Some colours

Yellow: Spot the free-range egg! Shocking, isn't it. I think I'm sold on free-range!

Pink: These ladies were waiting at the corner for the light to change, so they could continue their End Cancer walk, 60 km over two days! I loved the big hat. There were a few women all wearing them, but I couldn't jostle around to get them all in a picture.

My knitting these days is continuing very colourful. I will attempt a photo when the sun comes out. The days are definitely fall-ish here now. It's only two or three weeks till we start toying with the idea of turning the furnace on.

I found some pinkness

This poor old bit of a shawl was sitting in a corner, just waiting for me to return to it. I now have the perfect idea of what to do with it when it's done, so I dug it out and am once again having a ball with it!

It doesn't look very pink here, but it will, it will!

The bottom point, adding the 3rd row of scallops

Top left-hand corner, with pink!

The whole thing, thus far

I hope nothing terrible happens, like running out of yarn. Certainly I could add another kind of Noro sock yarn, but I'd rather not!

It's a bit of a scrumpled mess, but it will block out divinely, I am sure. 

 A bit of a pink leaf

Pink and purple month

There might be a bit of pink and purple in the stash and craft cupboards, but not a lot. To celebrate pink and purple month in Project Spectrum, I give you a few flowers.

That is all.

One sock

A sock is done!

I started this when I thought I had lost my grey sock... which has been found and newly ignored! This sock went to NYC and Turkey Point, while the grey one sits alone in a bag.

Now the question is: do I knit the second one of these, or go back to the grey one?

I'm thinking grey, but also I'm thinking that I shall ignore all socks for a moment and get back to my denim pullover!

It's stinkin' hot here, and that's all I have to say about that!

The end of green month

Today the kids and I went out to Toronto Islands with some friends. I didn't take many pictures, but I did get some greenery for you.

I am looking forward to July, blue month; I have a couple of dozen balls of indigo blue to knit up!

Basil seedlings

 

We'll check in again at the end of the month!

I had such plans

The other day I came across this lovely plate at the side of the road! Just my colour and kind of funky.

It was not quite so lovely when I picked it up, but was covered with that dust/grease combo the tops of your cupboards might have! I scrubbed and cleaned and had a nice green butterfly-shaped plate for dips or olives or little bits of nibbles. I was thinking of putting my rainbow fruit skewers on it this weekend!

I was also thinking of assembling a little show-and-tell of other green crockery I have.

Then, this afternoon, I was making dressing for Caesar salad with my hand blender (kind of like this) and I wanted to grind some pepper in, but without going to the trouble of removing the blender from the jar.

One really needs three hands and a much wider jar to do this without catastrophe. The blender tipped over and landed with a crack, right on the middle of my lovely dish.

I am pleased to say that no salad dressing was lost, though.

Boo hoo.

It's June

A new month. I first thought that whatever I had said I would do in May, I probably didn't do it! But I went to check, and it's not that bad.

Goals were:

1. Felted Tweed Botticelli
2. May square
3. grey socks -- or perhaps start another plain pair of socks??
4. sew together that dang blanket.

I did a lot on the Botticelli, but then dropped it to do the baby blanket. So that's 2 things I worked on. I also did the square, and even knit a bit on the socks! Not bad.

June is green month in Project Spectrum, and I shall knit a green square, of course. Also more green bits in the Botticelli. And, ahem, I will knit on those blasted socks, though I doubt I will get through my six baggies of sock yarn this year.

We have a trip coming up, which will require careful thought, as always. Perhaps I'll even work on the nice lace scarf, with yarn from Yarnscape, a pattern from Mary Lou and needles borrowed from my loyal blogless reader, Madeleine!

There will be lots of green. I took this a week or so ago, with the newish grass and the bright bits fallen off the trees. I like the stripes! (It's more impressive if you click to embiggen.)

Making apple crisp

First you peel the apples. 

Also, this time, I cooked up a bit of rhubarb,

but neglected to take a picture of it!

You mix the oats, brown sugar and butter.

Then, you take the apple peels out to the compost,

and stop to admire the flowers on the way. 

All this rain must be good for the flowers!

And maybe shoot a basket or two.

Then you put the oats on the apples and rhubarb and pop the whole thing in the oven.
The end.

It is almost the end of red month, and of Macro May! June will see lots of green, and you know I can do green! I'm looking forward to it. And looking forward to making these fruit skewers:

Happy Mother's Day

Wishing you all Amore, and a good lunch, too!

MM and PS

MM is Macro May, on Flickr.

I am finding this an interesting challenge, and find I am better at taking pictures of static things like a gate latch than plants or, heaven help us, animals!

Sunny weather is always helpful, too. Something that stays still in a sunny spot is just what I like!

PS is, of course, Project Spectrum. Today we have red from the bookshelves.

The cat's cradle book has seen a bit of use lately, but we are not experts. Much practice is needed. Perhaps we should buy a summer cottage if we want the kids to excel at this.

Debrett's is just a joke, really. While my friend was sorting books for a book sale, she came across it and recognized just the sort of silliness that we like around here. Too bad I am unlikely to ever have to address envelopes to archbishops and marquesses.

I must say I use the Scrabble dictionary a lot! Useful words include qi, za, xi and jo, just for starters. (Blogger's spell-checker only likes xi, by the way.) I have a sort-of-standing date to play Scrabble IRL once a week, but it's been a while since all the gang got together. And when the kids are off school in the summer it's almost impossible for everyone to have an afternoon free at the same time! Ah well. There's always Facebook Scrabble...

Colourful in the sun

The sun peeped out yesterday evening so I ran outside to take pictures of Botticelli! The back is progressing like anything! I have this idea that I hate stocking stitch, but it certainly does speed things up if you just knit one row and purl the next, I must say.

Red, Orange, Yellow(ish), Light Green, Dark Green and a row of Turquoise

When I got to the dark green, I swapped out the dark brown and replaced it with grey. Now I think about it, I could have done that with the red, as well. Not changing it now, though!

Ohh, those greens

I had to have a peek at some plants in the garden.

I took euonymus cuttings from a neighbour last year, and after a bit just jammed them in a hole in the ground and hoped for the best, and they seem to have rooted okay. New green leaves!

Then we have the weird alien thingmabobs, which are, in fact, fiddleheads from above.

This hint of spring reminds me of a funny thing I saw on Facebook:

INSTALLING SPRING…
███████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 44% DONE.
Install delayed….please wait.
Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Season not found. Season “Spring” cannot be located. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again.

Clarification, please

The Chia Pet has survived the winter and will soon be surrounded by baby cilantro plants, by the look of things. Very good, very good. Today, however, we are concerned with the red box beside him, containing tea -- special mountain grown tea from Taiwan, given to Stephen for his birthday recently.

I read the "directions" on the tin, and must share them.

1. A tea quantity, may depend on the person to like, the quantity soaks.
2. Soaks the tea set, uses the ceramic, the chinaware tea or the big tea cup, the drinking glass may.
3. With the mountain water seepage or pure water, the taste is good.

I assume this all means "pour boiling water over the tea leaves," but who can say for sure? And where does one find "mountain water seepage"?

Now, to vote! 

What to do in May

I don't think I ever made knitting goals for April. In fact, April just whipped by a bit fast and here we are in May! Arthur has only 6 weeks of school left! The garden has sprung into being without me digging out that wretched patch of grass properly! Aaaack!

Okay, so let's settle down with some knitting.

1. Felted Tweed Botticelli
2. May square
3. grey socks -- or perhaps start another plain pair of socks??
4. sew together that dang blanket. Actually, if I finish it soon, I might even have a baby to give it to! 

It is the start of a new Project Spectrum. I have not really participated in the last couple of years, but now we are back to a colour family a month, and I am keen. I took some pictures of my red/orange/brown Botticelli, but it is dreary outside and the flash pictures I took inside look awful. Never fear: I have some others for you.

The rusty orange yarn, mmm.

A shiny red apple, mmm.

Ick! Pretty colour, but do I really have to interact with them?

I have joined a group on Flickr to participate in MacroMay. It just means one takes pictures through the macro lens... So I took a few red ones, and a green one, too!

We're ready for Project Spectrum

My fingers are itching to get going on the next big thing. I have knit all I'm going to knit on the big black shawl for now, though I still have enough black to do a big swag of some kind across the top.

As you can see, it is huge. It's drying on three beach towels on the study floor.

Here's the bottom bit, with zigzaggy trim on the left and leaves on the right. Beads in the very bottom of the triangle. A dark grey dangly bit on the left.

The top. I love that leaf pattern! And look how it opened out so marvellously.

One of the unattached bits. I'm not sure if they will get tacked up onto the body of the shawl or left to dangle leprously. In any case, I am not obsessing about that anymore, but will let it dry and trim my ends and wrap it around my shoulders and see if I need to do more at some point. But, it's time to move on!

So, I could {mumble mumble finish mumble socks blanket mumble} or I could start my Felted Tweed Botticelli!

I have a great excuse now: Project Spectrum starts with red, and my sweater starts with red, too! 

If I ignore everything else, I could get this baby done in the red, green, blue and pink/purple months. Yeah, we know how that will work, but I will surely get started.

I figure the back will be something like 150 rows long, which means I can do two-row stripes, changing contrast colours every 16 or 20 rows, and go from red and orange, through my various greens, to blue and purple. I'll sort out the sleeves when I need to! I'm trying not to worry about matching two-row stripes through a set-in sleeve just yet...

I would like to do the whole thing in one piece to the armholes, but there is side shaping and front shaping and I think it will work better if I actually follow the pattern.

Who knows what a tweedy rainbow on a tweedy brown background will look like, but we shall soon find out.

Well, that was easy

Got my denim handles done. My, my, all that fuss over nothing... I guess I was just waiting for the right idea to pop into my head. The braids were quick and fun and turned out just the right length. (Make 'em long because the denim shrinks, but not too long, because they'll stretch out with the weight of the bag on them.)

And yes, I had to go out in the snowy bright sunshine for the photoshoot! Cold toes!

Like all knitted bags, it will sag under too much weight. Thinking about this led me down a crazy road when I decided to line it with blue jeans -- all those useful pockets! However, it's unlined for now, and I just won't use it for trips to the library!

The bag itself has been washed several times already, but I'm sure the handles will catch up in the fading department.

I still have almost 3 full balls of this, and some bits of 2 other denim colours, as well, and am keen to start something else. I almost feel like I should rush out and buy more, to embark on a blanket project. But, tsk tsk, I think we can invoke a few rules here: Knit from your stash, and I have plenty to do there. WIP Wipeout, and I think one blanket in progress is sufficient. Even if it's a blanket that is going nowhere fast... Maybe I'll get out the blue and make me a few squares.

I wonder if WIP Wipeout takes precedence over Project Spectrum!? When I finish Arthur's blue sock, the next sock yarn I have lined up is very pink and pink doesn't come up till April. And now that I am finished the blue handles, what I really want to knit is my long lost green cotton cardigan. So I will, even though green doesn't come up till April, either. I will toss in some white or grey here somewhere, too, just for fun. (Lucky it's really just me making these rules, isn't it?)

I tentatively knit a few rows on my blue scarf (sorry, it's one of those gigantic photos) and it's not compelling enough. And now I see a couple of places where I knit only one of the strands, making it (gasp!) imperfect. We'll see what happens with that.

Onward to blue sock!

So here we are in February

Wasn't that poetry day great! Spend some time skimming around and following links and you will be richly rewarded. I especially liked this one.


While reading lots of poetry, I finished up the scarf and hat for charity.

Things I learned: Mistake rib pulls in enormously, and while it makes a nice, thick, reversible scarf, it also takes a lot of yarn to make a nice, thick, wide, reversible scarf!

The hat is a tad large; it even fits over Bunny's ears... Perhaps one day I'll follow a pattern for a hat... That's an idea!

I told Arthur, my colour consultant, about the three colours for February and March in Project Spectrum, and he said, "Boring."

I was thinking they are the colours we see all around us these days. We are getting more and more grey and less white, as the old snow gets dirty. By the end of February there will be frozen heaps of filthy slush all over the place. As long as the sky tends more towards the blue than the grey, we'll manage, but unfortunately, it's all grey out there today! But you can have a picture of the sock in progress to cheer you up.

I also have (drumroll, please!) begun the denim handles! You know, it is not so bad!

Once again I learn the old lesson: if you do it, it'll get done. And if you don't, it won't. Terrible that one has to learn these things over and over. I realised I started this bag in March last year!

The handle is 13 stitches wide, with a 9-stitch braid up it. So far, so good.

I have, as you can see, several buttons in the sidebar that link to things. However, I tried and tried to get a PS button to work. It just wouldn't show up. I'll give it another go...

The last day of January

It's the day before Project Spectrum kicks off.


I have already got my blue(ish) socks on the go, and am working on the heel flap. So those will be out of the way soon.

I was planning on a pair of socks for each PS colour segment, and though these were mostly done beforehand, I'm counting them! (Yeah, okay, I started them in October...)

The bright pink will be next on the sock needles, even though pink doesn't come up till April.

(When I started knitting socks for Arthur, I could get all but the second toe out of one 50 g ball, but this time I only got one sock and most of a leg before I had to bring in the second ball.)


And I've got a scarf and hat on the go for Streetknit. I had four balls of this wool -- I paused the scarf after two, to make the hat, and then I'll use whatever's left to finish the scarf.

I hope the hat will be extra warm, with a strand of sock yarn knitted along with the main yarn. It's fun and fast, though the mistake rib scarf is dragging a bit!

This hardly counts as blue, but I'll finish it asap and move on to something that does.

I am itching to make a bigger project. I made an 8-inch square the other day for the school blanket, with cables! Got out my Alice Starmore book, set to work in earnest on a piece with a couple of different cables... and got completely bamboozled. Gauge goes right out the window, for one thing. There's been a rash of mis-crossed cables in the blogosphere lately, and I did my little part in that, too, though since it was just a wee square, it got ripped before being documented! In any case, it put me off cables for a while and the thought of a sweater full of them now fills me with dread. But I managed this square of three identical braids, and it looks so nice, that my present grand scheme for the blasted denim handles is to make a long thin braid! We'll see how many inches I can get before cracking.

And the plan for the bigger project will just simmer a bit longer.