Living in bathroom renovation hell!

Sometime towards the end of september my bathroom looked like this! (Notice the orange tiles, they were everywhere!)

The next day the toilet and bath were gone!

4 weeks later my bathroom looks like this!

The pink stuff is an underlay before the underfloor heating and tiles go down. There is no toilet, no sink, no bath, no shower!

On top of this we are trying to tidy the house up a bit (aka putting right all the kiddy damage!) so we are trying to paint walls, declutter, and sot out "my" fireplace.

Its now half term, the upstairs hallway is filled with tools, there are random bits of bathroom stuff stashed around the house (and to be honest I don't think the man of the house has factored storage into the bathroom plans!) I am exhausted, run down and don't remember the last time I sat down to watch tv in the evening.

And to top it all (yes I know I shouldn't start a sentence with "and") I have lost my knitting mojo!

I really would like a pair of fingerless mitts, I have the yarn, the pattern, the needles, but I don't want to look at it. I can't think about casting on.

I am hoping it is just related to the stress and exhaustion and sometime soon I will be once again soaking in a hot bath (in my own house!) thinking about yarn!

What a start to the week!

Its rainy, sunny and windy (reeeaalllyyy windy!) all at once, two of my children have come down with a cold, and admitedly I think i'm getting it too!
I really did not want to get out of bed this morning after being woken a million times in the night, and my poor eldest daughter has gone back to bed for a couple of hours after being kept awake during the night by a really annoying kitty.
Well altleast I got my hat finished this weekend though and can now concentrate on my socks!

You have to excuse the quality of the picture, I got a phone upgrade and there is a huge fault with the camera needless to say its going back today and hopefully the replacement will have a fully functional camera!

The hat is a touch big, but I love it, it is cosy and soft and I love the colours!

I am thinking I need to have a few more little projects on the go, I am envious of how many things others get made and in 3 weeks I knitted a hat! I guess maybe today I will pull out the sewing machine and get around to making me a new project bag!

WIP Wednesday!

Oh my, I think this is my 2nd WIP wednesday! and I think I am probably still working on the same things I was two weeks ago, I was away last week so just got a few minutes here and there to work on my current project my Hermoine hat and am about 75% of the way through, the colours are much brighter in person.

I also cast on my first ever sock today!! something i've really wanted to do since i started kniting in December.

I have only done one row and it seems rather messy at the moment, but obligitory pics anyway!

Its not twisted its just messy!!

oooh the yarn

Inspired by gingerbreadgirl's socks

fot more WIP wednedsays check out Tami's blog.

I am becoming lazy!

I feel like most of the summer holidays have gone to waste, too many lazy days and rainy days. Just a week left and my girls will be back at school and I will miss them like crazy.
I haven't really achieved much since the last post.
We have had a the odd few days out, we have been swimming again and everyone is gaining confidence. Isaac was even jumping in off the side.
We are not at all prepared for the return to school, we are still short a pair of shoes for the ever fussy Amelia who declared every one of the 40 or so pair she tried on were hurting her feet or just not right! and we need to go top up the school uniforms, but that will have to wait until we get back from a couple of days in london next week visiting the (not really) inlaws!!!

About a week or so ago I cast on this hat, which is coming along slowly but nicely

Have also started on this too for ds but I need to realise I do not like James c brett marble, and have only done a few rows then ignored it!

I want to get a couple of  other things started as I don't want to have nothing to work on while we are away despite the fact that I will likely not even finish the hat.

I might even cast on my first pair of socks today!!

A little late for friday.....

But I finished my shawl saturday (would have been done Friday but my Thursday evening knitting time was spent been attacked by children)

Here it is blocking very badly!

Now I am in that horrible, horrible limbo between projects! Arrggghhhh

WIP Wednesday

My first time taking part, if you want to see more WIP Wednesdays check out Tami's blog

I am still working on The age of brass and steam and only got a couple more rows done yesterday as I spent most of my evening cleaning out the kids bedroom with my sister, but will hopefully be finished by friday.

Well I have a lot to do so better get back to work!

The weirdness of blogger, or is it my computer?

I know I haven't been around lately, with the summer holidays, housework and a million crafty things that needed doing i've been a teeny bit busy. Though not really a good excuse as I usually have a quiet half hour with my coffee on a morning. I have however tried to check up on others blogs and post a couple of comments but for some unknown reason blogger/my computer wont let me. It likes to pretend I'm not signed in unless im in my own blog, which also means it won't let me follow new blogs I come across.
Its really rather frustrating.

Anyway, I have been a busy bee with the crafting, the last week of term was spent making little zipped pouches for all the kids teachers

Made from this tute which was really easy to follow.

I have also had a go at these but got slightly distracted by a craft swap and buying some more colours of bias binding.

Then I spent a couple of weeks working on something I can't share :o)

I have also started on my first shawl, The age of brass and steam. Which is coming along nicely depsite a few mistakes, but I must accept nothing can be perfect, people make mistakes!

I've done a couple more inches on this, its smaller than I expected but assume it will be a teeny bit bigger once blocked anyway.

It's been a while!

I know I have a habit of wandering off and forgetting what I was doing and then taking weeks to get around to it again.
I think sleep deprivation has taken its toll on me. Anyhow you've missed a birthday, where my wonderful sisters brought me a rather fabulous cake!

And my mum, sister and her boyfriend and mine brought an even more fabulous kindle!!
Which I'm almost finished making a kindle cosy for, I did my first ever cable and am amazed and impressed!

Anyway today has been a grumpy day so after school and a quick stop at Tesco we headed to the beach and blew the cobwebs away.

And beach without fish and chips just isn't right is it?

Ps I'm quite certain the pictures don't match the text but you get the idea.

C is for..... circular needles!

Before I learned to knit, all I knew were straight needles and every failed attempt to learn involved a pair of long 4mm needles, I didn't know there was a whole world of knitting equipment out there.
Sometime last year (before I learned to knit) I learned about knitpro (knitpicks), those pretty rainbow wooden sticks and when I decided once again I was going to learn to knit I promised myself once I had finished my first proper knitting project, when I was sure I would stick with it, I would treat myself to a set.

I did and never looked back, I have picked up straight needles twice since I started on circulars and I never made it past a few stitches., I don't know if its a mental block or because circular needles are just so amazing! You never lose a needle because they are tied together, you can knit something as wide as you like, you can get little connectors to join the cables together and make them theoretically as long as you like. You can get the most amazingly beautiful wooden ones, acrylic, bamboo, stainless steel, nickel coated, you can even get itty bitty teeny weeny ones for knitting socks! You can get fixed ones with a set length of cable attached or interchangeable so you can use whichever length cable you need with whichever size needle you need (although teeny sizes don't come in interchangeable as the cable join would be bigger than the needle) and you can get a set for all budgets.

What I love most about them is being able to knit in the round, watching the little vest I made for my son grow, its kind of like magic!

Head over to An accidental knitter for more ABC's

wow!

Well yesterdays bargains weren't so much of the yarny veriety, though there were a few things in there which are definatly usable, I was somewhat concerned about the bag of maybe 40-50yr old 100% nylon yarn and half knit jumpers!

althgough there is also three balls of an acrylic mohair blend (in peach) and the grey stuff on the right has a bit of wool in it too.

But that is just a fraction of what I found in there!

A bag of odd balls.

The black glittery stuff really intrigued me, with its blend of lurex and courtelle (imitation wool!) and and im not quite sure what to do with the burghundy double boucle but there is around 15 balls of it!

There is also around four balls of imitation mohair, and four or five of a bottle green mostly mohair blend.
I'm not done yet though, I haven't told you about the patterns, that is what got me really excited! I get a bit excited by old things just the thought of the history attached. Anyway here some pictures of my favourite bits.

B is for ..... bargains and babywearing

Learn your abc's with An Accidental Knitter

I am between cars at the moment and the other half decided he needed his car today so I was on foot. I decided to take advantage of the situation and have a wander round the local charity shops after dropping off the little munchkin to nursery. well I didn't make it past the first charity shop and I came across a huge bag containing a mini sewing machine, a lot of yarn, some needles and a big pile of knitting patterns. I was looking for a small sewing machine for the eldest two to use and took a bit of pot luck on the rest and decided to get it.
It was unfortunately a bit too big for me to carry although I did contemplate trying to squeze it into my lovely pink ikea shopping trolley or leaving it till monday when I would have the car again.
Then I had the perfect Idea, having Isaac already wrapped up on my back fast asleep I rushed home to get the pushchair and loaded it up...

The pushchair is a biiig three wheeled affair so you can see how big the bag was! A lot of the stuff looks like it may be a bit 'vintage'

I also picked up these too!

The red being 100% Icelandic wool and the green being a acrylic/nylon/alpaca blend.

I will post some more pictures when I get chance to go through everything.

A is for absent.

Ok so I was planning on taking part in learn your abc's  but as usual I am a bit late to the party and I forgot my keys.
yeah I kind of disapeared for a while and life got in the way as usual! So A is for absent.

Where have I been and what have I done? Well I think I failed the kids clothing challenge :-(  I made ds three pairs of shorties and cut out the fabric for a twirly skirt and thats as far as I got.
Other than that it was just housework, knitting and very long bedtimes! I was driven to ice cream.

I got out my treadle and am attempting to get it to sew (think there is a tension issue, the top thread keeps breaking and seems too loose before it goes through the tensioner thingy and too tight after, if that makes sense) I have changed the bottom thread after realising the bobbin in there had 3 different types of thread on it and god knows how many years it had been on there and will test it out a bit later!

I do have one exciting thing to share 

I'm finished my shrug!!!

I'm not sure about the sizing, it fits me but think it could have  done with being a bit wider at the front. I am now planning on making smaller ones for the kids.
I am yet to cast on my next project i think its something i need to do before i finish to avoid the "argghh I have nothing to knit" panic that takes me even longer to get something cast on!

Hopefully will be back very soon with "b is for....."

A new week and the sun is shining!

Urgh mornings!

Oh dear It has been one of those morning's I hate! The ones where you know your going to be late and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it! At 8:42 this morning I had 2 children naked from the waist down, a missing shoe and a lot of hair to brush, as it was we literally made it as the door was shutting albeit short a coat, reading book and Amelia wearing a cardigan two sizes to small, nope I obviously didn't look at my child as she shot past me into the car this morning and will never win awards for my organisation skills!

Kids clothes week challenge.

This week I am planning on taking part in kids clothes week challenge , my sewing machine has been sadly neglected and Isaac could do with some summery clothes and some shorties to wear over his cloth nappies, and I would maybe like to make dresses or skirts for the girls. I'm planning on mostly upcycling as I have quite a few bits of old clothes/curtains/fabric and felted wool jumpers around, and will be trying to post daily about what I've been up to.

Knitting progress.


As my knitting grows slowly row by row, I find it hard to see how much I have achieved, so have decided to post a photo every so often so I can see how its going. I have to admit there are one or two mistakes but there is no way I am going to start over with this again!

I am also trying to see how much extra knitting I can squeeze in, a row while supervising the kids in the bath or sitting with them chatting at bedtime. I have a bad habit of wasting odd minutes here and there as I don't feel there is enough time to get much done and I think I need to stop thinking and start doing!

Bad knitting karma!

I have obviously committed some evil yarny crime of which I have no knowledge, and it has come back to bite me on the bum, because for some reason this shrug seems out to get me!
After starting over last time I got quite far on, had to move on to the 2nd ball of yarn. then did a few more rows before I noticed a wandering yarnover that wasn't where it should be! cue me ripping back quite a few rows..... right back before I started the new ball..... back before i had weaved in the ends of the old and new ball! see where this is going?
A few reminders to myself! check for mistakes before adding a new ball of yarn, then again before attempting to weave in the  old a new balls ends and if I am ever stupid enough to forget the above, unweave the ends before starting ripping back. I somehow ended up with a large tangled mess of what seemed like 4 different strands of wool coming from all different directions.
An hour later I had eventually managed to rip back to before the mistake and carried on knitting.
I felt a bit like this thing just wasn't the same anymore, it was no longer smooth and pretty, anyway a bit further on and I noticed a couple of my yarnover's were breeding and had had a little baby yarnover! ARRGGHH I couldn't even bring myself to frog this yet and have started over with the original yarn and 6mm needles. Five rows in and I haven't screwed up yet!

My opinions on the hiyahiya's.

I transferred the previous shrug from my knitpro symfonies on to a  hiyahiya 5mm stainless steel, compared to the knitpro it was very slippy and the stitches moved along it much easier which meant they also fell of it a lot easier! once I got used to them and stopped dropping stitches, they were quite nice to knit with there were no rough edges to catch the yarn and no mysterious places the yarn got stuck. The cable however is not as slippy and the stitches didn't seem to move along it freely it is also quite curled up and not as flexible as the knit pro cable. Shrug attempt #4 was started on a 6mm hiyahiya which for some reason aren't as smooth as the other pair. I will certainly be using them though and for the price I paid am rather impressed. It won't stop me from trying out other needles but was a fix for my hiyahiya curiosity!

A day for doing something different.

Just some days I don't want to get up, make myself a cup of coffee and do the same things I do everyday, and waking up tired and in a bad mood there is nothing to shake up the mood than pilling in the car without a plan!
so breakfast by the sea? why not

Though it was a rather windy morning so we didnt hang around long, and headed off to costa for a mocha and chocolate twist and a round of chocolate babycino's on me.

Then we went off to buy crocs for the girls (although Amelia queen of pretty shoes somehow anded up with sparkly dora sandles) and shoes for the boy (which was no easy job with his chubby little ankles) and a not so little quick peak round hobbycraft, then back home....

but not without an ice cream first!

After a lazy tv day yesterday, we were all in need of some fresh air and sunshine so we went to Durham botanic gardens. We met up with a friend who unfortunately couldn't stay long and then bumped into another I hadn't seen in a while, and the kids had lots of playing to catch up on!

On previous visits I've not ventured far from the entrance but there was an Easter chick hunt (tho the chicks looked suspiciously like ducks) and the children were keen to find them all. It took us quite a way around the garden and we saw some lovely flowers, hundreds of tadpoles and even a couple of baby rabbits! I'm not sure where the rest of the chicks were hiding though as we didn't find them all.
It was a fabulous day and the kids had a great time.
It didn't occur to me to take photos until later in the day, I am now imagining the artistic shots of tadpoles and tulips and even ducks flying on ceiling fans I could have taken (if I had any photographic talent).
Unfortunately this is about all I got....

Back to the knitting (and the shopping)

I am a bit of a slow knitter, well to be honest i'm pretty slow at everything, except maybe reading and I guess I am slow at that too because if I dont actually read it takes forever to finish a book.

Anyway the shrug I was working on at the weekend got frogged re started in another shade of sublime cashmere merino silk (I am so enjoying knitting this yarn, its sooo soft) and so far everything is all as it should be, well apart from maybe the fact that im using 5mm needles not 6.5mm like I should , tho I have followed some changes made on someone else's project to make a larger size, so fingers crossed it may still fit me! and if not I'm sure it will fit one of the girls.

I know its rather slow going, an hour or two in the evenings is about all the knitting time I get with the odd row or two here and there when the kids aren't climbing on me, unfortunatly its a lot easier to shop online than knit when there is someone curled up on your knee and I managed to order myself a few knitting bits recently.

I have been somewhat disapointed with the knitpro interchangable set that I treated myself to after I'd stuck with knitting for a few months (I felt like had to prove to myself it wasn't something I was going to give up and get bored of before I splashed out on anything new) so I ordered some hiyahiya needles to try, and some purple pins dpns for when I get round to trying socks (sad i know but i'm so excited at the thought of knitting my own socks) and may have got a bit obsessed with stitch markers, I have even had a go at making a few of my own

quite fun, but not suprising everything takes me so long, if I keep getting distracted along the way!

Posting in my pj's

What a lovely couple of days we have had! The other half has had a few days off and the weekend just rushed by, it still feels a bit like sunday, infact I am still in my pj's, have just made a 2nd cup of coffee and the kids are watching scooby doo!

Monday we took the kids to the fair that was in town for the bank holidays, The plan was a couple of rides each, hook-a-duck and maybe some candyfloss, but somehow we ended up strolling round the museum of hartlepool and then onto pizza hut, I am not particularly a lover of pizza hut but have had a thing for their potato salad since i was in my late teens and with a kids eat free offer and the thought of no dirty dishes to deal with, it was a temptation we could not resist.

Isaac wasn't satisfied with watching from the sidelines so had to get in on the action

He wasn't so keen to get out either and had to have his hands prised off the steering wheel!

will be back later fully dressed, housework (half maybe) done and a wip to share.

Ahhh glorious day

I got to spend a couple of hours in the garden today doing absolutly nothing! Well not quite as I can't just do nothing so I alternated between reading and knitting.
I cast on a shrug last night and tho rather pleased with my progress and the sublime yarn is lovely to knit with, I've somehow messed up the increases and will have to rip back to the ribbing, wahhh. I'm not sure I can face it and may start over again with another ball of yarn

I'm not missing, just busy!

I guess everyone has those weeks when the work seems never ending and a coffee break means 30 seconds between jobs and errands. I think it was the sudden onset of summery weather, suddenly there seemed an awful lot of housework to do and every two minutes I was disturbed by "muuuuummmeeee"
so rather than try to fill you in on the last couple of weeks I shall share some photos.

The kids had an easter egg competition at school, so Isaac got in on the action and did a little painting

     The final result was quite impressive

We have had lots of days out at the beach and river

and maybe an ice cream or two

and had lots of fun in the garden too!

Building tents

snail racing

and just relaxing, well at least some of us were!

Slightly sad of me I know, but one of my highlights of the last few weeks was hanging the washing on the line! There is Just something so satisfying about a line of washing blowing in the wind, and something so relaxing about pegging it all on the line.

HAPPY EASTER!!!!