 September 26, 2006
Challenge
Apart from all the lovely offers of Socks that Rock yarn to trade, (thank you to everyone who emailed me, expect to see some rockin socks over here very soon) yesterday was a pig of a day. To summarise : - I fell out with people that I didn't expect to fall out with over stuff that I never imagined would turn into an arguement. Add to that some pregnancy hormones and other stuff and you can see why I feel like I spent most of yesterday crying. What I need from you all today is something to make me smile. Leave me a comment or send me an email with either a link to something cute, or tell me a joke or a funny story. I'm sure that all of you out there are a million times more together and happy than I am at the moment and hope that one of you can make me smile. It's your Wednesday challenge! Step to it..
Posted by Kerrie at 05:35 PM
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Socks that Rock
I've been doing very well at looking at pictures of everyone's socks that rock that are appearing all over the website at the moment and not being too jealous. I did try hard to work with Blue Moon to stock the yarn at HipKnits but Tina wasn't keen on working with an online store at that stage and wanted to concentrate on bricks and mortar stores only. Shame that. Now I can't cope without any more. Does anyone want to swap me a couple of skeins of socks that rock yarn for some HipKnits cashmere sock or lace yarn? I'll make it worth your while, promise? Just leave me a comment or email me at kerrieATmagknits.com and we'll work something out. Thanks! I'm thinking about socks a lot at the moment, I have a couple of pairs that I need to make for the book and some new sock club patterns that I want to play with. The weather here has been wet and autumnal for a few days so I've actually got to start wearing my hand knit socks again. That reminds me, Laura - did you ever finish the sock you started at NEC? Pictures? x
Posted by Kerrie at 08:22 AM
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September 25, 2006
Sunday nights
What do you do on Sunday nights? The deal in our house is that Wayne usually deals with the washing and the drying of the hair and then I do the plaiting. Last night it took me over 1.5 hours to do the 2 of them, but they looked so neat afterwards it was all worth while. The plaits should last a whole week which saves any messing about with combs and brushes in the morning when we're trying to get ready for school. I try and keep Cam's plaits nice and simple. I think that anything too fancy can look a little girly and our lovely boy doesn't need any extra help there! He usually has straight plaits either from front to back or parted down the middle and going from centre to ears. Last night I threw in a little variation but its still nice and plain.
With Brooke's hair I get to be more adventurous. I often plait in beads or have the plaits all meeting up in 2 or 3 places on her head so that she can wear them in bunches. Rarely does she go to school with plaits straight from front to back like Cam. This time I tried to break tradition and do something very different. I usually like to be symetrical but this time I just randomly plaited in all directions, let some cross over the top of others and then plaited the long ends together to keep it neat. I'm not totally convinced but at least its neat. So, that's how I spend my Sunday evenings most weeks. Do the rest of you have any traditions to share?
Posted by Kerrie at 06:35 AM
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September 24, 2006
Take it off!
At the NEC I bought a pack of mixed yarns from Colinette and decided that I would use it to make lots of hats / scarves / bags etc for Christmas presents. This was the first hat out of a skein that was in the bag. It was meant to fit a child around Cameron's age and I hoped that he would try it on for me to make sure that I'd got it right. I put it on him the other night and it fitted perfectly. I told him to go and show Wayne who was in the kitchen at the time but Cam just sat in the middle of the lounge floor and when I went over to him I realised that he had tears streaming down his face. "Take it off mum" he said and I just burst out laughing and hugged him. Poor little guy just sat there saying "take it off, please take it off" until I pulled it off his head. Not sure it was a huge success with him, lets hope the real recipient likes it more!
Posted by Kerrie at 03:55 PM
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September 22, 2006
Fabric plans
Fabric purchases from the NEC. I seem to spend more money when I don't have dad helping me out and taking charge of the takings!
This one is going to be a baby blanket, its the softest jersey fabric ever. I love it! I'm going to do something very simple and just cut it in half and then sew the 2 pieces together with some fleece fabric in the middle to make it a little warmer. Maybe even today if I make it to pick up my parcels and get back in time. This flowery baby cord fabric is going to be a bag for me. I only have a million bags so desperately need one more, don't you think? I'm thinking of something simple (again) with a nice long strap and a BIG flap at the front. I wish I was clever enough to use my sewing machine properly and make a bag like this Amy Butler weekender one I found on poshyarns. Sigh. Isn't it gorgeous?
Posted by Kerrie at 06:43 AM
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September 21, 2006
Viveka on her way
I made a start on Viveka at the NEC, this is the first sleeve so far. I'm using some of our HipKnits aran weight cashmere which knits to the right tension and is just so so soft and luxurious. I had lots of the pale pink left over and thought that would be the perfect colour. I managed to find a few grams of undyed white which I hope will be enough for the contrast trim, I may have to cheat and use some wool for the neckline if I run out. The first sleeve is now just about finished since I took this pic so its on to the back I think. I like to muddle up the order of knitting and work on some small pieces as well as some large pieces. After the back I'll do one half of the front, then the 2nd sleeve then the final front piece. That should be muddled enough to keep me interested and not find me having to knit 2 sleeves next to each other, I lose interest that way.
Posted by Kerrie at 08:03 AM
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September 19, 2006
Ugh
We're safely back from the Knitting and Stitching show at the NEC. It wasn't the most successful show, in fact I think it was the least profitable one that I've ever done in that it ended up costing me money! The few days away were a nice break though, Laura and I stayed in the Hilton so had a nice posh hotel room to crash out in every evening and a big breakfast to start the day. This was the first time that Creative Exhibitions had organised this show at the NEC so hopefully other years will be better. It wasn't just us that had a bad show, a couple of stands packed up and headed home early and very few broke even. There was lots of politics and griping which I stood on the sidelines of and just watched, listened and nodded in agreement every now and again. I have enough politics at work work without getting involved in knitting show politics. I came back yesterday and found that I couldn't get into MagKnits or my MagKnits emails. I checked with a couple of other people and found that the site was down completely so logged a support ticket with Dreamhost to work out what had gone wrong. They replied to say that the domain had expired and that they had sent 5 emails to my registed email address (hotmail) warning me. Whoops. So, I logged into my hotmail account thinking at the time that it had been a while since I checked those emails as I don't tend to get many there. Hmmm, yes. It really had been a while as the Hotmail staff had closed down my account so having lost all the emails that were there I've now decided to give up on hotmail for a while. How silly. MagKnits is back now and my emails will be today, or so I'm told. The HipKnits site will be updated at the weekend I think with all of the goodies that I bought back from NEC and then we're in full getting ready for Ally Pally mode. It never stops does it?
Posted by Kerrie at 07:52 AM
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September 12, 2006
New Knitty
I was just thinking yesterday about my winter wear this year. I am really looking forward to being pregnant through the winter instead of through the summer this time. I have visions of jeans, maternity T shirts and lovely hand knitted cardigans keeping me warm for the next few months. I have a couple of cardigans that I wear a lot but really need a couple more, I was wondering which pattern I should choose for my first winter knitting for me that it not for the book. Then I saw the new knitty last night, and fell in love with Viveka. I know its not a cardigan but it will be by the time I've finished with it. Look how simple it would be to break the front in 2 and fix them at the top just under the V neck with some ribbon or a little button. Lets face it, none of the cardigans are actually going to button up (remember what I looked like when pregnant with Cam towards the end?) but they will still look beautiful. So Viveka is on my list, what is everyone else going to make from the new Knitty?
Posted by Kerrie at 08:05 AM
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September 11, 2006
Roll Call
Thanks for all the excited comments and emails over the weekend, we're all seriously looking forward to being a family of 5. Although March seems like a while away at the moment I'm pretty sure that the time will just fly by. I thought that I would copy Anna and show you some of my current works in progress. Of course the biggest one at the moment is Yarn Forward magazine which Laura and I will have ready and sent to the printer today. See how positive I am about that! Impressive huh. Knitting wise I have lots of odds and ends on the needles, some haven't been touched for ages due to the burn but now my hand and arm are fully functional again there really can be no more excuses. With all the other bits happening around here it would be easy to forget that I have a book to write by the end of the year! The first few completed projects have been creeping in by post already which is amazing but only serves to make me feel even more slow with the pile of projects I have sketched and swatched.
The current favourite TV knitting is some beautiful sea silk in glacier. This is going to be a beaded and lace shawl of some kind when it grows up. I'm hoping that it will come to the NEC with me and provide some perfect sitting in the hotel in the evenings knitting time.
Next on the needles for a quick and fun knit at 3 stitches to the inch is some Schaeffer Esperanza. The colours in this are just gorgeous and my beautiful ebony needles make it a dream to knit. Add to the mix the fact that it is kid sized and there is no reason not to have this done and dusted very very soon. Sewing? Yes, I have a whole pile of sewing to be done. I have the Hustle Bustle pattern from Miss Twiss that I had every intention of making until I realised that I didn't know how to turn it into a maternity skirt. I now have big plans to Brooke size it and make her a couple of hustle bustle skirts for autumn. I also have 7 quilts in progress, yes I know - silly isn't it? They are all going to be Christmas presents and the aim is to have 3 done by the end of the month. Brooke's is all pieced in Amy Butler fabrics (a huge thank you to whoever it was who included some Amy Butler fabric for me in their Oliver's Fund stash package, I lost the card, but the fabric was beautiful and just enough to enable me to make the quilt that little bit bigger.) Cameron has a quilt top from assorted Cath Kidston fabric and a back which is Donald and Mickey, I know its an odd combination but I had planned to make it all Cath Kidston before he fell in love with a random piece of Disney fabric that was in my stash. I have no idea where it came from but he loves it so much that I think it will be perfect. Then for the baby there is a lovely combination of Heather Ross fabrics. The other 4 quilts all fall under that wonderful header of work in progress. Although this could mean anything from I've decided to make them to they are nearly finished what it actually means is that I've chosen the fabrics for most of them but haven't actually cut them out yet. 2 of them will be done in October and the other 2 in November. Perfectly reasonable, don't you think? (please don't tell me otherwise.)
Posted by Kerrie at 08:09 AM
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September 08, 2006
More big news
These little ladies are from Brooke's doll's house set. The doll's house is one of those toys that is intermittently played with. One week the dolls house is the most important toy in the house and then the next week it is full of junk where Brooke tidies up her room by shoving it all into the dolls house and it is ignored for a while. At the moment, the toys from the dolls house are flavour of the month. Brooke carries the one on the left around with her and Cameron carries the one on the right around with him every day. Both dolls took a trip into school and nursery yesterday and regularly spend a portion of their time shoved up the T shirts of Brooke and Cameron. Any guesses why this might be? If I were to tell you that the dolls measure EXACTLY 6.8cm from crown to rump (head to bum) does that help you? Wayne and I were looking around for something that was the same size as the new baby that would make sense to the kids and as if by magic the dolls house dolls fitted the bill perfectly. So that makes me 13 weeks pregnant with a due date of 16th March next year. Yay! I know that I waited a lot lot longer to tell you when I was pregnant with Cam but that was when I used to sit at home and update this site without ever seeing people. Now I have the HipKnits shop and NEC next week people are bound to see me and notice and I thought I'd spare people that is she isn't she question. There is nothing worse than trying to work out if someone is pregnant or just been eating too many cakes! Although, really, could this stomach be the sign of anything else? We had the scan early in the week and everything is fine. We also went for a nuchal scan, haven't got the full results from that one yet but they told us that it was a very very good result and that the risk factor for Downs Syndrome etc would be very low. The nuchal space measured 0.9 mm, a result of 1 - 3 mm is considered normal so that's pretty good news. Brooke and Cam are both so excited about the new baby (as are Wayne and I!) Brooke calls it a boy and Cameron says its a girl so one of them is set for a disappointment. Cameron comes up to me when we are at home and says "cuddle baby please mummy?" and then pulls up my Tee Shirt and puts his face on my stomach, he chats to the baby and makes it answer in a funny squeaky voice that Brooke uses for her dolls and then he pulls up his Tee shirt, shoves his doll up there and says "Cameron's baby in his belly button now" and then walks around with it there for a while before letting it drop out on to the floor and smothering it in hugs and kisses for a while. His baby even gets to ride on his JCB trucks (big lorry diggers to Cam) which is a real treat. I've been much healthier this pregnancy than I was with either of the other 2. There has been no real morning sickness, lots of nausea though, which is probably best when I have so much other stuff going on. Talking of which, its nearly time to go and get the others from school and nursery. Why don't you go and see who else in the blog world has exciting news to share?
Posted by Kerrie at 07:51 AM
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September 06, 2006
Emails
I have now officially caught up on all my HipKnits emails (insert applause here) and now I'm working on the few hundred MagKnits ones I have waiting for me. I'll get there sometime later today, I promise. Thanks for being patient. Talking of being patient, all the stashes went out again yesterday. We only had one person who didn't want to wait and I refunded their money so that made me feel better. Thanks to everyone else for being so patient with me.
Posted by Kerrie at 08:39 AM
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Scary arm
Don't play with boiling water, otherwise you may end up looking something like this. Warning - not a pretty picture although all the health professionals that have seen it seem to think its healing nicely and looks fab. I, however, prefer Cameron's reaction to it which is to refuse to go anywhere near it, call it "mummy's yucky scary arm" and follow me around with pots of cream all day saying "cream for your arm mummy? Cream NOW" A small section of the Scary Arm.
Posted by Kerrie at 08:02 AM
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Knitterati
Feeling glamourous? Seen this? There's not much time so get designing and knitting and show us what you can do! I have a sneaky feeling that Hipknits will be donating some yarn to the prize winners if that is any extra incentive for you?
Posted by Kerrie at 07:09 AM
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September 05, 2006
3 years.
Wayne and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary while we were in Cornwall. Well, when I say celebrated we had chocolate cheesecake on the sofa in front of the TV after the kids had gone to bed! Wayne shamed me by managing to buy me a card even though we were together every minute of every day from about a week before the day so I have no idea when he managed to buy it. He would tell you that I forgot our anniversary which isn't strictly true, I had remembered that it was on the 30th August, I just had no idea when that was. One day is the same as another when you're in a caravan in Cornwall you know! Its amazing to think how much has changed in the last 3 years, it seems like only yesterday that we were standing up in church telling the world how much we loved each other and yet at the same time it feels like we have been together for ever. Love you Wayne, now and always. Oh, and sorry for "forgetting" to get you a card. xx
Posted by Kerrie at 12:37 PM
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September 04, 2006
Now with added pics
We took many more photos than this but they were on Wayne's camera and he has already taken the photos off onto his laptop and deleted them from his camera so I can't get them until he gets home from work tonight. A few things that we did on holiday :
Cam slept in a big boys bed for the first time. So cute. Wayne and I kept sneaking into their room to look at him!
I have a whole collection of the kids looking like this. Whenever they see a camera this seems to be their standard pose!
We saw some BIG waves on the beach. Up to 12 foot on the Friday. That's unusual for us East coast of the UK people. Cameron wouldn't go anywhere near the water and I wasn't allowed to get my bandage wet but Wayne and Brooke had a good time jumping over the waves.
The children (Wayne included) were obsessive about digging holes in the sand. I left them for an hour one of the days while I went to get my dressing changed and came back to find that they had dug a hole so deep that Cameron couldn't see out when he stood in it!
There are a lot of unknowns about this one. I dont know why I was on the phone when we were on holiday (maybe to Anita?) and I dont know why Wayne or Brooke would take a photo of me on the phone but it shows my nice bandage. This was on Friday when I had been downgraded to a tube bandage instead of one wrapped around and around my arm.
Posted by Kerrie at 07:34 AM
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September 03, 2006
Cornwall stories
We're back from holiday! Did you miss me? Cornwall was gorgeous, we had a great time despite a couple of fairly major setbacks. We've all decided that we'd love to go back again soon, in fact having seen the post and emails etc that we've both come back to Wayne and I think that next week would be a good time for another holiday! We set off on Monday lunchtime, intending to drive around half way there and find a Travelodge to stay in for the night before checking into our caravan on Tuesday. We made it to Yeovil which was just fine, had dinner in the little chef which the children loved and Wayne and I were reasonably happy with and then headed back to our room for the evening. That's when setback number 1 occured. To cut a long story short I managed to spill a kettle full of just that second boiled water over my right arm and hand. This was just as the kids were getting ready for bed so at about 8pm I was in the bathroom with my arm and hand under cold water in the sink. By the time Wayne had the kids asleep and settled and came to find me at around 9 I was in a lot of pain and unable to take my arm out of the cold water without crying. Wayne went off to get ice from the Burger King next door and to get the first aider who advised us to hold it under cold water for 20 minutes or so and then to let it regain heat. Well, we'd already tried that so adding lots of ice to the cold water in the sink I rang NHS direct (fantastic service from them each and every time) who advised me to go to the local hospital for treatment. So, with my arm wrapped in clingfilm and a wet tea towel on their advice I set off in a taxi to Yeovil hospital leaving a concerned wayne in the travelodge with the children. I returned a couple of hours later with the wound having been dressed and bandaged from finger tips to elbow with the knowledge that the combination of first and second degree burns would probably blister and peel before it got better. The rest of the holiday was spent with lots of appts at the local doctors to get the dressing changed. The skin on my arm and hand is now a deep bruised colour, with the worst of the blistering having disappeared. It did mean that for the rest of the holiday I was almost totally useless having no use of my right hand. Oh, and it also meant that I could ask them to take out my stitches while I was there. So I did. Saved Wayne from having to do it! The next day we set off for the 2nd half of the journey to Cornwall, we made excellent time although did note that all of the traffic in the other direction was stationary and arrived at our caravan mid afternoon. The rest of the holiday was spent on the beach. We were planning to do some amusement parks and other fun stuff but with my arm this wasn't really an option. Add to that the fact that all the kids wanted to do was to play in the sea, on the beach, in the rockpools and on the beach again and we were all happy. The weather was average, a bit windy and not too warm for most of the days but it was OK to be on the beach. On Friday the weather was amazing and we met up with Anita and her lovely family for an afternoon on the beach. Both Brooke and Cameron made good friends with her girls (Cameron is still mourning the loss of his tractor playing partner now) and we had tears from Cam all the way home when we had to leave and go our separate ways. The journey home was more eventfull (and by that I mean LONG) than the journey to Cornwall. From home to Cormwall took us just over 5 hours split over 2 days. From Cornwall to home took us just over 9 hours done all in one day as everywhere we tried to stop for the night was fully booked. We missed off the main roads in Cornwall completely (after spending the first hour driving just 12 miles up the road!) and stuck to teeny little roads that looked like they were not even wide enough for one car let alone two. Fun! We then made a brave / stupid decision (delete as appropriate) to drive right through Dartmoor forest on the way home. With a navigator who was feeling car sick and scared of heights, coupled with a driver who is more at home on the M25 than back roads we headed into the moors. The weather was appalling and it was probably a good thing that there was so much mist around as it meant we couldn't see how high up we were. Brooke loved every minute of it and shouted out about all the wild ponies, sheep and pigs that she could see. Neither Wayne or I were brave enough to look over the side of the mountain to verify that they were indeed pigs so you'll have to take her word for it. It was all part of the adventure though, I'm glad that we did it. Pics tomorrow when I get the camera out of the bag. Today is all about emails (argh - millions of them!) washing (argh - 10 loads that came back from holiday with us) shopping (bare cupboards and empty fridge) and sleeping (I wish!) I'm back to the doctors for an arm update tomorrow so I'll let you know how it is, having had a quick peek under the dressings I've realised that it looks more bruised than I thought it would. Lets hope it doesn't scar.
Posted by Kerrie at 01:42 PM
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