "World Wide Knit In Public day".

First place we went to was the Storehouse Deli. I got to wear my lovely February Lady Sweater.


See! :)

We stayed for around 4 hours. I had 4 large latte's, 1 double ristretto and 1 Chai Tea Latte. Needless to say, I had a bit of energy to burn. Maybe it's not so surprising that I finished knitting Jayden's birthday vest. Lol!




More photo's of the vest on My Ravelry page.

I used 1/2 a ball of Knitspirations 12 ply yarn and knitted it with 5mm needles. It came out beautifully. I changed the pattern too. I was supposed to do ribbing around the neck and arm holes, but I decided to do double crochet! It turned out great.

Later on that day, we all met up at Gelatissimo for ice-cream, coffee and affogato. Because my body had decaffeinated by that time of the day, I had to have a cappuccino! We then moved on to the Indian restaurant and had our main meals. We then took a leisurely stroll up to the teppanyaki bar. We decided that we would skip the entree's and went back to Gelatissimo for more ice-cream.

Here we all are at Gelatissimo at the end of the night.

While we were at gelatissimo, Kylie gave me a little present. It's a needle case - the perfect size for a pair of knitpicks. Isn't se so clever? The mushrooms are so darling, they remind me of being a Brownie Guide. :)


All up, it was a lovely day and it was so nice to get to spend all of that time with my friends. :)

5 minutes? Mocha mug cake!!!!

Does this look tempting? I made this today and it was absolutely sensational. I just had to share it all with you. It's the perfect treat to enjoy on a cold, rainy day. So print it out, put the kettle on for a cup of coffee and make this devilish treat and have it ready to eat before the kettle boils.

Mocha Mug Cake in 5 minutes

4 Tbs flour, sifted

4 Tbs sugar

2 Tbs cocoa, sifted

1 egg

2 Tbs milk

1/2 tsp instant coffee dissolved in 1 tsp boiling water

1 Tb vegetable oil

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

2 Tbs Chocolate Chips

1 Coffee Mug

Do it like this...

Put all ingredients in mug except chocolate chips and mix well. Make sure that you get all the flour from the bottom of the mug. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Put mug into the microwave and nuke for 3 minutes on full power @ 1000 watts.

Eat straight from mug with a spoon. Chocolate chips sink down to the bottom and make awesome chocolatey gooeyness.

Nom nom nom.

This recipe is too tempting to avoid, as you are basically only 5 minutes away from a warm mocha treat all the time. Best enjoyed while knitting!!! :)

Fruit Tingles

Fruit Tingles!

My "Fruit Tingles" socks are finished..... both of them!!!

Project Notes:
Pattern: Monkey by Cookie A
Needles: 2x 2.5mm Addi Turbo's
Yarn: 2x 50g skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in "Winona"
Started: 1 June 2009
Finished: 8th June 2009



Apart from a few little mistakes at the beginning, this project went smoothly. I basically finished the February Lady Sweater, then started knitting these socks straight away. Unfortunately, I had the gull lace pattern stuck in my head still, and was trying to knit that while knitting the monkey lace. Oops. After 9 whole rounds, I realised why it wasn't working right and frogged it. Then I started again and it was all good again.

It's nice to have the Monkey off my back. :p

Shopping Spree

Recently, I have discovered the joys of Tangled Yarns. So I went shopping. :D

50g Malabrigo lace merino baby 2 ply "Buscandoazul"
100g Araucania Ranco Multi 4 ply "310"
100g Araucania Ranco Solid 4 ply "Green"
100g Fleece Artist Seawool "Olive"
100g Hand Maiden Seasilk "Topaz"
100g Hand Maiden Seasilk "Berry"

1 set if Addi Clicks :D :D :D





This lot of shopping is aimed at shawl knitting. I am really looking forward to knitting the Swallowtail Shawl by Evelyn Clark.

Progress on my second "Monkey" sock is going well. I had to frog almost an entire pattern repeat (11 rounds to a pattern repeat) because I had made a mistake. I was doing too many yarn overs. Eeep. At least it is all perfect again and back on track. I've also learnt that I should never attempt to write out the pattern, my handwriting is too messy and too hard to read. Stick with printing it out. I am hoping to make good progress on it this weekend.



I also visited Cassidy's in Canberra and purchased 2 balls of Angora Merino. The yarn is lovely, the store and customer service is not. There were signs up in the store requesting that customers not open the bags and touch the yarn. Come on, how rude! Anyway, I am not going to harp on about it, instead I will focus on the yumminess of the bunny wool.


Mmmm, so silky and soft, you just want to pet it all the time. This is going to be a real treat to knit with. I wonder what I should knit?