Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone had a super day yesterday. Christmas in our house was a little subdued this year, as I have been dying of a horrendous 'flu type lurgy and have not really been in the mood. Christmas Eve was perhaps the worst day for it; I went into work but had to come home at lunchtime as I'd reached the point of being so ill that I was just bursting into tears in meeting rooms. I spent the next 12 hours curled up in a duvet on the sofa with my husband and the cat.

I did feel a little better on Christmas Day itself; well enough to cook and eat an amazing roast dinner, although I did spend a fair amount of time wrapped up my duvet watching Doctor Who (I bought Jamie the box set of all the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant series). The real sign I was feeling better was that in the afternoon, I felt well enough to pick up my knitting again, and finished off a hat I started at the weekend, before I started to feel ill.

The pattern is Odessa and the yarn is Cascade Ultra Pima Paints, which I picked up at Imagiknit in San Fransisco when we were there on our honeymoon. It used less than half the skein, so at some point I may whip up some matching wristwarmers. I just love the way the colours have striped, and spiral around the hat, reflecting the spiralling stitch pattern.

I also love the way the striping changed when I hit the crown decreases.

Santa didn't forget about my hobbies though, there were two pattern books hidden in the Christmas tree for me this year.

Knitted Cats & Kittens was from my husband, chosen because of this pattern which reminded him of our very own Mr Fidget. Knit your own Zoo was a gift from friends, the parents of the lucky youngster who we gave the dinosaur to. There are some truly awesome patterns in it, including a giant anteater and meerkats.

I can't start anything new now though, I really need to crack on and finish all my WIPs!

Year of Projects 3: 16th December update

Phew, it's been another busy few weeks. I was away at a LRP event last weekend, and have been ill for most of the week, so not much has been going on worth posting about! But I've got over whatever virus it was that we had, and with Christmas fast approaching, I've gone into overdrive.

I have since put all my amigurumi in the tree, something which is
fast becoming a Christmas tradition in the Jones household

All of the decorations are up, with the exception of the Christmas Stockings as I can't figure out a way to hang them from the fireplace without destroying the mantlepiece. We did an epic Christmas present shopping trip on Sunday, and I spent most of the afternoon and evening wrapping presents and writing Christmas cards.

I haven't made many of our Christmas gifts, mainly because knitting to deadlines is something that really drives me up the wall. However, that said, in the end there are five handmade gifts winging their way to friends and family this year. Two of them were still unfinished when I started wrapping presents yesterday!

This is Esiotrot. The knitting on this tortoise was done months ago. But it was so much sewing! There is a reason I prefer crocheting for toys, as generally speaking there is a lot less faff. All of the limbs, head and tail were knit flat, and had to be sewn up. I was so fed up by the time I was done, but the end result is incredibly cute. I hope its new owner (or at least, her parents, as she is still too young to really appreciate it) loves it as much as I do.

This fantastic little dinosaur was definitely worth the hassle. While I did reach a point yesterday evening when I was about ready to throw it across the room in frustration as I sewed on the legs, I do love this little guy. I've wanted to knit him ever since I saw the pattern, when Jamie gave me the book Knitted Toys by Zoe Mellor for Christmas a few years ago.

I have to say though, as cute as the patterns in the book are, I'm not sure I'd be tempted to make any more of them. The patterns are not particularly well written; if you were a complete beginner you'd get stuck pretty quickly I think. For the dinosaur particularly, I had to write out parts of the pattern myself in order to make sense of them. And everything is knit flat, then seamed afterwards.


I have a couple more YoP finishes to share which I will do later in the week.

Merry Christmas folks!

Christmas is finally upon us! It's been a strange build up this year, as work has been crazily busy (and with month end week falling in the same week as Christmas, unfortunately while the rest of you are all enjoying Christmas Eve with your loved ones, I am in work today!). I kept forgetting that Christmas was coming!

Over the last week or so, all of my knitting and crochet projects have been put on hold, in a race to finish my Christmas stockings in time for December 24th. I am very pleased to say that I made it!

Cool Stocking

Star Stocking

Both are patterns by the fabulous Mimi Hill. I have mainly used Patons Diploma Gold DK, although for the Star Stocking there is also a James C Brett Top Value DK and an Adrafil Regina in there as I couldn't get all the colours I wanted in the Patons. I am so pleased with how they have turned out, as my first major colourwork project to be finished. They're not as neat as Mimi's, but they'll certainly do the job this evening!

Year of Projects Update 12th December

I've been quiet this week, you may have noticed. Christmas does funny things to a routine! The combination of Christmas parties, shopping and preparation has left me little time to blog.

I've not been neglecting my crafts, however. Given that I started out this holiday season determined not to make anything, I think I'm doing pretty well. So far, all I've committed to is knitting two giant colourwork Christmas stockings for the house, some mini ornaments for work Christmas presents and a birthday hat and gloves set for a colleague!

Things are going well with the giant stockings (one finished, one about a third done) but as they are not technically YoP projects I won't share my progress today.

Remember this yarn? It, and it's green cousin, are in my list of stash yarns to use up this year. I have two balls of red, and just over a ball of green (remaining from my leafy fingerless mitts). Red and green are perfect Christmas colours, so when I found myself in need of a Secret Santa present, I decided to dig it out and have a go at knitting some mini Christmas ornaments for my colleage.

The pattern I have used is Mini Christmas Stocking Ornaments by Little Cotton Rabbits. Each stocking is knit flat, then seamed. I chose to use the zig zag chart from the pattern for my first sock, and stripes for the second. (You can tell I'm really falling in love with colourwork, can't you!). I will package these up with some chocolates or something (we only have a £5 limit - accountants are all cheapskates).

Emboldened by my success with the tiny stockings, I went in search of other mini knits for the tree. I found the world of tiny sweaters! I knew I had to make one, but as Jamie had already declared "I'm not having my tree turn into a washing line!" I had to find someone to give it to. Salvation came when I remembered a chance remark from one of my friends in work the other week, as he saw me teaching another of my colleagues how to crochet.

"Could you knit me a onesie?" he asked. I wasn't sure if he was joking or not. I told him in no uncertain terms that asking me to knit him an adult size onesie for Christmas, with just two weeks to go, was not going to happen. He seemed disappointed!

I used the pattern Noel Knit Sweater Ornaments from the Red Heart website. Rather than follow their instructions for patterns (the samples use a multi-coloured yarn that self stripes, as I only had solid colours I needed a colourwork pattern) I figured out a chart to put red zigzagged stripes across the jumper. It was a little fiddly, but I think it came out alright in the end (even if my increases ended up a bit wonky on the sleeves).

I wrapped it up with a note that read: Not quite the "onesie" you wanted, but all I could manage in the time I had... I took the opportunity while he was away from his desk to leave it on his keyboard, imploring my colleage sat next to his desk not to tell him it was from me until he opened it, and only then if he couldn't figure it out for himself. I needn't have worried, as soon as he opened it he laughed and asked her if I'd left it there. He very much appreciated the joke, and said he would take it home to hang on his children's Christmas tree.

He also agreed that I needed more advance warning for a commission of that sort. I don't think I will be knitting him an adult sized onesie at all, but at least he has proved himself knitworthy should the need to give him a present arise again!

Christmas is coming...

December is here! We are getting scarily close to Christmas. I hope all of you who are knitting or crocheting gifts this year are merrily casting off and preparing to wrap everything up ready for December 25th!

I haven't done any Christmas crafting this year. I knew I'd struggle with finding the time to knit people gifts, because if there's one thing the Year of Projects has taught me, it's that once I have a list I will find any excuse to go off piste and work on something completely unrelated! The project I'm sharing today is a prime example of that...

I knew this year I wanted to learn stranded colourwork. I was very generously gifted the yarn and pattern to knit Peerie Flooers so it was almost top of my list for the second YoP. I finally got round to starting it a few weeks ago and quickly discovered that I love knitting stranded colourwork!

Unsurprising then, that when my needles for Peerie Flooers broke, I reached for my new delivery of Patons Diploma Gold and cast on for Eskimimi's Cool Stocking. What was I doing to myself! A pattern and yarn not included in my YoP list, so shouldn't even be on my radar right now. And not only is it one pattern, it's two, because I will also be making the Star Stocking. Both of which, of course, have to be finished before Christmas comes, because what would be the point in knitting them now if they weren't?

Casting on went smoothly, the cuff was nice and quick and before I knew it I was thick in the middle of all those lovely colours.

It is hard to tell in that photo, but I have been finding it harder to do the stranded knitting on dpns. My floats are a lot tighter than they are on Peerie Flooers, so I am going to have to do some serious blocking on this stocking to get it straightened out.

This was my nemesis. It took me three goes to get that toe right (mainly down to my ineptitude at reading the instructions!), but my main concern was the afterthought heel. I am Not A Sock Knitter so this was an alien concept for me. But I put my trust in Mimi and her pattern and just followed all the instructions to the letter (reading and re-reading several times in the case of the heel, so as not to repeat the toe fiasco).

I put a lifeline in the live heel stitches before unpicking my pink waste yarn. I didn't want to have to faff around with my dpns while risking losing the live stitches and having the whole thing unravel on me. It was really weird seeing the sock tube open up like this!

But I did successfully pick up the live stitches with my lifeline, and was able to easily get them back onto my needles. For ease of picking up stitches, I went back down to my 3mm dpns to capture them all, before knitting them back onto 3.5mm needles as I completed the first row of the heel.

Once this heel is finished, I will cast on straight away for stocking number two. It will have taken me about two weeks to get this first one knit, so I still have time (just) to get the second one finished and both of them blocked and finished off before Christmas Eve!

Snappy Happy Monday

We bought Portal 2 last week and have been playing through
the co-operative storyline. Has eaten into my knitting time!

My keys went missing for a week. I really thought I'd lost them,
until Jamie found them hidden in the lining of my handbag!

It became December! Which means I get to see my advent calendar again!
I'll be sharing what gets pulled out of the box each day on Instagram!

I don't normally put the decs up this early, but we are away next weekend.
I'm loving how much space we have for the tree in this house!

Keeping with the Christmas theme, I've been working on my
colourwork Christmas stocking this week.

Christmas comes early.

A couple of weeks ago, Sarah over at Crafts from the Cwtch started a series of posts about Christmas gifts. In her first post in the series, she talks about two craft books inspired by two of my favourite literary classics: The Wizard of Oz and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

As soon as I read her post, I knew I had to own these books. So I hopped over to Amazon and added them to my wish list. Imagine my surprise, when a few days later, one of them dropped through the letterbox! I'd entered my wishlist in a Christmas RAK last week, so wasn't totally surprised to see an Amazon parcel on the doormat when I hadn't ordered anything!

Everything Alice: the Wonderland Book of Makes

I've had a quick flick through, and have already found lots of things I now desperately want to make.

This rabbit would make a great gift for our niece

Lavender doormice - but I want to make them with catnip!

Wonderland themed decorations for the Christmas tree?

I've wanted to make teacup candles for ages

Love the queen of hearts apron in the middle.

I can't wait to get stuck in. I'm also finding myself now desperate to host a Wonderland themed tea party, just to give me an excuse to do more of the projects in the book!

Cook from a Cookbook(ish) - Bread

So, it's been a while since I did a Cookbook challenge. Christmas kind of got in the way! There was nothing particularly new or exciting about our Christmas cooking (lets face it, the traditional dinner is just Sunday roast with extras), although I could claim the boiled and baked ham as a new recipe. We combined two different recipes found online (the boiling instructions from here and the glaze from here) to create an incredibly tasty joint of meat. It was so successful, we did it twice.

Gratuitous shot of the Christmas buffet preparations - 80 pigs in blankets
and a boiled but not yet glazed 3lb ham joint

But I am not here to talk about roasted pig product. No, I have a more exciting cooking experiment to regale you with. You see, every year we buy those part baked bread rolls to have in the house over Christmas (you know, because the shops are shut for *gasp* an entire day, so you have to stock up, in case you run out of something absolutely vital). This year, we were wandering round Tesco and somehow ended up in the home baking aisle. I stopped in front of the packets of bread mix on the shelf, and we both had a mini eureka moment. We picked up one plain white mix, and one fancy cheese and onion flavour.

We baked the white loaf on Boxing Day. I followed the instructions to the letter (pretty much add water, mix into dough, knead, leave to rise, bake) and ended up with a rather tasty, if overly large loaf of bread.

When it rose, it rose somewhat more on one side than the other.

We ate it with the left over ham, and it was delicious.

Just this weekend past, we re-discovered the other bread mix and gave that a go.

It smelled really cheese and oniony, right from the start

This one rose in a far more sensible fashion than the other loaf.

Look! Proper bread!

Arty farty shot of the slices, before I slathered them in Clover and pate.

So, not technically a cook book recipe, but our success has paved the way for some more experimentation using the recipes in my Good Housekeeping Baking Book!

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Last night was the Twelfth Night of Christmas, making today the twelfth day, and the deadline for taking down the Christmas decorations. I always count down to the 6th January, as I am determined each year to leave the decorations up for as long as possible.

This year I had so much fun putting up a daily decoration for the advent calendar, I decided to make myself a Twelve Days of Christmas calendar too!

I found these gorgeous embroidery patterns for sale online here. I printed out the full size pictures onto some thin card, cut them out and each day I have been putting them on the wall. We have this handy edge that is exactly the right size for them!

It is a shame I don't have a laminator, or I'd laminate them to keep them for the future. I will put them away carefully this year so hopefully I can use them again.

A Christmassy FO

So to round off the year, here is my final FO of 2011 - a last minute Christmas gift for Jamie, who sprung on me the surprise, just two days before Christmas, that instead of not getting any presents for me as we'd agreed he had actually bought me presents! I had to do a mad dash into town on the 23rd to pick up some presents for him, but before doing that I made good use of the hour I was up before him to crochet him a stocking!

Pattern: Bev's Christmas Granny Square Stocking by Beverly A Qualheim

Hook: 4mm

Yarn: Sirdar Bonus DK in red, green and white

I modified the pattern slightly. Instead of four round grannies, I did three, and to avoid lots of end weaving from colour changes, I used the continuous join-as-you-go instructions here for the final contrasting colour round.

For the first side, I did red in the middle surrounded by green, but for the reverse side, it's green in the middle with red outside.

I then used up the last of my white yarn to join the two sides together with a round of single crochet through both layers, doing one stitch in each dc of the clusters, and two in each chain space.

The end result came out extremely cute. I packed it full of chocolates - a Terry's Chocolate Orange in the toe (because all good stockings have an orange in the toe, and I thought a chocolate one would be better received than a couple of sad looking satsumas) and the rest is stuffed with chocolate coins (milk and white, as Jamie is a lover of white chocolate). It was a bit of a tight squeeze, because the opening isn't all that wide or stretchy, but I managed to get it all in!

I then wrapped it up in paper, so he wouldn't have any clue what it was. He even saw me working on it on Friday morning, but didn't realise what I was doing!

For it is in giving that we receive*

Christmas is a time for giving. One of my favourite ways of spreading the love at this time of year is getting stuck in to a Secret Santa or two, and this year was no exception. I had organised one in the office, but then I got a new job, so had to pull out. In its place, I signed up to a Secret Santa swap organised by the UK Random Acts of Kindness group on Ravelry. It's a great group full of extremely kind hearted and generous people; if I'm honest, I was far more excited about the prospect of buying lovely things for a complete stranger who shares my interests, than for someone I saw every day but shared nothing with apart from a place of work!

There were no real rules to the swap, spend as much or as little as you could afford and no requirements on package contents. The only stipulation was you had to wait until Christmas Day to open your parcel! Since in this house, we open our presents on Christmas Eve (as soon as the clock strikes twelve!), I got to be one of the first to open and post pictures of their present.

I have to say, my Secret Santa absolutely spoiled me. I am over the moon with the contents of my parcel. It arrived only a few days before Christmas, so I didn't have to wait too long with it tempting me from the corner of the room! I don't think I could have lasted more than a few days!

All of this was crammed into a parcel that really
didn't look like it contained this much stuff!

I waited until I'd opened all of my other presents before tearing into my secret parcel. The first thing I saw was the yarn. Four gorgeously squishy balls of Artesano 100% alpaca DK in a lovely shade of red.

It's more red than it looks in this photo. The flash, you see.

Hidden under the yarn was a ton of other amazing goodies. A set of red captive bead stitch markers from Atomic Knitting, a set of 4mm 10" Brittany DPNs, a red tape measure and a Hotel Chocolat dark chocolate reindeer lolly...

I just love dark chocolate. I have been well stalked!

Hiding underneath all that, was a beautiful hand made gift - a warm and snuggly cowl, in a fantastic shade of red which matches the yarn I'm using for my Cherry Wrap!

This isn't a great photo, so you can't really see the pattern detail.
I blame the flash again, taking photos at 1am is never a good idea!

As if that wasn't enough, nestling in the bottom of the parcel I found not one, not two, but five printed patterns! The patterns are for:

• A Noble Cowl
• Cafe au Lait Mitts
• Candle Flame Cowl
• The Age of Brass and Steam Kerchief
• Wurm

I don't know who my Secret Santa is, but I love her! I am overwhelmed with gratitude. It just goes to show what a fabulous community we're all a part of.

Edited to add: I found out who she is! Nikki outed herself after seeing my gushing praise for her parcel in the forum. Which means you can find all the details on my cowl from her project page.

*so said Francis of Assissi

Merry Christmas!

A Very Merry Christmas to all of my readers!

The advent calendar is full!

I spent ages hunting for string yesterday to get the cards up properly.
Then I realised I had a massive pile of yarn I could use instead!

The tree is filled with presents, and we can't wait to open them! Luckily, in this house we have
a tradition of opening presents on Christmas Eve, as soon as it hits midnight.

Home baked croissants for breakfast is another tradition here.

I hope you've all been good, and Santa brings you

everything you wished for!