Noodly Appendage

I've been on a bit of a yarn buying kick at the moment - possibly to make up for the lack of knitting I've been doing (don't ask me how that logic works, it made sense in my head *laughs*)

I am actually saving a couple of purchases for their own posts, but I wanted to share this one right away...

It was half price in John Lewis, and I thought it looked pretty interesting. And it seemed like a nice, quick-fix to my lack of knitting time lately.

Essentially you use your hand as a knitting loom, churning out 4 stitch icord. Not quite as quick as the box says ("your own fashion accessory in minutes), but still pretty fast. I made a big pile of cord in a couple of hours...

Hmmm, that doesn't look like much. Here, have a picture with my hand in it for scale *laughs*

It's pretty chunky. Now, though, I have a long icord (or "noodle" as the box called it) and according to the instructions I need to sew it together in one of a number of ways, depending on whether I want a hat, scarf or snood.

Call me pedantic, but the box promised "knitting without needles", not "no needles until you need to sew it up, then you have about 8 meters of seaming to do" *sigh*

Who knows when this intestine will become an accessory! I'm glad it was half price (£6.49) as I wouldn't have been too thrilled if I'd paid full price for it. To be fair, the instructions are there on the box, I just hadn't read them ;)

Nameless Socks

Hey, check it out, it's Friday and I actually have a finished object to share *laughs*

I don't think I have actually posted these socks before at all, but they've been my "I have 10 minutes, I'll do a couple of rows" project for a few weeks now.

I haven't blocked them, because I wanted to wear them straight away - blocking socks is really only something I do for the sake of good pictures, and that doesn't always work anyway ;) So please ignore the lumpy bits *laughs* They are the same length, not sure why they don't look it!

They're made from KnitPicks Felici sock yarn - the same yarn I used for my Super Awesome Happy Rainbow socks. I love those socks, the yarn is so soft and they've held up really well, so I asked for some more Felici for my birthday.

I did a garter stitch short row heel. I'd used the technique on a different pair of socks and the heels are nicely bouncy, so I thought I do another set that way. It has nothing to do with laziness and avoiding purling, honest *laughs*

I do have on problem though...

These socks do not have a name. My mum is a big fan of the names I give my socks, but for some reason I haven't found one for these. The colourway is Hummingbird, so they could be Hummingbird Socks, but that doesn't sit right. So, any ideas?!

Creativity - ish

If you happen to follow me on instagram, you might have noticed I have developed a bit of a penchant for experimenting with nail varnish. I never used to wear it at all, finding it too much of a hassle - especially as I seem to manage to chip half of it off within a couple of days *laughs*

But I do like having nails that compliment my outfit, so I started playing again...

Copper houndstooth (to go with a reddy/orange dress)

My (not very good) attempt at yellow/orange/red gradient

I love this one, but somehow only have a really low quality picture :( It's lilac polish with lorem ipsum writing over the top of it.

The yellow with black dots makes me think of racing for some reason...

My first experiment - I had some old varnishes that had gone a bit gungy, so I scribbled them over boring grey varnish for a Jackson Pollock look ;)

I do sometimes go for the more classic look though *laughs*

The writing, dots and houndstooth patterns are all achieved using nail stamping plates - I'm not skilled enough to actually draw that kind of stuff on!

Special Offer

I've posted a couple of times recently about my new freelance business, but it occurred to me that some of my readers here may be interested in a special offer I have running at the moment. I know some of you have websites and businesses of your own, so I thought I would share...

If you don't think that you need an entire half day session, and just want a quick check through, let me know. I can work something out that suits you *smiles*

Anyway, I hope you will forgive the slightly salesy nature of this post, normal posting will resume tomorrow ;)

Do They Match?

During knitting and crochet blog week, I created this infographic:

As you can see, it shows the breakdown of my crafting - from the 96 items in my queue and the 76 items in my stash, to the finished objects I have made.

What I thought would be interesting is to see if the types of projects I put in my queue are actually the same types of projects that I actually make *laughs* Do they match?

[Just a note - in case you don't know/use the queue feature in Ravelry - essentially if you spot a pattern you like you can add it to your "queue" - you can assign the yarn you plan to use, which is a useful feature, and you can set a deadline to make the item, which is not so much a feature I use!]

So, from the stats above (I have actually made a lot more than 58 things - I have 99 projects loaded into Ravelry, I just picked out the most common types for the graphic)...

20% of my projects are garments
25% are pairs of socks
35% are accessories (mitts, scarves, hats, etc)
19% are "other" (shawls, dishcloths, blankets)

I now have 100 items in my queue (yeah, I've added a few in the last week *laughs*)... Incidentally, it makes working out the percentages easy!

So, of my queued items:

15% are accessories
39% are garments
17% are socks

As for the "other" category - well, I have become a lot more interested in knitting shawls lately, so even though I didn't have enough finished to justify a category in the graphic, I have so many queued that I think they deserve their own figure, as they now represent 22% of my queue!

So, what does this tell me?

Well, I clearly queue a lot more garments than I actually make *laughs* Obviously garments can take a bit longer than other items, which does contribute, but reviewing my queue has given me a bit of a push back towards the garment projects.

I knit more socks than I queue - not surprising as I tend to knit plain socks and rarely pick up a more complicated pattern. But I do have some cool sock patterns queued, so maybe it's time to branch out a little more ;)

I'm becoming more drawn to shawls, so my sock yarn stash now has more options *laughs* I don't queue nearly as many accessory patterns as I make - I think because when it comes to accessories I tend to have the yarn first and then go searching for a pattern to fit. All of the accessories I do have queued are linked with the yarn I tend to use, which confirms this.

Viva Las Socks

I realised that I don't think I ever shared my finished Vegas Socks (named for the fact that the yarn was bought in, guess where... Las Vegas *laughs*)

Well, here they are:

Pattern - as usual, 64 stitches, toe up, short row heel. Essentially the pattern I keep in my head and therefore don't have t think much about ;)

Yarn: Tofutsies. I've mentioned it before, and it's quite an interesting yarn: 50% superwash wool, 25% soy silk, 22.5% cotton, 2.5% chitin (made from shrimp and crab shells). The soy silk and cotton makes these quite a light sock, not as warm as my more wooly ones. They are lovely and soft too :)

Para... Para... Paradise

I mentioned yesterday that cunning boyfriend and I went to Paradise Wildlife Park with his kids at the weekend.

I took lots of pictures, many of which were hampered massively by glare on windows and the fact that the sun was so bright it was hard to see the screen on my phone *laughs*

Starting with my favourite pic - the Zebras (side note, boyfriend and I once had dinner at a restaurant specialising in exotic meat - Zebra was the tastiest one we tried - of course I didn't mention that to the Zebras we saw at the park!)

These otters were so cute - they would line up together and all stare at a person taking a picture - it was as though they were posing *laughs* I got a shot as they were rearranging their formation.

This Tiger went from chilling out and enjoying the sun to having a bit of a staring contest with kid the elder. I was laughing too much to get a picture of that part ;)

I was particularly taken with the squished face little marmosets, I still can't believe how many varieties there are. These 2 were my favourite - they look like grumpy little old men *laughs*

 Kid the younger was absolutely fascinated by the giant Sulcata Tortoise.

Do you know the O RLY owl meme? This one:

We saw him in the flesh *laughs* Check it out:

Weird looking guy, huh?

And I can actually bring this post right back to knitting - when we saw the rabbits I told the kids about angora , and then we saw the alpacas, so I told them that yarn could be made from them too (honestly, I don't think they were that impressed *laughs*)

And then there were sheep...

Very interested in the approaching bag of food:

Suddenly more interested in the camera:

*waves*

Hello, poor neglected blog ;)

I swear, all my posts lately seem to be commenting on the fact that I'm not posting much - maybe I should try and do something about that *laughs*

I'm happy to say that this is mostly a result of me building momentum with my freelance business, which is getting busier than I expected and taking time away from activities such as blogging - not that I'm complaining of course!

I think some of that stems from the fact that I had got into the habit of blogging first thing in the morning, so now if I haven't posted by lunchtime, I don't post at all. Hopefully recognising this will help me break that habit *laughs*

I'm also not crafting as much as I once did. Partly of course due to the new business, and partly because boyfriend and I moved in together. Because he has 2 lovely children, when we didn't live together he would spend the weekends at his house with the boys, and while we'd all meet up I still had a lot more time to myself that I would spend knitting.

Why is this relevant? Well, obviously it explains why there is a lot less knitting content for me to post, but it also explains this next part...

I miss blogging, but with less knitting content I have less to post... Unless I broaden my scope a little bit (I know I do post about other crafting, and cooking at least). So, prepare for slightly more general posts. For example, this weekend we all went to Paradise Wildlife Park, but more about that another day ;)