Long time no blog

Sorry Sorry Sorry- I must be the worst blogger that ever blogged! In fact I am positively hopeless but it has been a crazy 4 months so I hope that I will be forgiven when you see how productive (ish) I have been.

First things first, I wanted to share these:

 These knitted, crocheted and crafted flowers were the table decorations for my big sisters wedding.  The concept of having knitted, crocheted and crafted centre pieces was probably the first thing that was actually decided about the big day! All my family are pretty crafty so a wedding is a dream opportunity to pull all our skills together.  My mum and I were in charge of the knitted flowers in the vase whilst my big sister did some crocheted and material flowers with my little sister making card butterflies (you can just see one poking out the top image).  We were slightly concerned that people would find knitted table decorations a bit odd and it certainly sounds worse than it is when you describe it to someone (they make an 'oh that sounds lovely' face when really they are struggling to think of anything more hideous..) but I think these turned out really well and gave our guests a great talking point.  The flowers doubled up as favours and as we had put them on wire stalks people got really stuck in with the gents wearing them as button holes and the ladies tucking them into hair styles, wrapping them round their wrists and also wearing the pearl strings in the second picture as necklaces. All together it looked pretty fab!  I was really excited to share this knitted table decoration idea with you- so excited in fact that I forgot to take a picture of the finished product on the day before the wedding! Cheers to my Uncle for taking the time to get a photo of them before they were shared out.

So that's one big excitement!

The next big excitement was the arrival of the boys nephew! Luckily he was about ten days late which meant I had time to finish this:

I hope this will help keep him cozy for the cold winter ahead.  I actually really enjoyed knitting it- all the different colours and stitches made for a project with good variety and I am planning to make a slightly bigger one as it was so warm- I almost kept it for myself! So you see I have been fairly productive as last time you saw this project it was in bits.

On to some less exciting news:

Yes that is right everybody I am STILL knitting this dress. Urgh! This has been one of those projects and now I have run out of wool and haven't got round to ordering more.  I am excited for it being finished not only because it will be a long time coming but I am looking forward to wearing it as it looks warm and I am constantly cold. 
A wee knitting tip though in case you are interested (and if you're not then that's tough)- when I knit sleeves I divide the ball of wool into two (or use two balls (don't you dare snigger)) and knit both sleeves at the same time this helps to make sure that the two sleeves are the same length and that the decreasing happens at the same point etc- this is mainly for knitters who are like me and don't really pay attention to patterns or bother/ remember to count rows- it certainly helps you to not get your knickers in a twist or have wonky sleeves for that matter. No one likes a wonky sleeve.

I have also started a couple of new projects as I can't focus on one thing for too long (that might be why the above project has been in progress for over a year (painful)).

I am knitting a ballet cardigan. I am using an ancient knitting pattern which I stole off my mum (sorry mummy!) and have had to increase the pattern in size slightly as I am far from being the figure of a 10 year old ballerina but it is shaping up quite nicely I think. It does have the potential to be a complete disaster but hey ho you live and learn.

The other project I have started is this:

I will leave you to guess what it is (oooo a cliffhanger- on a Saturday night- well I never).
And yes- I have gone there with the mustard yellow wool- it is either going to be 'quirky' or ghastly..... brave or stupid.

Until next time!