02.22.09
The Hood
I did as I said and sat down and knitted for a full hour last Sunday, I made a few mistakes but I pulled it back and started again and I’m now happy to show my progress. I have one more cable cross togo before I start the short rows for the top of the hood. I am hoping to get to that point tonight.
Hood with scarf at top of photo
In other news this week, I have started a night class in New Zealand Sign Language. I have always wanted to learn sign so when I saw it in the community education brocher at a time that suited I signed up. The first week was great fun and I look forward to the next lesson. I must do my homework though which cuts into the knitting time, bummer you can’t sign and knit at the same time.
02.15.09
Trouble knitting
You may have noticed that I haven’t post about much of my knitting lately and the sad truth is not that I’m working on something top secret but that I haven’t really been knitting. Yes it has been a little hot for knitting but that isn’t really the reason either, I just have not had the motivation to sit and knit.
I am going to try and change this tonight, I plan on watching Bones and while doing so I’m going to do my utmost to knit for the whole hour. I have pulled back out the Hooded Scarf and picked up for the hood, which took me 3 times to get right. I use my nifty Knit Picks Crochet Hook End, to pick up the stitches which helped out.
Here are some photos of me doing it. NB its really hard to take photos of you picking up stitches with out a tripod.
02.11.09
Lantern Festival 2009
Saturday evening after dinner we ventured into the inner city to attend the auckland lantern festival which is held in Albert Park. It was around 7.30 when we arrived and the whole park was packed. It was a little too busy for my liking and very difficult to get any good shots before people walked infront of you. I couldn’t believe how rude people can be when it is so obvious that you are about to press the shutter. After an hour or so with TP getting tired we headed off home, below is a little sample of the laterns, more can be seen over at Flickr
02.10.09
Birdfeeder
We have a lot of birds in our garden most days but we thought it wouldn’t hurt to try and attract some more so a few weekends back TP helped me make this.
Coke bottle feeder
It was super easy however we are yet to see any birds on, although I think they may be knocking it so the seed falls to the ground as I do see a lot of birds under it most mornings.
02.07.09
Weekend Gardening
Yesterday (Waitangi Day) we headed off to the garden centre or as the case was The Big Red Shed, to purchase some lettuce seedlings for the garden. While there we also got some more bamboo stakes and a couple of plastic cloches which will be great for the seeds that will planted in the next couple of days.
Lettuce Seedlings
I also noticed that one of the tomatoes has started to ripen, I can’t wait to taste it.
Ripening Tomatoes
The other purchase in the garden department was a hanging basket for out back. There are 3 hooks from previous residents on the eves and I always thought it would be nice to have baskets up there, so I have started off with just one, to see how it goes, plus I wasn’t sure what you can grow in them. I picked up a punet of Lobelia purely because it was the first thing I saw that said it was good for hanging baskets. On speaking to Besty, I found that I could also grow herbs and would you believe tomatoes in hanging baskets so that might be what goes in the other two.
Hanging Basket
Contents of Hanging Basket
02.03.09
How does the garden grow?
Our garden is looking a bit bear at the moment, all the salad greens went to seed well before the tomatoes rippened so it is my job today to plant some more so when the guys below turn red we an have a full home grown salad.
Else where in the garden we have these little beauties growing, although they look really yummy they are unfortunately rather tart.
02.01.09
Dritto & Rovescio
The latest Dritto & Rovescio issue is up, #46 ,and I was surprised when I went to Ravelry that there is very little on there from this great source of free patterns. I have never made any of the patterns but I do have quite a number of them saved for reference, however as they are not on Ravelry I tend to forget about them. I don’t really know much about the magazine apart from that it is Italian, put out by a yarn company, Adriafil, and not available in print form here in NZ. I believe it is published twice a year, summer & winter. Each issue they release tends to have around 27 women’s patterns available in PDF format and perhaps 5 girls/babies patterns. Their website server isn’t the best, as at times I find the site wont load, so do be persistant when trying to check it out.
Here are a couple of patterns that stood out to me when I checked out the latest issue.
Edvige, Cardigan
Milia, Cardigan
Rachele Pullover
As well as the current issue they have all back issues up to #24 still up on the site, which if published bi annual dates back 11 years, but I don’t think that is the case, maybe they reduced how often they publish in recent years.
