September 2006 Archives

I picked up this gorgeous new Debbie Bliss SoHo wool rather randomly thinking "love this maybe I'll knit a hat in it?" so thought I'd do the cable pattern hat from the Rowan book that Max (http://www.noodlesanddoodles.com) sent me, as I was using a different wool to the pattern suggestion and the pattern said 8mm needles while the wool recommended 51/2mm I'd better be good and do a tension square. Having done that I settled on 10mm needles to get the right size?!? I did think that's a bit odd but the tension square's the way to do it - so how come that 12 rows up with 23 to do my hat is already over halfway up my head but shorter around the brim than previously successfully knitted hats??? it looks like my lovely hat will reach down to my chin while squeezing my head tight?! So I will persevere as I am, because I'm really no idea what to change and maybe have to roll it up a lot - I'll keep you posted!

we've been quite active this past weeks holiday and have started walking - that's proper Walking with a map, compass and proper boots type walking as opposed to the walking we've been doing for the past 30odd years to get about! - we're rather proud of ourselves and also have some lovely photos:

this was our first walk up Kinnoull Hill overlooking the Tay river

and this was the second around Edradour, where our favourite Whisky's made (we're in Scotland you have to have a favourite dram!)

Here's my lovely little bag finished! (although I think I may line it when I find some suitable material) but isn't it the cutest little bag?!

Yaay! after a long evening I have unknitted to the back to front cable and corrected it and knitted back to where I was! very tedious and concentrated job (much more so then knitting in the first place!) but I do feel much better now! I'll post a pic when it's finished.

MMMMM! how yummy is sweetcorn straight of the plant into the pot and eaten within minutes of picking!!! well worth waiting for! I found some of those little sweetcorn forks eventually in the local ironmongers! quite hard to come by they are!

As we've got a few days off we decided to explore a bit further up north than we've been before and went to Inverness! and then took the pretty way home alongside Loch Ness (don't ever fall for going into the Loch Ness/Nessie exhibition - talk about rip off! basically 20 minutes of video - shown in dark rooms made to look like caves which amounted to there being no real evidence of a Loch Ness monster that couldn't be explained away, but they're not going to come out and say that because then you wouldn't be tempted to buy one of the several hundred different Nessie's in the gift shop!) But anyway, back to our relaxing day - Scotland scenery really takes my breath away at times!

That last one is actually Paul, Seal and Dolphin watching! and we did spot some! very excited we were! I didn't however get a pic. of them as they went so fast and we were concentrating on fighting over the binoculars to see them as they were far out and had I taken a pic it would probably have looked like a small log in the middle of the water!

I must first apologise, I've been very bad at posting lately, I seem to have been bogged down with work lately and no energy at night to blog, but I'm off for a week so should get some more posts on!

For a start here's the Rowan Dolly bag which finally arrived and I got stuck into - it was going very well until I stopped last night and spotted the big cock-up in the cable on the left (I must have held the cable at the back instead of front I think) really really really frustrated, I first thought oh sod it I'll just make that the back of the bag but we all know that a big blip like that will bother me forever. Tonight therefore I will attempt to carefully unknit it! this is I know going to be hell to get all the cables right but it's got to be done!

The gardens mainly about harvesting at the moment and leaving Paul to process an awful lot of veggies (far too much cabbage again!) cauliflower was a new one this year and has done quite well so learnings for next year - less cabbage and pick cauliflower earlier as some of them seemed to take on a strange pink tinge after a while?! I'm quite excited by my pumpkins - after a slow start when the baby pumpkins kept falling off it's taken off and running (up the wall to be precise, which will be interesting with big heavy pumpkins so perhaps need to redirect it carefully). So if it carries on growing very fast I hopefully should manage pumpkins for Halloween!

I joined the rowan members club last week, mainly because of the free gift of the wool and pattern for a very lovely dolly bag so I haven't started anything else as I know I'll want to do it as soon as it arrives - but I've been waiting a week since the letter to say it'll be following shortly! and my fingers are getting twitchy for a good project. The crochet's not going so well - I just about cracked basic stitches and I made a circle but following a pattern has me beaten at the minute, so in frustration I want to get some knitting in before I try again!