How exciting!!

So Lien in our knitting group (Oxford Bluestockings) organised for us to be in the gallery section of The Knitter. This involved us sending off projects and headshots with a small blurb about what we'd knitted, did we like the pattern, what yarn we used and so on. I was very excited when in this month's edition there was my wedding shawl!

See Lien's post here for a peek at our projects, and pick up a copy of issue 34 of The Knitter if you want to see the pictures properly :)

On Sunday I was at knitnation taking Franklin Habit's Lace Edgings: before, during and after. The class was my first knitting class and it was great fun and very informative, I think you'll be seeing decorative lace edgings on a lot of things I make! Including a new lace top i've finished and will post about soon. Knitnation was great fun, although I was slightly disappointed that the marketplace was quite so yarn heavy (as i'm not buying any at the moment) and few stalls had much to offer other than yarn. I was in the market for a variety of knitting accessories, such as needles, dye and row counters, but there was very little choice (in some cases there was one option). Had I been buying yarn I would have been a happy bunny though and probably would have bought some Habu as it looked very exciting, though not as much as Mikal!!!!

I'm in Germany right now for a collaboration, but therefore have a bit more knitting time, so am finally making headway on both June and July's socks. I'll pop a picture of July's socks up soon. Sorry for the lack of piccies in today's post!

Tiny Cardigan, and Big Jumper

I've been working on a jumper for my lovely husband, but it's big and so slow growing.. I'm about halfway to the point where i'll add armholes, so making progress. Here's a sneak peek:-

To break the monotony of the jumper, and to make a pressie for a friend with a baby, I completely copied Liz and made the Drops Baby Cardigan with Short Raglan Sleeves, but in the 6-9 month size.

I used some yarn that was leftover after a complete online shopping fail. I'd ordered 6 balls of wool for a jumper for myself, and it arrived in two batches. This should have warned me of what was about to happen, but I was new to all things wooly, and so began crocheting my jumper... A week or so later the other half of my yarn showed up and was, although the same colourway, an entirely different colour and texture, and made in an entirely different country! When I contacted the seller about this and the fact she had sent me stuff from two dye lots, she insisted she'd done nothing wrong (even though what she'd sold me was unfit for the purpose it was bought for) and would only refund unused balls. Therefore I had two balls left, and an entirely unsatisfactory shopping experience.

Two balls however, were plenty for a diddy cardigan for a diddy person, and here is said cardigan blocking to counteract the fact I rewound the crocheted yarn without soaking it first (so my stitches were v wonky). The cardigan is ravelled here.

I dropped off the finished object (with added buttons) this weekend, but the recipient was out, hopefully it'll a) fit and b) be liked! I however, really enjoyed knitting such a quick garment and the little bit of lace was a welcome break from cabling... I think more baby garments will be making it onto my "to knit" list, at least partly as people I know keep having babies!

Busy busy busy...

So we've been busy busy recently.
Here's what we were up to last weekend, not exactly uneventful!

First we went to the wedding of some lovely friends of ours:-

 Here's the outside of the Church, can you guess which building's nearby?

Beautiful flowers in the church.

The very big, very shiny organ in the Church

The service was lovely, though filled with hymns that I have not encountered before. Both bride and groom looked radiant, though I don't want to put piccies of people up without their express permission, and they're on honeymoon :)

We all walked a few minutes round the corner to the reception venue, and after a wonderful wedding breakfast we had a disco in this room:-

It was a lovely day celebrating with Julian and Liz, and I hope they're having a lovely honeymoon and that we'll see them soon.

Sunday didn't want to be outdone by Saturday's excitement, and so we hopped into the car and drove to Milton Keynes Bowl where we joined 65,000 other people to watch the Foo Fighters!!

First up were The Hot Rats, whose songs seemed surprisingly familiar given I hadn't thought I knew any of them. They were enjoyable to watch, and seemed to enjoy having quite such a large audience.

Next up were one of our favourite bands, Jimmy Eat World. For the most part they stuck with playing the old favourite songs, including half of the Bleed American album! They did play a few from the new album though, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them live again. I was particularly happy as they weren't in charge of the support bands. When we've been to see them live as the headline band, the support bands have been generally disappointing! Something that we have never quite understood, given how much we like Jimmy Eat World's music.

After JEW the next band up were Biffy Clyro. I saw them live about 9 years ago in Cambridge where I was impressed at how well their music came across live. Often when bands come out with albums with complex riffs and you see them live the complexity of the music fails to translate, or the ability of the band to play in sync with one another does not live up to the expectations set up by the recording. Happily on Sunday Biffy Clyro do not cause any of these disappointments as they played extremely well and the whole crowd seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves.

Here's what 65,000 people (well, a small portion of...) looked like on the pleasant Sunday afternoon:-

 If you look closely you'll see the lovely Dave Grohl on his runway stage in the middle of the crowd. I sprained my ankle recently, so Chris and I refrained from trying to get close, and just hung out on the side of the bowl. 

Chris made a very good observation of Dave Grohl, that he resembles an overexcited puppy! He was full of energy and running all over the place for the entire time they were playing. Being Dave Grohl though it's not like the running around diminished any other aspect of his performance as he still sang and played extremely well. 

Here's a view of the stage after the sun had retreated for the day:-

My camera's not so good at low light levels, but i'm sure you get the idea.

Not content with playing to entertain us for two and a half hours, the Foos also thought some guests would be a good idea. When playing their new song Dear Rosemary they had Bob Mould on stage with them, who recorded the song with them and can be heard singing away with Grohl. 

While the rest of the band were taking a well deserved break toward the end of the set Grohl was joined on stage by a couple of other special guests, namely Seasick Steve and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin! Dave Grohl hopped up to play the drums and the three of them played us a few songs.  

Overall the gig, and the whole weekend were lovely, we had a lot of fun, but given we only got home at about 2am Monday morning (it took a long time to get out of the car park) it was quite a tiring weekend!

I've not been entirely idle, and will have a new finished object to show you soon, and even some July socks on the way (we're ignoring the fact the June ones aren't finished.. they're still plodding along in the background).