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