This is getting a bit silly

I've cast on for another cushion.
When I got married (a year ago on the 10th May) I had this thing about cushions. It started off with me wanting chair covers and gawping at the cost of them. I then got fixated with cushions as an alternative, I suppose there were worse things to get all Bridezilla about! So, me and a friend went to Ikea bought 50ish 59p 30cmx30cm cushions, unpicked them, removed fluff, dyed them red, re stuffed, sewed them up again and sewed on ickle red roses. Small job.
Here was the result.

So a year on and I still have all these cushions. Most were vacuum packed in the garage, until the bag exploded and now a few have made their way into the lounge and other areas of the house.
So far I have covered three of them (as per blog posts)one for each child. Now I think my sofa deserves some, probably more than the kids. My sofa is chocolate coloured leather (mmm chocolate), so it needs cream or brown cushions, and would you believe it, I have two balls of Sirdar Big Softie in brown just waiting to be turned into a cushion for my sofa. Half a ball is so far (so far, sofa, lol, ahhh)

Some lovely lady tweeted this pattern the other day Hugs and Kisses cable washcloth It's an easy beginners cable pattern, one which I thought would look nice as one side of my cushion, I'll probably fabric back it like the others. It was handy in that it require 35 stitches, which is how many wide my cushion is.
So that's where I'm at, a year later still obsessed with cushions!
I have used the word cushion 11 times in this post!

This weekend I mostly...

Made cushions.

Oh my, it's so beautiful

I think this is one of my best knits ever.
Disregarding a few mistakes and rip backs, purely due to knitting whilst watching The Apprentice and shouting at that stupid "Pantsman" idea, this worked out wonderfully. This bamboo yarn is great to work with and so soft.
I'm not going to talk about the sleeves...I hate sleeves, don't know why but me and sleeves don't get on. I made them short so as not to prolong the sleeve agony, although considering we are coming up to Summer (though if it's anything like last year Autumn 3 months early) it was probably a good call as this is 3-6months, also I had a wee panic about running out of wool as only had 2 balls.
Poo, I did end up talking about the sleeves!

All packaged up now and winging its way to its new little owner.
All credit to Jacki Kelly for the wonderful pattern.

Must practise sewing, cos I'm rubbish!

I've been kind to myself and have only uploaded the pictures of this finished cushion which hide the pure amateurishness of my sewing abilities.

It was going well to begin with, I cut my backing fabric and hemmed the edges which made a slightly skewiff square, pinned the furry side down and sewed 3 edges... ha ha ha ha I made that sound so simple. Sewing furry fabric is not easy, for me sewing any fabric isn't easy.
After stuffing the cushion pad in sewing up the open edge proved almost as difficult as getting my 5 year old to learn his spellings, in fact getting my 5 year old to sew this probably would have yielded neater results.
Oh well it's not that bad and I'm sure my girls will like it in their room.
They will like it in their room.

Finished, wrapped and well received

Saw my sister today, as it was her birthday, and she seemed to like the socks that I FINALLY finished. It seemed to be a long slog in the end and I hope I blummin' see her wear them after what seemed like a lot of effort! It was such hard work finishing them yesterday whilst sitting in our sun drenched back garden watching DH weed and mow, hard life.

I enjoy knitting socks, to a certain extent, but also find them a little tedious, I don't know why. I do know that's the reason I do them two at once as I know I would find it hard to have the motivation to do the second one! I will admit to these being the first ones I've done with a stitch pattern, which helped, and I love the effect, so who knows I may do another pair soonish. Funny how yesterday I was saying I would never knit another pair!
But for now I have a new ickle baby cousin to knit for so I'm doing her a Seamless Kimono Sweater in Sirdar Snuggly Baby Bamboo.

I've knitted another one of this fabulous knitter's designs before, her Seamless Kimono for a friend's little boy, which was lovely. I expect this one with be just as delicious and I hope to get it finished in a couple of days.
Last night, whilst watching LOST, I finished the cushion cover front which now needs sewing.
It's all go!

So near and yet so far

I have until Sunday to finish these socks, that's tomorrow, and I've lost all motivation!
I have half the feet and then the toes to do.
I really must get on...

I had a little problem turning the heels in that I forgot to do two at once, like a jibber, so had a hard time repositioning them, got there in the end after blood and tears and a sore thumb that needed a plaster (bitten in frustration)
I realy must get on...
I also did two rows of the pattern wrong due to a wonky stitch count after repositioning nightmare and I had no choice but to swallow it and carry on, lucky that I'm not going to be wearing them as I would notice that constantly, even though it's not noticeable to an untrained hubby's eye, I can see it in the photo above, left sock.
I have sock woe sympathisers (esp tiggerjen at http://withneedlesinherhand.blogspot.com)
So to all the naughty socks out there, behave!
I really must get on...
If I get these finished I can start something new, after I've finished the cushion I started before the socks.
I REALLY must get on...

Easter Knitting

Loooong weekend, hubby off from Thursday and doesn't go back until Wednesday! I've haven't had lot of time to knit, to managed to squeeze in a bit amongst doing a mega clear out of the kids rooms, we have swapped them all over so that the girls are in together and boyoh gets his own room. This meant a new cabin bed for him so that needed picking up and assembling without instructions (that was challenging to say the least!) Also decided that if Bea's old bed was to go in the garage then to make room that needed to be cleared out, so that got done. Then when clearing the rooms we needed even more storage space so it was decided (by DH) to clear out my wardrobe of excess clothes to make room. The charity shops are getting a nice delivery tomorrow!

In amongst this mammoth, almost impromptu spring clean my sister declared that for her birthday she would really like a pair of socks. So whilst I went with big girl in tow to the wool shop, DH decided he would let Bea clean our MacBook with a babywipe that she had previously been sucking, bye bye nice LCD screen and working keyboard. It's off to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store for a seeing to tomorrow. I'm no psychic but I foresee much expenditure on the horizon...

Back to the socks, I suppose in some roundabout way I could blame my sister for the wipe incident, if I hadn't have had to buy wool for her socks then I would have been here to prevent sucked babywipe incident, think I can bill her? Anyway again, back to the socks...decided to keep doing two at once magic loop style cuff down, but couldn't face round and round knit so opted for a very simple rib variation found a pattern called Chardade which uses Herringbone rib, which I'm following loosely.

You can't see the pattern very well with this yarn (Regia 4ply) but it's keeping me from going mad with knit knit knit. Need them finished by next Monday as that's her birthday.

Inbetween the socks I'm doing a little cushion cover for the girls' bedroom from some Sirdar Funky I got ages ago from a sale for 70p a ball. Only have a enough for one side of the cushion, but I have some nice fabric to back it with.


I nearly forgot!! Pictures of Bea's dress...

Ahhh School Holidays (more like Argggh!)

Kids!
Create mess faster than you can tidy it away, play rough games with their siblings then cry and whinge they get hurt despite several warnings that the game will end in tears and "don't come running to me if you break your leg", tell tales constantly that you wish you had never named them those names because, quite frankly, their names warbled at emense decibles are started to grate, are entranced so much by the telly that they forget their own warbled names and their memories are only jogged by screaming their name for the forth or fifth time in their ear that "dinner's ready", then refuse to eat it cos "it's disgusting" (even though they liked it last week)
Give you hugs, tell you they love you and you are the best Mummy in the world for letting them have an Easter cake (given simply because they went on and on and on and on about wanting one, that you ended up screaming "OK, WHATEVER!")
Breathe and knit...

Onto the next, just quickly...

Here's me in my vest.

And this is Bea's dress on the needles.

It's coming along quickly, shouldn't take much longer, although with the Easter Holidays for the next two weeks I'm not sure how much I'm knitting I'm going to get done.
The wool I'm using for this, RY Luxury Cotton DK, is awful, nice and soft but so splity that I keep knitting half a stitch.
Going to get on with it now, whilst I can.

I have created...

Well it is finished, my first Mummy sized garment, I have yet to block it as I keep forgetting to do it before I go to bed, so I will post some piccies of it being worn when I sort that out.
Here it is though, Voila...


I haven't anything on the needles at the moment, to be rectified later today/tonight when I cast on for Bea's dress. I had such a sweet comment from the pattern's desinger on my post lower down. Unbelievably her daughter is also called Bea, and is also 2! So it really will be a perfect "Bea" dress. How spooky huh? It had me shaking my head in amazement, I mean it's not exactly a common name is it? We often get asked if it's short for Beatrice or Beatrix but it's not, it's just Bea. We wanted short names for all our kids and they have 3 letters each.

I've turned my hand to crochet over the last few days with hooks from the Charity shop at 30p each, trying to desperately understand the basics, have done a few circles and flowers. It's really enjoyable actually. I'm now going to go OTT with embellishments, Zan you have inspired me. (My friend Zan at Zanzthingz)

Not bad for a first attempt, you should have seen my first knitted square!!

Whilst writing this I am listening to Just Jack, I've had his albums for a while but revisiting and loving! I suggest you do the same, now, go on...