Teeny, tiny loveable booties!

Oh how my heart swells when I see these:

Whenever a friend of mine announces that she's pregnant with a little girl, my mind automatically jumps to "I need to make her some Saartje's booties".  I'm sure I'm not the only one judging by the 14189 projects on Ravelry.

I know that realistically, these babies probably won't wear these booties for more than, oh, I don't know 5 minutes noting how rapidly they grow and how fiddly little booties are to get onto tiny wriggly feet.  Not to mention that the little girl that I've made these for is due in February... which is summer in Australia!  In my crazy knitter mind, one of that matters, I just love how adorable these little booties are, and how quickly they are to knit up.  I made these in one evening as I caught up on the Big Bang Theory. 

The green yarn was leftovers of the delicious Skein Merino Cashmere fingering in the Sprout colourway.  The grey yarn was a tiny scrap of Storied Yarns Superwash Sock yarn in the Oncoming Storm colourway that I had collected to make a hexipuff out of but thought it was perfect for this little number (it has tiny subtle flecks of blues and greens in the grey). The tiny heart buttons were purchased at the annual Old Bus Depot Markets Celebration of Wool day in Canberra, maybe in 2012.  I bought a whole card of tiny buttons on all different colours but hadn't find a use for them but they're actually the perfect size for these booties.

I'm thrilled with how these worked up - they're tiny, squishy and "aww" inducing.  My friend was equally thrilled with them and made a point of how they are just the right amount of "girly" without having to be pink and frilly (something my friend is strongly against). 

Oh I'm so excited to meet the little girl that these were made for!

XOXO
Bee

Adorable, bespecked addictions

Why hello there! 

For a while there, I had forgotten that I even had a blog, or really, that I was even a crafter.  My day job became my day, night and weekend job for a while meaning the "leftover" time was spent sleeping or zombie-like on my couch... not fun.

Just as the latest crazy period was coming to an end in gainful employment land, I stumbled upon a pattern that made my heart zing!  The beautiful "A most bespeckled hat" pattern by Alex Tinsley which is on Ravelry here... and has a fun pattern page here. 

Within a day of finding and purchasing the pattern, I had sent a link of it to one of my best friends.  She has a birthday in November and I usually try to make her something and there was something about the speckles and the pom pom that screamed her name to me... or maybe it was that she shares a name with the designer.  Within seconds of sending her the pattern, I had an excited email telling me all of the colour combinations that she'd love and what coats she'd wear it with!  I'm a knitter that loves that level of excitement from a knitwear recipient so I got started straight away and within a day, I had this gorgeous number.  Oh just look at that pom pom!

Within moments of finishing the first hat, I dove straight into my stash and found some lovely grey mystery yarn.  I think I'd purchased it from a fellow knitter who was doing a little bit of a yarn purge and I paid about $2 for about 90g of this stuff... It looked a little bulkier and I remember the knitter saying something about it being 12ply (so more like Aran weight than the Worsted called for) so I went down a needle size and paired it with some yummy red Zara yarn that I had languishing in my stash and less than 24 hours later, I had another yummy hat (and only a couple of metres of yarn left!) Phew!

Now, it was as I was knitting the second hat that I realised that I'd actually misread the instructions a little (totally my own fault for being so keen on knit knit knitting) and had left off a repeat on the first hat.  And because I had a very limited amount of yarn for the second one, I chose to keep that modification (especially because the first one fit great).  I'm glad I did because the second one also fit great.  Although I sometimes wish that I had made it using the size 7 needles that it called for because the fabric did come out a little denser than I'd normally go for in a hat.

My mojo for this hat didn't stop there, within a few days, I had finished another (although for this one, as it was 8ply or DK weight yarn, I did the full number of repeats called for in the pattern and I love the result)... I also love how they all look together!

And I may or may not have another on the needles.  This time, I'm trying something a little different.  I'm doing the pattern in sock weight yarn and size 3 needles.  I only did about half the amount of ribbing and I'm just going to see how it goes... I'm hoping for an adorable little baby shower hat.

(I roll of washi tape in the picture for scale)

Now, credit where credit is due, I actually found the pattern on the project page of the wonderful Dani of the Little Bobbins Knits podcast (which can be found here).  Little Bobbins Knits is fast becoming one of my favourite knitting podcasts! Dani has great taste in patterns and makes just beautiful stuff!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to admit something shameful.  When I found the pattern, I thought (only for a moment) that, as there was only one size and the design is relatively simple, the $5.50 USD price was a little steep.  I can, hand on heart, say that I was absolutely wrong.  Maybe I could have tried to mimic the look without a pattern but I would not have been anywhere near as successful as I was with the pattern.  I've also now knit more than 3 hats with it, bringing the price to about $2 AUD for each hat - totally worth it!  I also fully intend to make more (in fact, I may have pulled yarn for at least 4 more hats).

Anyways, sorry for the rather long and somewhat rambly post.  I hope you'll check out the hat pattern (which I love so so much) and maybe pop over to watch Dani's podcast!

Take care

Bee
XOXO

p.s. sorry for the very inconsistent, phone camera pictures.  I promise that I will start busting out the proper, DSLR photos soon but in the interests of getting some posts out there, I've decided to just go with the crummy pictures for now. 

Perfectly Fitting Sweaters and Pretty Little Cities

I'm a procrastinator or procraftinator... either way, I have this habit of leaving things right up until the very very last minute and that's exactly what I did with D's sweater.  I had it about 90% there for approximately 5 WEEKS.  All I needed to do was to pick up and knit the shawl collar, and sew on the toggles... I will admit, I'm a little bit scared of picking up stitches so I procrastinated.  Well, I don't really know what I was waiting for!  As soon as I had the fire lit under my bottom (at around 10PM the night before our anniversary), I absolutely flew through it...

But the thing about leaving things till the last minute is, you can't anticipate the little things that can derail your plan.  For me this time, it was my sweet, loving mister uncharacteristically requesting that we go to bed early! EEEP! And for good reason because I woke up (very early) to this:

 

Whoops.  It would've been a really sweet touch to be able to present him with his sweater at breakfast too... but it wasn't to be.

So at lunchtime, I sat outside and bound off the last few stitches, weaved in ends and sewed on the toggles... I packaged it up (along with a super secret surprise present I also got him)... and I waited (not so patiently) until dinner.  Dinner was delightful.

And after dinner, I finally gave him the sweater and to my intense relief, IT FIT and HE LOVES IT!

He's hard to keep still long enough for a picture but SQUEE!

Now, after a big project like that, I just lost all sweater mojo so I started (and due to a week of sick leave) finished this adorable little number:

 Designed by Satsuma Street on Etsy!  Paris is close to my heart, not only is it one of my absolute favourite cities that I was lucky enough to visit in the winter of 2010/2011, my best friend now lives there!

And I enjoyed it so much that I started another Satsuma Street design: 

This one's a little closer to home... I'll give you a hint:

XOXO

Bee

Lunchtime goal setting

I usually spend lunchtimes one of two ways - either I:

1. work straight through and grab a bite to eat at my desk or 

2. venture out of the office to run errands / catch up with friends.  

But lately, I've added a third...

3. using the break in my day for some reflection, organisation and today, a little goal setting. 

When lunchtime rolled around on an overcast Wednesday,  I found a quiet corner table in the lunch room and set myself up with a steaming bowl of soup and got started...

Lots of appointments and catch ups went from the Blackberry to the diary and a few "to do" lists went into the elephant notebook but on the crafty front, I planned out my goals for Stash Dash (admittedly very late).

Stash Dash is a knit-a-long of sorts hosted by the fabulous Laura and Leslie of the Knitgirllls video podcast.  Basically, the aim is to finish knit 5kms worth if knitting between May 23rd and August 7th.  That total can be made up of existing WiPs as well as new projects... and noting that I have 3 sweaters on the needles at the moment, I decided to take the plunge and join in.  Unfortunately 5kms of yarn is a LOT of knitting and my personal list is incredibly ambitions for me...

But I'm going to give it a shot!  Wish me luck!

xoxo
B

Sweater Progress...

I thought the more knitting I did, the more I would blog but I was wrong.  Despite how quiet I've been on the blog, quite a lot of knitting progress has been made on dear D's sweater.  Here are some progress pics.  I cast on on 6 May 2014 so this is a progression of a little over a month.

Unfortunately, because it's so large, I can't knit on it on the train anymore (which is where I was getting a tonne of progress)... In fact, it's so big that it won't fit into any of my project bags so it's now living in a box.

I have 7 weeks till my self-imposed deadline of 30 July.  I think I can make it.  I hope I can make it!

XOXO
B

The perfect knitterly weekend

I've been putting off this post because I'm scared that my words won't do the event justice.  But last weekend (17-18 May 2014) as my ultimate knitterly dream weekend.

It started with breakfast on Saturday.  D and I rolled out of bed (a little late) to run a few errands before heading to our favourite local cafe for breakfast.  En route, I found the perfect scarf - I'm obsessed with this colour at the moment.  I'm not sure what it's called - magenta? pinkey-purple? I'm not sure but I'm obsessed... so I've been looking for a scarf or cardigan in this colour for weeks and finally I found something within my price range.  This chevron beauty (pictured with the other colours I'm obsessed with at the moment) only set me back $20!

Then we went to breakfast (which was DELICIOUS), and then we sat at the cafe for ages doing this:

After a few hours of hanging out at home, I left D at home to study and I hopped into the car to Canberra where my incredible friends not only let me stay the night, but they took me out for a belated birthday dinner:

Then there was the knitting:

But the real festivities started the next morning when, bright eyed and bushy tailed, we went to the Old Bus Depot Markets' Celebration of Wool Day!  The Old Bus Depot Markets are an old favourite of mine.  They open every Sunday in Kingston and sell a great combination of food, plants, handmade goods and other knick nacks. Once a year around May, the have a special Celebration of Wool Day which sees yarn vendors from around the region to come and sell their wares.  It's basically the closest thing to a sheep and wool festival that we get in this area and this year, it did not disappoint!

In fact, I had so much fun, I didn't end up with that many photos - but here is a collage of a few that I took (very last minute as we were on our way home):

And of course, we could not resist buying some lovlies to bring home (unfortunately that's our combined haul - so only the Paris bag, the navy and pinkey purple sock yarn and fibre came home to Sydney with me):

Those bags are made by the amazing and talented Michelle of Buttontree Lane and you can might be able to get one here.  The navy, pinkey purple (yeap, it's that colour again) yarn, the red yarn and those cute stitch markers (sitting on top of the hedgehog bag) were from Little Plum Yarns (who had a table full of incredibe colours - I had to physically restrain myself from buying more)... You can get some here. The pink yarn right off in the distance is Quince and Co which is exclusively sold in Australia at one of my favourite yarn stores - Suzy Hausfrau.  I did also get a little spinning fibre but I'm not sure who the vendor was... and I'm also not sure what type of fibre it was - it was just labelled as "wool".

And because we managed to find some spinning fibre, we decided that I should have a whirl on my friend's spinning wheel!  My very first spinning experience (unfortunately that's not a picture of me spinning - that's my amazing friend setting up her wheel for me to try):

To be honest, I wasn't totally enamoured my spinning... I think I'll stick with knitting for now, but I'm glad I tried it and I might try it again in the future, maybe when I have a little more bandwidth and a little less knitting mojo.

Speak of knitting mojo, it was running HIGH after the market so we popped on a movie (Midnight in Paris) and got knitting:

Of course there was a long and boring drive home, but the entire time, I was kept company by some of my favourite podcasts: Down Cellar Studios, The Knitmore Girls, Prairie Girls Knit and Spin and The Knit Girllls (who I sometimes just listen to instead of "watch"). 

As knitterly weekends go, it was pretty much perfect...

Oh, and that blue knitting you keep seeing in pictures, that's D's Brownstone... it's going well *touch wood* :)

XOXO
Bee

The opposite of knitting...

For what was meant to be a knitting blog, there's been a conspicuous lack of knitting posts lately, and that's because there's been a lack of knitting in my life.  In fact, it's actually worse than that, there's been a lot of the very opposite of knitting - frogging.

First up - my Marin.  I was knitting this for a friend of mine - her birthday is in September and I thought I'd get an early start on it (given my mojo lately, it might get to her in about 2 birthdays time)... I had been plodding along on it at a steady pace around Christmas time, then I put it down and it went into my knitting bin (which is literally a tiny purple wheely bin) for a while.  Then I picked it up again when I was visiting Canberra and was lucky enough to snag a knit date with my favourite knitting companion. Ahh it was bliss...

We spent a few hours happily knitting away... I felt the Marin was starting to look a little strange but didn't think much of it until I got back to Sydney and was re-reading parts of the pattern to find where I was up to and I saw this:

I had totally forgotten to do that after I'd started back on this project after it's hiatus.  There was just nothing to be done but to rip it. So I ripped..

And ripped...

Until it was just a ball again...

As heartbreaking as ripping back the Marin was, this next project was even HARDER to rip back...

D's sweater is something I've been working on for literally, YEARS and for a while, I've known that it's not really working out.  In fact, I blogged about it here.   The pattern is not clear, I'd done a tonne of mods but hadn't kept a good record of them, and the whole thing was looking really "off".  But I've had the thing in hiatus for ages and so on D's birthday, I pulled it out to have a look at it and my heart sank.  I just couldn't keep knitting on a project that I didn't think would work.  So, with a heavy heart, I decided that this huge pile of knitting had to go.

I immediately went on to Ravelry (where I'm "stealthknits" by the way), and found a sweater pattern by a reputable designer that a tonne of other Ravelers had knit (successfully!) and seemed to be something D would wear: Brownstone by Jared Flood.  Within 15 minutes of deciding to stop knitting on the original sweater, I had picked the pattern, bought the pattern and had cast on for the sleeve.  It's going well and I'll share some progress pics soon...

But I just don't have the heart to rip the original sweater.  There will come a time that I have to rip it out so I can use the yarn - but until then, I think I might just leave it the way it is...

XOXO
Bee

Market Madness!

I am not ordinarily a morning person, and on Saturdays, D and I like to sleep in... but this Saturday, I was up, showered, dressed and in the car by 7:15am to go to the markets!

In August, one of my good friends is getting married and I am super duper excited to be one of her bridesmaids.  One of the things she wanted to look into was doing her own flowers for the big day so we decided to head out to the Sydney Flower Markets.  We had done our research and found that if you want the best quality flowers that day - your best bet is to get there at 5am when the markets open, but if you're looking for some bargains, you're better off getting there around 8:30 or 9am as the vendors are getting ready to pack up.  For the actual wedding, I'm sure my friend will be there at 5am sharp, but for practising, we thought we'd try for some cheaper blooms (and have a teeny bit of a sleep in too) so we arrived by about 8:30am and this was the first thing I saw:

I instantly fell in love with the coral roses (see them on the right hand side of the picture) but forced myself to focus on the task at hand - finding the perfect wedding flowers!  So we explored:

After roaming the markets for about an hour, I was feeling super accomplished - my friend had a really good idea of what she wanted, and we'd picked up some cheap flowers to experiment with, but those coral roses were still calling my name.  So as we were walking out, we ducked by the same flower vendor from earlier in the morning and he had just reduced his prices from $5 per bunch to 3 bunches for $10! It was a sign! I couldn't resist any longer and I bought 2 bunches of the coral roses and a bunch of the white ones too.

I won't share the pictures of our practice wedding flowers but safe to say, I had a TONNE of fun experimenting, and the bride is super happy with her choice.  In fact, we had so much fun that I didn't get home until about 10pm!  But when I did, my mind immediately turned to playing with those coral and white roses. I think here's a good place to not - I am not a florist, nor do I have ANY experience arranging flowers ahead of today but I thought I'd do a little post about what I did...

This is what I started with:

I cut off most of the folage from each rose - leaving just a few leaves at the top, and I cut the stems down to a length that I thought looked nice in my vase (making sure to cut them on an angle).

The white roses didn't have many thorns but I was surprised to find that most of the coral ones were very thorny - with teeny tiny little thorns that were difficult to remove (so I didn't).

 

By the time I was done - I had a LOT of leaves and stem cut offs to throw away (luckily my apartment block has a green waste bin).

 And I was ready to start arranging!

I had a few Silver Dollar Eucalyptus leaves which were leftovers from wedding flower experimenting that I added to my arrangement to break up the roses a little. I absolutely love how they sort of poke out of the round arrangement. Basically, I used the two types of flowers and the leaves, I just got playing and poking and changing and switching until I was happy with how it looked.  Here's the finished product!

I absolutely LOVE how it looks on my kitchen island! I wish it could be a permanent fixture.

XOXO
Bee

26

Today I turned 26 and it was lovely.

My birthday this year fell on the same day as one of my very best friends' last night in Australia.  He leaves in the morning to start his incredible new post doc in Paris! So we celebrated in style. And it was glorious!

The perfect staycation...

Hi there...

I was very skeptical about staying in Sydney for the Easter long weekend. D wanted to stay home and rest for Easter.  I disagreed, I wanted to fly north to visit my parents in Queensland, visit Melbourne or drive to the coast.  Eventually, we came up with something of a compromise, we'd stay in Sydney but we'd get out and about to see some of the sights.  Basically, that we'd be tourists in our new city.

The weekend started with an early mark from work! As I strolled through the rain to the train station, I remembered that Lincraft were having some pretty awesome fabric specials and I just couldn't resist checking it out.  To give you a little bit of context, I had spent a significant part of last week dreaming of new quilts, and specifically, a particularly deliciously pinky/purpley one made by Elise Blaha Cripe... Swoon.  So 15 minutes in Lincraft and this is what I was trying to wiggle out down to the register:

Unfortunately, that was as close as I got to "crafting" all weekend (but don't worry, I have some big plans for that fabric).


On Friday, we aimed for "lunch with a view"... and we ended up at Dunbar House in Watson's Bay. It came with the highest of recommendations and wow, it did not disappoint.  The view was lovely, the food was delicious, the service was friendly and the company was particularly wonderful.

After lunch, we went for a long walk, nearly bought a watercolour (but talked ourselves out of it) then did some lazing in the grass... all in all, a perfect Friday.

On Saturday, we went to the Royal Easter Show... WOW.  The Royal Easter Show is an annual event run in Sydney over 2 weeks around Easter.  It's like a big country fair but in the city (think lots of livestock and prizes for things like the best jam and the biggest pumpkin) plus a fair / amusement park with lots of games and rides.

Neither D or I had been before and we didn't really know what to expect.  To be honest, the whole experience was overwhelming but incredible.  The animals were adorable, the entrants of the arts and craft exhibitions were really inspirational, the woodchopping exhibition was really interesting and the hundreds of stalls were pretty tempting.  The whole place was also incredibly crowded but nowhere more so than the showbag hall (and yes, we bought a showbag, although mostly because it had some great vouchers which were worth more than the cost of the bag).  The only thing I wish we'd done differently was to take cardigans. Although it was mostly warm during the day, in the evenings, it was actually quite chilly.

I think I could write 6 (probably long, probably boring) blog posts about the day, instead, I thought I'd just insert some pictures:

On Sunday we had grand plans of going to Taronga Zoo... I wore my special elephant t-shirt, packed snacks and numerous bottles of water, had a quick pitstop to eat breakfast and arrived at the zoo gate... where we saw the longest line ever, huge numers of police and security and at least 3 news crews.  Which is when it twigged, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the little prince were also going to the zoo today. Neither D nor I were really willing to brave the increased crowds and the fact that parts of the zoo would likely be blocked off for the royal visit so we hopped back in the car.

We were going to turn back home but then we decided to go for a walk in Mosman.  And found this:

 

And then we started dreaming about the beautiful suburbs we could move to in Sydney and visited Cremorne, Wollestonecraft, Waverton, Balmain and Chatwood.  In Chatswood we stopped, grabbed a bite to eat and decided to catch a movie (The Other Woman - it was OK).  Then, on our way home we made a pitstop into the video store and picked up Despicable Me which was fabulous!

 

Aaaandd Monday.  Wow, how blissful it is to write about the fourth day off.  Well, we decided that Monday should be a "rest day" of sorts. We woke up late, made french toast (with brioch bread and cinnamon sugar - amazing) and lazed about watching tv. 

Just as we were debating what to make for a dinner, I got a text from our best friends asking what we were up to as they were en route from the Blue Mountains to Canberra and were up for an impromptu hang out!  So we put on a spread, let the wine pour (only for 3 of us, someone had to be the responsible driver), and the chatter unleashed!  

I used to live with these two awesome individuals and now they're about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime - living in Paris (for his job - and she's going with him!).  We're going to miss them and their impromptu drop-ins :(

All in all, the perfect ending to a brilliant Easter long staycation...

XOXO

B