Lots to see and do!

Looksie! More aceness 😀
1) I grew potatoes! Look!


Some are teeny tiny, and some are a lovely new potato size. The materials were in exchange for those chunky green socks I made for that guy at work. He provided the sprouted potatoes, tubs and his special compost mix. Water well, top up slowly with compost everytime the growth appears, and let nature do the rest of the work. These shouldn’t have been out really yet, but the heavy rain, while doing the plant loads of good, did the slugs loads of good too, so I have organically home grown baby potatoes. They will go in a big pan with some oil and rosemary for tea yum yum.
2) Here are all the funky sock yarns I got in my remnants swap with Ruth C at Roo Knits. Yum!

I’m particularly looking forward to playing a bit with the Regia Silk – I know I have Silk Shine but the texture just doesn’t compare, and the Lana Grossa Cotton… And the Emily colourway has made me very jealous 😉 Ruth R at Roobedoo also fancies a bit of a swap, so this could start to get slightly confusing, BUT, I suspect she already has her eye on a couple of new yarns in my stash… ;D
3) An almost finished Ram’s Horn Cardigan!
Not much to do now! The collar is the only thing left to knit, and I know people have complained about the pattern details for the collar, so I’m a bit nervous. I have help from other bloggers though 😀 And there will have to be a lot of blocking. A lot.
4) My first stranded knitting! These are a pressie for a certain someone, so I can’t show the whole thing in case she reads here. Hope I’m not jinxing the project by posting this, but so far I’m quite pleased. I’m finding it tiring working with both hands, but I’ve kept the paler shade in my strongest hand to make sure the pattern really stands out, and found the ribbing a good intro and practice for the main pattern.

5) Plumetis in action at last!


And here is a detail shot of the front plumetis stitch for Sylvie’s perusal 🙂

I’ve given the button band a good iron with a damp cloth over it, but as you can see it is still a bit mad. I might have just enough yarn to do them the way the pattern specifies, but I’m not 100% sure, so I’m going to leave them, and just make sure I give them another block before I wear it out. It also needs an 11th button at the top but I only have 10 (see number 6 below) so I may replace them yet for something smaller and plainer (I don’t want them to take over – perhaps some little wooden ones or some shell ones?). It is the perfect summer cardi now that we at last have some summer weather here 😀 Well. Some… 😉 It fits well, and the pattern allows for your own extra shaping if you need it, but the ribbing pulls the garment in under the bust so makes it really versatile. Yum 🙂
6) Buttons! I have plans for something to make on inspiration from reading Selvedge and finding a fab website in their ads. I bought one of those big bags of cheap odd buttons, and was lucky enough to get quite a few sets, some awful (very sloany red and navy on a gold background), some bizarre (red or silver glitter hourglass shapes on gold glitter on a gold rim), the cute kid cardi type (little Tom kitten type ones :D), and then there were these.

Gems amongst stones. Just gorgeous. The ones on the left are coloured and stamped abalone or shell type buttons. The top right is wood with little flowers painted or burned on it, and the two smaller right hand ones are enamel I think. I’m a little disappointed there weren’t more of these, but I’m sure there will be a way to use them as embellishments on a garment. I’ll need some cute little buttons for Chrissie, and I’d still like to make a KSH sweater.
Ok. That’s enough for now 😀