Just a little update

Hello beadpeople. I've been a bit quiet, haven't I? It's been over a week since I last blogged.

I was in Oxford on Thursday and Friday - I went to see my grandfather (Mum's dad) who is known as 'Herbie'. His name is Herbert and when I was a child I started calling him Herbie. I was Nannie and Herbie's first grandchild and all the other family and grandchildren followed suit and before long everybody started calling him Herbie and it just stuck. Anyway, I went to visit Herbie as he is very ill. I also saw Dad, Sally, Emily and Robyn and Dylan (my niece and nephew) so that was nice. It was also great to see Buster again. I do miss him.

Because of said family things going on last week I found it a bit hard to concentrate on my beads. I've just put some etched midnight blue beads in my Etsy shop and I'll try and add some more beads later on today.

I've been reading all about the wonders of gardening. We have two gardens that need some prettying up so I bought myself a copy of Alan Titchmarsh's 'The Complete How To Be A Gardener' which is an amazing book! I have learned a heck of a lot already just from dipping in and out of various chapters.

A few weeks back I ordered a composter for the garden and it arrived last week. Chris and I cleared a space for it and installed it on Saturday but not before Chris had hidden inside it. Unfortunately I ruined his joke as I saw him climbing into the composter before he could jump out and surprise me!

In knitting news, I do have a project on the needles. It's a multi-coloured scarf made out of all my oddments of sock yarn. Sounds horrible but it's actually looking really nice. Hang on, I'll take a picture .....

There you go. It will eventually lose the bright pink edge as that is just a provisional cast on. The scarf is knitted along the long edge. The pattern I'm using is a very simple slip stitch pattern which produces a flat, almost woven-looking fabric. More details about the pattern can be found here.

And finally, if you're a Twitter user you may be interested to know that I've re-signed up to the service. I used it for about three weeks a while back but stopped using it. I thought that I'd rejoin so I can keep you updated with Etsy listings and also because I was missing Peter Serafinowicz's witty tweets. My username is beadsbylaura (surprsing, huh?) so do follow me if you feel like it. There's a Twitter link over there on the right hand side of my blog.

That's enough of my waffle for now - I'm off down to the shed to make beads .....

Knitted Produce

Hello there! I hope you had a great Christmas?

I've not been making any beads (as I'm having some Christmassy time off!) so I thought I'd do a look-at-my-knitted-produce post. These were all given as Christmas presents to various people, hence why I couldn't blog them before now.

The scarf at the top of the post was a pressie for Chris's Mum and was knitted in fine two ply yarn in a wonderful pink-red-purple kind of colour. The pattern is 'Butternut' by Anne Hanson which is available here.

The 'Lizard' socks above were knitted for my uncle's wife, who is also confusingly called Chris. I designed these ones myself.

Then next there is a pink and glittery scarf that I knitted for my friend Helen who loves all things pink. The pattern I used for this was 'Scrunchable Scarf' by Susan McConne and it can be found here.

And lastly a scarf that I made for my friend Cheryl. It's knitted in Japanese Noro yarn which ranges from purple, through green and blue to grey and black. The pattern I used for this one was 'One Skein - A Stole!' by Katja Jordan and it's available on Ravelry as a free download.

Not a massive amount of Christmassy knitting but a whole load of work nonetheless.

Oh and many many thanks for all your lovely congratulatory emails and comments re The Engagement. It's just about starting to sink in now .....