 June 30, 2006
Knitting in Paris
I hardly knit anything in Paris. I wanted to take something special along but it had to be something small enough to fit in my little bag * and something that I could pick up and put down without too many difficulties. I decided to take the Art yarns silk rhaphsody and the lantern moon needles that were a birthday present from mum and dad (yay!) and see what happened.
What do you think? I'm loving the yarn, the needles and the pattern all in together. Its going to be a beautiful luxurious scarf when its finished. I'll write up the instructions when I'm done with it. Here's a close up of the stitch pattern :
* This bag that Amanda made me ages and ages ago is still my all time favourite. Add a couple of little Happy Birthday people given to me by Barbara and a beautiful Molly Chicken Brooch and I'm all set. Seriously, I've used this bag just about every day since I got it. Love it.
Posted by Kerrie at 06:19 AM
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June 29, 2006
More distraction
I had every intention of sharing pics of the new layout in the shop and also the very gorgeous scarf that I took to Paris with me. However, the camera is in the shop and I am at home so that kind of ruins that plan doesn't it? Instead I offer you more distraction, this time in the way of the most beautiful shawl I have ever seen, knitted from just one skein of our cashmere sock yarn. Really, have you ever seen such beautiful pics and such great knitting?
Posted by Kerrie at 08:35 AM
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June 28, 2006
Distraction
Knitting to deadlines (thanks for the help Laura xx) plus lots of proper work to do plus last minute panics with MagKnits and a HipKnits update to put together means that I'm going to try and distract you with a cute pic of Cam and Brooke that I took this morning before we left the house. There. Are you too distracted to notice the lack of anything much else around here? Good. Now move on and go read someone less boring but come back tomorrow for Paris knitting pics. PS - selling lots of merino fibre on ebay. Bought too much of it and now need the space. 500g lots starting at £4 each. Bargain.
Posted by Kerrie at 01:45 PM
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June 27, 2006
Oliver's Fund
The lovely Michaela who makes so many wonderful wacky things for Hipknits came up with a great fundraising idea to raise some extra funds for Emma and Oliver's fund. Her idea is to get as many knitters as possible to donate a skein (or more) of yarn from their stash that we can put together and auction as a whole stash on ebay. The only stipulation is that the yarn must be new with ball band. I offered to collect the yarns for her so that she didn't have to give out her address to the whole internet. The first deadline for sending in donations is the end of July but if this is popular I'm sure that she may well do it again. Please send anything that you'd like to donate to the following address : Oliver's Fund Michaela will be gathering all the donations together and sorting them out into mini stashes to auction. She is going to keep the auctions small enough (just under 2 kilos) so that they can be posted internationally. I know that Michaela has been contacting some of the big yarn companies about donating yarn so there will be lots and lots of goodies to bid on - how exciting! Knitters are such generous people, I'm sure that you'll all be able to dig into your stash and find at least 1 ball of yarn that deserves a new home. Thanks so much in advance!
Posted by Kerrie at 06:04 AM
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June 26, 2006
Paris
Paris was amazing, just amazing. We had pretty much 3 full days to explore and believe me we made the most of them. I don't think either of us have ever walked so much, we left the hotel at about 10 and didn't get back until nearly midnight and most of that time was spent walking around. My basic French was sorely tested when no-one in our hotel spoke English which was actually a really good thing. I tried really hard to speak French at every opportunity and was quite chuffed when the lady serving us in Monoprix asked if I had a loyalty card, I must have sounded reasonably French don't you think? We stayed in Nanterre, just on the outskirts of Paris in metro zone 3. Trains, tubes and buses were all mastered - we found the city really easy to get around. Visits were made to La Drogerie, Phildar and Boutique Le Comptoir and while nothing was purchased I did come away with some Bouton D'Or bamboo yarn which was a generous present from Barbara, owner of Boutique Le Comptoir. This gorgeous store is a must visit for any knitter in Paris, its a beautidul boutique on Rue Cadet which is really centrally located. A traditional haberdashery shop it sells yarn, needles, fabric, threads, jar upon jar of buttons and beads and very soon some gorgeous HipKnits yarns as well! How excited do you think I was to visit our first French stockist in the flesh? It was beautiful and so lovely to meet Barbara. Tourist wise we managed to visit the following :
Eiffel Tower. Of course. Impressions? Very tall and a lot darker than I was expecting. I kind of thought from all the pics that it was made from a silver kind of coloured metal. Beautiful though, especially when it shone full of twinkling lights in the evening.
Arc de Triumph. High. I'm scared scared scared of heights but I managed to climb the 284 steps to the top with only one panic attack on the way which found me hiding in an alcove half way up the stairs with my eyes shut while Wayne tried to coax me out. I wasn't impressed when we got to the top though and stayed with my back to the edge in the middle the whole time. Wayne assures me that it was a great view though.
Notre Dame. Looks just like it does in the Disney cartoon! We loved the street acts going on around it though, skateboarders and other fun stuff. This was a good place to hang out in the evening.
Moulin Rouge. Very cool windmill but we didn't go inside. Louvre. Bit disappointed with the fact that Mona Lisa is so small but the rest of the paintings totally made up for it. We spent an hour and a half in there and only managed to see half the paintings on one floor in one wing of the museum. You'd need a whole day there to see everything, its massive! Lots and lots of other sights were seen. Not much knitting was done though, I'll show pics of what I did manage later in the week. We're exhausted and so glad to be home with the kids now, sometimes coming home is the best part of going away, don't you think?
Posted by Kerrie at 06:07 AM
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June 19, 2006
The Big Three Oh
I'm finally 30! Saturday was the day of the BBQ, it was a lovely hot day and we had a great time out in the garden, melting in the sun or hiding in the shade under the gazebo. Lots of food was eaten, a few cases of beer were drunk and half a dozen under 6 year olds ran riot around the house until they started to fall asleep on various chairs at about 10pm! Here are a few pics of the garden, before the party :
During the party :
After the party :
Cleanup is the worst part of something like this but it always looks worse than it really is. A couple of hours on Sunday morning and our house was restored to it usual organised chaos. Look at my cake, isn't it beautiful? The ever perfect Michaela who made me that gorgeous HipKnits cake excelled herself with this one, it was just gorgeous. Yes, I did say was. There is just enough left for a cup of tea and slice of cake later on this morning. Delicious! So that was the party on Saturday. My actual birthday was spent doing 2 very fun things. In the morning was the photo shoot for the calender to raise money for our local breast cancer charity. 15 girls in pink bikinis and sarongs, 2 make up artists, a camera man, a film producer, a beautiful house and lots and lots of giggles! It was an all day affair but I only stayed until just after lunch, I was in 3 photos so can't wait to see the calender when it comes out in September / October. I'll be selling them to raise money for the charity so depending on how well they do at hiding stretch marks I may even show you the finished calender here. We'll see. Wayne and the kids came to pick me up after lunch and had to wait about half an hour for them to finish the last photo I was in. Wayne sat outside with a beer in his hand not knowing where to look as he was surrounded by women wearing pink bikinis. Think he would have stayed all day if he could! Then it was off to a local wildlife centre for my birthday treat as organised by Brooke. Isn't she lovely? Cam didn't want to have his photo taken with us, he was too busy chasing after ducks while flappign his arms and shouting quack quack . Out of all the lovely presents though, the best one had to be from Wayne. He is whisking me off to Paris tomorrow morning for a few days away, I've never been to Paris before and I'm so so excited! I'll be packing tonight and then we're leaving home at around 3am tomorrow (yuck) and getting back on Friday. This does mean that knitting club is cancelled tomorrow night and there may be a slight delay in replying to emails but hey, I'll be in Paris! I'll make sure to post lots of pics at the weekend. Does anyone know where La Droguerie is in Paris? I looked it up on the website but the address given (rue de Jour) doesn't seem to exist anywhere in Paris unless I'm going totally mad. Its not a big deal, I'd just love to pop in there if I knew where it was.
Posted by Kerrie at 09:24 AM
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June 16, 2006
Place your bets now
Thanks for all your bike riding suggestions and comments, I'll take some pics of our progress next week. She is having so much fun learning what does it matter if my back creaks a little more with all the bending over and holding onto the back of the bike?
I'm going to start one of these 2 cardigans for myself next Monday. The only question is, which one? They both call for DK weight yarn, the White Lies Design one will be made in cashmere sockweight held double, the Sirdar one will be made from something else which I haven't totally decided on yet. I think I want to make the White Lies one first but Wayne chose the Sirdar one. His decision was based on the fact that the Sirdar one was more normal and to quote his words "the white one looks like it might lose control at any minute" I think it scared him. So you might as well have a say in this as well, white or brown?
Posted by Kerrie at 11:46 AM
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June 14, 2006
Time to lose those training wheels
Brooke flies around on her little bike with stabilisers (training wheels) but we've been a little slack in getting her to ride her big girls bike that we bought her for Christmas. I decided that this week was going to be a big effort on my part to get her riding confidently but Wayne and I are having a big difference of opinion on how to go about it. So I decided to turn to the internet and to you all for some advice. I really like this idea about using a hill to allow the child to gain confidence with their balance. Many of the articles I read seemed to say that if a child learns to depend on their stabilisers and can't ride without them by the age of 4 then they are unlikely to be able to learn to ride a bike. I skipped over those ones. The way that I've done it for the last 2 nights is to put her on her big new bike with no stabilisers and hold on to the back of the saddle while she peddles. She is getting more confident and more stable although her balance isn't great and she does lean over to one side a lot. I've let go of the saddle a couple of times but only for a heartbeat and she is OK but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to let go for long enough for her to learn. So do you think that I should carry on as I am doing and see how she gets on or just let her bomb around on her tiny bike where her knees nearly touch her chin as she pedals and her training wheels stop her from tipping over. She so badly wants to learn to ride like her friends at school but I'm not sure if I'm going about teaching her the right way. It doesn't help when I have Cam under my feet while I'm trying to teach her, on his little trike asking me to push push push MY bike mummy all the time. Sigh. This is rapidly turning into one of those things that its just easier to ignore and I don't want it to be one of those things. What do you all think? How did you teach your kids to ride their bikes without training wheels? Do you have any words of wisdom, what not to do or what worked well for you? I'd LOVE to hear from you.
Posted by Kerrie at 08:52 PM
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New Things
You guys had some good guesses yesterday about my new reads! Janine was right on the money with the fact that they are nearly all about sewing. I seem to be reading more and more sewing blogs these days, is sewing becoming the new knitting? We'll have to wait and see. Jorun bought up a good point about an online sewing magazine, this is something that I was thinking about doing a while ago but it never really came together. I dont think I could do it on my own but maybe I should see if someone was interested in working with me on it. Hmmm.. This pile of knitwear is glaring at me from the corner of the room at the moment. It is a collection of designs for a magazine and my deadline is fast fast approaching. Version blue is 90% done. Version pink is 80% done and version green was 50% done but is now back to zero again. Not wanting to fuel any further rumours, I should make it clear that while version pink and blue are for my 2 little ones, version green most certainly is not.
Posted by Kerrie at 10:35 AM
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June 13, 2006
New Reads
Anyone notice a theme with some of my new favourite blog reads at the moment ?
Posted by Kerrie at 06:07 AM
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June 12, 2006
Summery summary
This weekend was so jam packed full of stuff I feel tired just thinking about it. It was all about getting broken down cars fixed, sitting in the sun for HOURS at Brooke's school fete yesterday selling HipKnits yarns and some handmade bags and bears (Laura made them, not me!), family christenings, visiting mum and dad, pub meal and pints of lager shandy on Friday night, splashing in paddling pools and wearing factor 30 sun tan lotion - that last one applies to me and the kids. It is such beautiful weather here at the moment, but a little too hot for me. I like to be able to go out without a coat on but not to roast. Around 20 - 24 degrees is optimum Kerrie temperature. Not that I'm complaining you understand, not at all. I finished the first bouquet sock. Love it. Even more so when I realised that Wayne did not love it! It may be a little bright but its such a fun sock, I'm looking forward to either wearing them or seeing someone else wearing them all winter. Yes, these may be for a present. I haven't decided yet. The 2nd one is only a few rows in at the moment but I'm hoping to get it done this week. I also made a little flower hair band from the Hand Maiden chunky silk / cashmere left over from this twirly scarf free pattern I did for HipKnits. See, pretty isn't it? Only took about half an hour to make the flowers as well. I had 20cm of yarn left when I'd finished, I love the satisfaction of using up every last scrap of a skein of yarn!
Posted by Kerrie at 10:53 AM
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June 08, 2006
Bouquet sock
This was a skein of Bouquet from a recent big order I just did for Get Knitted that went wrong. The colours bled, there ended up being yellow spots from the green in the middle of the pink and pink spots in the green. It looked AWFUL in the skein so I whipped it out and replaced it with a decent one. Funny how it doesn't look too too bad when knitted up, I can see pair of bright Bouquet summer socks in my future. Have you seen the Knit a River campaign yet? If not, why not? Go and knit them a blue square, its for a great cause and Gerard from I knit is a great person. So its almost compulsary to knit a square for them. I'm rummaging through my stash now to find some blue yarn. So, while I was in time out on the sofa I had a bit of extra surf around and find new blogs time. There are so so so many knitting blogs out there, its a bit scary. When I started this blog the only UK knit bloggers were Emma, Anne, myself and someone called Trina who has since long gone back to New Zealand and forgotten all about us. :( Now there are approximately 50 million UK knit bloggers, or at least that's how it seems sometimes! I thought I'd share new favourites with you each day for the next little while. Number one has to be Robynn. Glamourous hostess of Purlescence. I'm her official Internet stalker, wonder if that post comes with a badge? Talking of badges, have a look at the HipKnits blog. I'm updating there most days now and there is lots of information about my 30th birthday sale which is going on. Come and join our club and I'll send you a little membership card and badge.
Posted by Kerrie at 08:14 AM
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June 07, 2006
Likeness
I just had to show you this picture that Brooke drew of me, don't I look gorgeous? It all started when I left for knitting club last night and Cameron got upset that I was leaving and cried for me. Brooke decided to make him a puppet of me so that he could hold it and not be sad but she couldn't find the scissors to cut me out and stick me on a lollypop stick so in the end she gave him the picture to carry around to make him happy. She showed me it this morning and explained that the initials on the dress stood for I love dad Brooke and Cameron and that she couldn't find the right colour crayon for my skin so she thought I'd like to be brown like her daddy and Cameron. I love it! My hair is in 2 plaits, just the way I like it, my eyes are big and blue and have long eyelashes and I have fingers and toes. What more could I ask for? Cameron is a bit clingy to me at the moment. He's also just beginning to string words together in little fits and starts, the pause between the words is getting shorter and shorter and yesterday he managed 2 sentences that sounded like they could have come from Brooke. Unfortunately the first proper sentence he ever said was : "Brooke, brush teeth. Now! Chop chop Brooke, chop chop" How's that for a lot of words to come out of his mouth! Brooke and I just collapsed onto the floor laughing while Cameron (realising that he had an audience) just kept waving her toothbrush at her and shouting "chop chop Brooke, chop chop" So funny. I'd also advise anyone considering travelling in the car with Cameron to avoid motorways unless Cameron is asleep. He is very much into cars at the moment and while the cries of "Look, car!" can be sweet to start with, a few miles of motorway and a hundred cars later you'll wish you'd taken the country roads! He's growing up so much... Wayne has the job of washing and drying Cam's hair. I have the job of plaiting it. The girls who look after him at nursery love his hair big and although he often goes in looking curly (look at those teeth, as the dentist said last week when we went for family check up - its a bit crowded in there!) we never take him in with his hair combed into a big afro. That is strictly for home. I did print this picture out into A4 size and take it in for them last week though. They stuck it on their notice board! Love him.. By the way, those subglasses he was wearing in the curly photo? He went to bed in them the other night cluthching a long cardboard tube that originally had wrapping paper around it. Why? Well, it just seemed easier than arguing with him. 2 minutes after he fell asleep I crept back in the room and moved them to the bottom of his cot. When we went in to see him in the morning he was wearing the glasses again and gave us a thumbs up sign and said "cool man". Where does he get it all from?
Posted by Kerrie at 07:56 AM
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June 05, 2006
Don't your feet deserve a treat?
I have so much to show you that I've been working on for the last few weeks on the sofa, lets start with the most recent shall we? A mini socklette, knitted in its entirety yesterday whilst at Greenwich park. The sock and I chilled out on a blanket and watched Cameron climbing trees, playing football and chasing ducks. At the same time Brooke was pottering around picking up sticks and bringing leaves and things over to show me. Wayne kind of went between all 3 of us. This was made out of the very luxurious Hand Maiden Silk / Cashmere 4 ply yarn. Less than 1 50g skein for my average sized adult feet. Pure luxury at a not too expensive price. Don't you love your feet enough to treat them too a pair of silk / cashmere socks? Click here for a close up of the foot decreases, couldn't you just eat them up? The socklette pattern is free with any purchase of Hand Maiden Silk / Cashmere 4 ply yarn, but if you ask nicely we could be persuaded to send you one if you buy some of our cashmere sock yarn as well. Just add a little plea for "socklette pattern please" when checking out and we'll include one in your parcel for you. Tomorrow, a kid update. Aren't you just desperate for some Cam and Brooke updates?
Posted by Kerrie at 05:56 PM
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June 01, 2006
Thanks for everything
You guys are great, thanks so much for all the emails, phone calls, cards and flowers. I love each and every one of them, too many to list here individually. Just know that I appreciate all of them. The rose in the pic above was from a beautiful bunch sent by the Simply Knitting team, they smelled absolutely beautiful and I was so sad to see them start to droop. I should have taken a pic of them sooner, I forgot how roses don't last that long. So, I've had a great couple of weeks at home. I've learned to love daytime TV and the opportunity to sit on the sofa and knit all morning, a little nap after lunch and then maybe a good book in the afternoon before the kids get home from school. Its really a shame that I ever have to leave the house and get back to the real world, but I know that I do. I've been checking emails every now and again and today I got the June MagKnits up and out there. I'm going to be finishing off the HipKnits June update today and tomorrow so that should be up by the weekend. I'm just waiting for the last 2 deliveries to arrive, 1 from Earth Faire and 1 from Fleece Artist. I'm expecting them both today! We have so much stock to get on the site that its taking ages to get all the labels on and photos taken. Lucky for me I have Mandy, Emma and Shirley helping out in the shop - I couldn't do this on my own any more. I have so much to show you and tell you about, but for now its back to my sofa with my needles and yarn. I'll be back properly next week, promise!
Posted by Kerrie at 07:11 AM
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