It's Christmas in July!

That's right, the whole of July is celebration time! Use discount code CIJUK10 to get 10% discount on ALL orders over £5 from my Etsy shop. 

Stock up on your birthday and Christmas shopping with great deals from lots of UK Etsy sellers taking part in this promotion.

Figgy Pudding!

So who's started planning their Christmas projects?

Christmas kitties

As we pack up Christmas for another year, I want to share our Christmas kitties with you.

They are truly amazing - hand-made as a custom order by the very talented Stupidcats on Etsy! I sent her various headshot pics of our kitties, and she painstakingly pieced and felted these little guys together.

I can thoroughly recommend these to any cat-owners who'd like a special representation of their beloved feline family members!

Last Christmas of course we had Tiggy and Poppet, but then we lost Poppet so very sadly to the road last March.

In July we brought home 14-week-old little Prada from our local RSPCA centre, so I had to order another little kittie head!

I just realised that I don't have any pics of Prada on my blog yet (oops!) so here she is now at 9 months old - and getting bigger than Tiggy already!

More festive surprises

And again...

I arrived home from work to find our Christmas decorations had been put up around the house! Just the tree left to adorn, with a note on it that it had been left for us to decorate together as a family. :)

This was such a relief as this year everything has been so busy I was feeling quite stressed about not having time to get the house looking festive.

Apparently it was the Cornish Christmas Fairies who did it this time...!

An early Christmas present!

My daughters came home from their nan's today with an early Christmas present for me and hubby. 

They had both seen busy baking and brought us a box of homemade mince pies! Scrumptious. :)

Mega Sale!

Wow - where did December go?!

Hope you all had a great Christmas - we did apart from the usual bugs that seem to be everywhere this winter. Having to travel back a day late from visiting relatives up-country because of the amount of snow was different!

To bring in the New Year I've decided to hold a Mega Sale - a massive 70% off all necklaces, scarves, and cowls in my Etsy shop! Happy bargain hunting!

UK Silly Sale

Woohoo - my turn for a little piece of fame - and maybe some fortune too?

I was one of the lucky Etsy sellers to be featured in the Etsy UK Newsletter focusing on the UK Silly Sale. 

The sale is scheduled for 24 hours from 7pm GMT Friday 8th October, but I'm extending mine over the whole weekend with a huge 50% discount on everything!

I have also made a treasury showing some of the items already tagged as part of the sale from lots of UK Etsy sellers. Of course lots more will be included in the next few days.

Take a look and get some early Christmas shopping bargains!

Christmas card re-uses

I do like Christmas cards - probably more so after Christmas than before!

I find it very satisfying to re-use them by making them into gift tags.

This time I've done them in a Mini-Moo-inspired style. The back is left blank to write on.

Love 'em!

AWOL

Oops, I seem to have gone missing for a while. Been busy dealing with winter bugs, celebrating eldest DD's 11th birthday and preparing for a lovely family Christmas. Should quieten down a little just before New Year - maybe.. Merry Christmas everyone!

New Year Thoughts

First up I hope you all had a great holiday. We did, and although it seemed to fly past at warp speed it was thoroughly enjoyed.

We visited family and friends in the West Midlands and exchanged more gifts.

Here is my beautiful 9-month-old niece wearing her cashmerino shrug that I knitted as her Christmas gift.

It looks great on her, although she has a while to grow into it properly. Better too big than too small at that stage!


This was our hotel window view on New Year's Eve morning as we were packing to come home.

Yes that canal is frozen with snow on top of it!

Thankfully the roads were clear and we got home without any problems. We were glad to find that Cornwall was about 8 degrees warmer than the Midlands, although the temperatures have dipped down to about -8 degrees since!

I have started the new year with new nails. I've bitten my nails for over 30 years and it's about time I stopped.
I normally bite them when in thought in front of the computer at work or in meetings, so I managed to grow them a little over the holidays as usual.

In an attempt to continue this trend I visited the Top2Toe beauty salon in Newquay last weekend and treated myself to a french manicure with a seaweed-based gel treatment to harden the nails and encourage growth. So far so good..

You can see them here when I modelled my latest crochet handwarmers (listed in my Etsy shop) - made from pure cashmere in a gorgeous lacy design - lush!

Thanks for your lovely comments about the lengthways stashbuster scarves.

I'm still knitting them - in fact I find them quite addictive as each one turns out different to the last.

Here's the Chocolate Mandarin one - this is my favourite so far.

That's a taster for you - if you want to see more, take a look in my shop!

Busting the stash

I've been absorbed with warm rich colours recently, obviously inspired by Christmas.

I decided to knit some more lengthways scarves. Here's the first one:


There are all sorts of yarns in there - chenille, acrylic, polyester eyelash, wool, alpaca, mohair, cotton, merino..



I used one of my Addi circular needles, working 2 rows in each yarn at a time, randomly switching between garter stitch, stocking stitch, and reverse stocking stitch.

It was a windy day when we took this shot!

Now I've cast on another, this time using warm browns and oranges.

They make great stashbusters - and great presents too, each one totally unique. They're fun to knit but very easy - perfect for Christmas TV watching!

Been busy

There's a lot on at the moment. Not least numerous small projects to be finished. Here are a selection of the completed ones:
Chunky collars for my Etsy shop and Christmas sales

A cabled cashmere collar for my Etsy shop

A chunky hat as commissioned by my FIL

A white eyelash shoulder shrug for eldest DD, to go with her Christmas dress. I'll get a modelled shot as son as she's up to it - she's been off school today poorly.

Must go - we have to get to a family buffet for my SIL's wedding anniversary in half an hour!

AWOL

Hi! I'm back from my unexpected break - temporarily anyway. You know how it is this time of year - lots going on.

My Dad and step-mom visited us from Spain for 5 days and we had a lovely time. Good job they flew back to Alicante before the enforced temporary closure of Newquay Airport!

This week I've been knitting neckwarmers like mad for a local sale tomorrow. Oh and we got to see Santa and his real reindeer in Truro on Wednesday evening. I've never seen so many people in Truro!

Back soon...

Keep on going...

The Snuggle Blanket has reached that stage. You know, the stage where you know you must be making progress cuz the yarn is being used up, but you're still way off from the finish line.

So I thought I'd take some pics for my own sanity's sake. So I can actually see the progress myself.

Each row is now 70 shells across - that's 210 trebles in each and every row.

Still, I can see how I'm getting on now, and I know that soon it will be decrease time.

Despite all that negative sounding stuff, I do actually love this blanket! I find the colours quite addictive, and I'm really pleased with the overall look.

Plus it's another Christmas present in the pipeline, which has to be a good thing. :-)

Christmas FO

The first Christmas present is done!

I finally seamed the Cashmerino Baby Shrug and added a double crochet flower embellishment to use up the last few remaining yards of yarn.

That yarn is so smooshy and lovely that I didn't want to waste an inch of it.

Here is the intended recipient (my sweet little niece), when she came to visit with her family almost 2 weeks ago (wow, where did that go?!).

As you can see, she's in the stage where she is fascinated with labels - I remember mine being like that.

We had a great time all together; it was lovely to have my family here as it was the first time they've visited since we moved here 20 months ago.

We had fantastic weather too - good enough for ice-creams and sandcastle-building on the beach! A little weird for October but much welcomed after this summer's rain.

Christmas knitting!

Yes, it's true - I've nearly finished a Christmas knitting project. I didn't mean to do it. I wasn't actually thinking about Christmas; I just needed an easy project on a circular needle to do whilst travelling on a coach, and this leapt to mind.

I had planned to do this project at some point, just not yet. So much so that I'd added it to my Ravelry queue and even bought the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran while it was on sale at Stash Yarns.

And now I'm so glad I did. What a great project! It's the Debbie Bliss Baby Shrug in size 9-12 months. This was featured as a free pattern for a while on the Prima website (and probably in the printed magazine too). It doesn't seem to be in the listed patterns now but I found it via Google here.

It's quick, easy, gorgeously smooshy in the cashmerino yarn, and so very cute. Plus there's very little seaming to do - bonus!

That's all I need to do now to finish off this little beauty, then Christmas Present Number 1 is good to go.

Oh, it's for my lovely little niece by the way, who is coming to Cornwall to visit us with her brother, mom and dad (i.e. my brother) this weekend coming. I can't wait!

Merry Christmas from the seaside!

Here are the ingredients gathered together to make a gorgeous cranberry and chestnut stuffing roll to go with the Christmas dinner tomorrow.

I was amazed to find them all in nearby little Perranporth - even fresh cranberries and fresh chestnuts!

Here's something else we found at Perranporth - a christmas tree with working lights on the rock!

I don't think it'll last long, and goodness knows how they got the lights to work out there, but it looked great when we saw it.

That rock is actually huge; when the tide is on its way out you can climb up to the top. Usually the Perran flag flies on a pole where the tree currently is.


And here's our own little christmas tree, as decorated by my DDs.

Merry Christmas to all!

Knitting extremes

I recently gave in to temptation and bought this skein of hand-dyed cashmere 4ply yarn in shade "Heather" from The Knitting Goddess.

It's an extreme opposite of my recent knitting projects, which have been some quick chunky collars and scarves on 10mm needles. This feels like I'm knitting with sewing thread in comparison, despite using 3.5mm needles!

I've chosen the simple Feather and Fan pattern as I wanted a simple lace project that would be reversible.

I am starting to love the way the colours are traversing as I work up the scarf, and the yarn is creamy soft although it feels more like laceweight to me than 4ply!

I haven't yet decided whether this will be a Christmas gift for somebody else - or maybe for myself as a special treat. :-)

The clock is ticking

WIP Check
Soft Pink Bamboo Cardigan - seamed and awaiting oversewing seams with sewing thread
Driftwood Bamboo Top - need to seam right shoulder and knit neck edging, then seam the rest
Christmas Gift #2 - 40% done
Aubergine Lacy Aran Cropped Cardigan - still awaiting sewing in the ends and sewing on the beads (but should I use different beads?)
Rose Pink Felted Crochet Bag Experiment - we have a small shape that can hold things but I'm not sure it's the shape I wanted..

Pics to follow!

Lined Up
Exciting news - I need to knit 2 family baby gifts! No, neither is for me. ;-) Two of my relatives are due with babies next April; only one is going to try to find out the sex beforehand (and even then there's no guarantee is there?!) so generic colours are required.

I'm not keen on knitting toys these days (too much sewing required afterwards) so I've decided to knit "Lucky" - a very cute moss stitch cardigan in the "Pipsqueaks" book. I may need to do a different pattern for the second one if the moss stitch gets too much, but we'll see.

I'll be using Rowan All Seasons Cotton in shade "Tapestry" - a sandy beige - from my stash again (woohoo!). I have a 500g pack of it which I was saving to knit myself the "Apricot" cardigan from Rebecca magazine, but I've changed my mind on that one. Great pattern, but I really need to lose weight before I'd do it justice.

In The Distance
I'm itching to start some socks using the Tofutsies yarn I bought recently, but I do need to finish some WIPs first. The "Central Park Hoodie" is calling to me from Knitscene (a stash of various aran yarns are marinating ready for that), as is the "Rogue" hoodie - I have some lovely Adriafil Point yarn reserved for that one. Why do future projects always seem so appealing..?

Early bird

Hey - a next-day post? What's going on?!

Well I'm stuck at home, and the postie very graciously delivered a parcel of great fabrics from Fiddlesticks Fabrics and Crafts this lunchtime. The parcel included this lovely piece, which I have literally just finished converting into this first Christmas 2007 present!







I'm so pleased with it - hence the large number of photos. :-)

This is a big carry-all type affair, reaching down to the hip.

I followed this free crochet hobo bag pattern and used 500g of Rowan Linen Drape from my stash, a large button from Truro Fabrics, and the lining fabric as before.

Thank goodness the yarn wasn't full price otherwise it would have cost almost £40 to make.

That's the first present crossed off the list for this year!