More Deliveries

More deliveries today. The machine cones were delivered to me via Royal Mail. I bid for them on EBay as I am having difficulty finding anyone who stocks machine cones that aren't single colours. I am sure that there must be an online shop somewhere that I am missing. I have tried the usual machine knitting cone outlets but everything is either in plain colours or in very thin shiny viscose. I just have to keep looking out on EBay but unfortunately for me that all seem to have been put on the site this week. As I have been looking so long I dare not let these go at these prices. These are not for baby things but for shawls and scarves later in the year..

Two more patterns arrived, or rather one did and the other one I had to pick up from the Post Office. The same thing happened yesterday. Yesterday someone had re-used a stamp and so I had to pay the postage and today there was no stamp on it at all. I have had patterns from both of these sellers before and nothing was wrong with the postage then so I won't name and shame them. I just hope that it doesn't happen again as I am getting fed up of the ride to the sorting office. There is no room to turn the scooter around and today I got stuck on an kerb and must have accidentally knocked the manual switch on my scooter. I couldn't understand for a few minutes why it wouldn't go.

Another little jacket finished. This time it is darker coloured so I made it larger. I didn't use a pattern for this but I did write it down in shorthand so hopefully I will be able to follow it again should it be needed.

I made a baby hat from the pattern that arrived yesterday. I think that the Quickerknit specified on the pattern must have been more of a chunky as this hat has turned out to fit a premature baby. I am not over fond of the bobble stitch. It is hard to keep the bobbles all the same size and also I feel that little baby fingers will pull at the bobbles and stretch out the strings of the stitch. I have a feeling that it will look tatty in a short while. I will have to adapt this pattern if I make any more. I like that shape so will have to improvise.

More hats to make tonight, I think, but I am probably better at hats when I make the pattern up myself instead of using a pattern. It's just a matter of getting the shaping right at the top and then it's all improvisation after that.

I Love This Pattern

I knew that I wanted this pattern. I will say thanks once again to Maureen for sending me her copy of the pattern after I got outbid on Ebay. I really love this pattern and I am so pleased with the way that it has turned out. I will definitely be using this pattern again.

My Ebay patterns keep arriving daily. I have got to the slow down stage now as I have bid (and won a lot of them) on most of the ones that I liked the most. I have probably paid well over the odds for a lot of them but they are such lovely patterns. Well I think so. That's all that matters.

These are all crochet. I especially love the crochet helmet in blue and white.

The middle design is knitted but the other two are crochet.

These are all in crochet.

The top two patterns are knitted and the bottom two are crochet.

I bid on this knitting bag and it arrived with 3 part balls of DK acrylic, some knitting patterns and one crochet pattern for babies hats and booties. The bag is practically new and is just the right size for carrying my crochet around to hospital appointments, There were also a few pair of old knitting needles in the bag but as they are short length I will be donating them to the knit club. Rachael is always teaching people how to knit and so knitting needles are always wanted to practise with.

These are some machine cones that I ordered from Ebay. I am not using them for knitting on the machine. I thought that they would crochet some lovely small shawls. It's so hard to find random dyed 4ply without paying an absolute fortune for the hand dyed wools. Lovely though these space dyed sock yarns may be, the price of the yarn would make the finished shawl far too expensive to sell. Nowadays it's not just a question of my liking something I have to take the price into consideration. If anyone wanted something in wool or merino then they would have to put their hand a lot deeper into their pockets. I love the colours of Noro but don't like the feel of it and definitely don't like the price of it even in the sales. I might splash out on it for myself someday but not to crochet and sell on. The cone in the right is especially pretty as it has a silver thread running through the colours.

I have almost finished another crochet baby cardigan. This time it is slightly larger than newborn size as the colour is a little bit darker. Tonight I am going to crochet some baby hats so that I can show something less expensive on my Etsy site. I am getting excited now as it should definitely be open by the end of the week.

My head is still buzzing with ideas and I have taken to carrying my notebook and pen around with me so that I can draw and describe what is in my head before it pops out of my brain again. I have a kind of short circuit brain. I have some brilliant ideas just as I am ready to fall asleep and then if I don't draw or write them down then I have forgotten all about them in the morning. I am trying my best to write down ( in my pidgin way) what I am crocheting free hand so that even though no-one else would be able to understand my shorthand at least I can make something again should it be needed.

Time to cook some dinner. Nothing fancy tonight. Just meatballs in a tomato and onion sauce with spaghetti topped with mozarello cheese. There will be enough for tomorrow too. I like it when I don't have to cook on certain days as it is already made.

After that it is back to the crochet.  I hope that there are some good programmes on TV tonight as the more enthralled I am in a programme then the faster I can crochet!

I Must Get Back To My Knitting Machine

No excuses. When I have finished off the sleeveless jacket that I am crocheting for my niece I must try again on the knitting machine. I am sure that once I sit and read the instructions for the lace carriage it will all come back to me. I can knit plain but I want to make some lacy baby cardigans.

These are another reason why I must get back to machine knitting. I already had the baby cones and today my friend Sue has been in her garage and given me these cones of cotton from her stash for my machine. I can't complain that I have nothing to machine knit with now.

Sue also gave me  a pack of each colour in Patons Zhivago. it is beautifully soft and silky and will make lovely crochet sleeveless jackets. I have a couple of patterns that I bought but haven't made as yet that will really suit these colours.

She also gave me these balls of QK which she inherited from an old lady's stash. It has the aroma that my other donated wool from a couple of years had but once it is left open to the air it fades eventually. It's a strange rather musty smell. I often wonder where old ladies store their wool.  Quickerknit is hard to buy these days and I have a few old Patons Quickerknit patterns that I can use this wool up for.

I am not in my second childhood. I wanted a baby doll for when I design my baby patterns but unfortunately when this doll arrived it is more the size of a premature baby. I have ordered another larger doll so hopefully that will be a newborn baby size. I already have a doll that was used for display when I had the shop but she has seen better days and is about the size of a 9 month old. Next time my son calls I will have to make sure that the dolls are  put away in the spare bedroom or he might think that I have gone a bit strange dressing dolls at my time of life. Crocheters will understand when I say that I want a life sized model to design for but other people won't. The doll is anatomically correct. I could have ordered a little boy doll but I didn't want any extra pieces of plastic spoiling the line of the baby clothes.

I  have spent some of today looking for Oscar. They still haven't found him. They want me to keep an eye out and phone them when I find him. It's very unusual for him to disappear like this. Perhaps he has realized that they have moved and in his cat like way has found himself a new place to stay. Usually when they are not home or on holiday the first place he comes for food is here. He has done that for years. I hope that he turns up soon.

I am on the finishing straight for the Doris Chan sleeveless jacket for my niece. I have about 8 more rows to do on the body and then all the edgings to crochet. After that I hope that I can force myself into some machine knitting. Once I start I will be fine and probably will machine knit for a while. It's just the starting that seems to be the problem.

It has been raining most of the day today. By the time the weather was nice enough to go out shopping it was too late. I managed to find things in the freezer to eat so I will try again tomorrow. I have got a rain poncho and rainproof trousers and jacket but I still don't like scooting in the rain unless I have to.

New Excuse To Stash

I did need the knitting machine needles as quite a few got bent whilst I was trying to sort out what I was doing wrong with my ribber. Of course as any true stasher knows there is no point in paying the postage just for 2 packs of machine needles when for a small amount more I can add a couple of cones in the parcel. My stash excuse is that most of the wool already in stash is a bit too thick for this knitting machine. It will take a double knit but it has to be a very fine one otherwise the knitting is so stiff it practically stands up on it's own. I think that double knit and thicker will have to be knitted or crocheted by hand or knitted on the chunky machine.

As I am still at the practising stage at the moment I don't want to use, and possibly spoil, any good quality wools. The baby cones that I got from Kemps were very reasonably prices but they only do cones in the baby shades. I ordered the machine needles from Metropolitan and and ordered these cones from their sale. There wasn't a photo of the unlabelled cone and it was described as a beige. Whilst I quite like this colour to me it is more of a camel or mink shade. As it was only £2.29 for the cone I am happy with it no matter what colour it is. The teal is the same brand as the purple that I bought last week and was just over £4 a cone. Once I improve my workmanship I can move onto the more expensive cones or wools. I would hate to ruin anything that I had paid a lot for the wool. I know that I can unravel things but it does tend to strip the wool of some of it's texture if I do that.

Yesterday and today I haven't done any more practising on the machine as I am so afraid of wanting to do it all of the time when I am on deadlines for my hand knit and crochet garments on my list. Last night I hand knitted 3/4 of a sleeve on my younger niece's jacket. I could race along as there is no patterning on the sleeves. I am hoping to finish it tonight and start the second sleeve. I will feel that I have done most of the jacket once they are finished even though I have 2 fronts (with pattern on) , the button bands and a very large collar in rib still to do. Once I have done more than half I feel that I am nearly at the finishing stage.

I have decided against the vibrating bed for a couple of reasons. Mainly I don't have the money, but if I did I don't think that I would get much use from it as instead of relaxing me I found that it woke me up. I did like the feel of it on my back but like Bev it hurt my neck and shoulders and I had a positional headache that lasted all day and most of the evening. I think that if I had that kind of money then I would rather come and visit you Bev and lie of your bed for a shake up and down after travelling so far on a plane.

I understand what you mean Linda about the Shiatsu massage but I don't mind a vigorous massage on my back. My pain is mostly muscular, despite having back surgery, and my back relaxes out after a massage. Whether one of these cushions will work for me remains to be seen. I suppose it's a question of whether the massagers are in the right position for my back, neck and shoulders. I am still very tempted by it though and have been toying with the idea of getting one for a while.

My credit card bill came yesterday and I nipped up to the bank to pay something off it today. I didn't manage to pay anything off the chair and scooter bit of the bill but I did clear the extra that I had put on it from wool, books, patterns, machine accessories, the steamer and various other bits and bats. I had a bit of a mad month and whilst I am annoyed with myself for not making a dent in the debt for the scooter and chair I justify it by thinking that it was an exceptional month for buying things. I think that I should hide my credit card this month. Ha ha. No chance of that. To think that I never used to shop online at all. How on earth did I manage to buy anything?

Well to be honest I was able to walk about then and go to the shops and buy things in person. I wonder how our elderly relatives ever managed. There was no online ordering or any credit cards back then. I suppose though that there was a lot more family intervention and the young ones made sure that the older ones got everything that they needed. I can remember going all over the place to get things for my Mum and my Gran. I never thought anything about it. There was no whinging like there would be today. It was just something that I was brought up to do. I was told to knock on elderly neighbours doors to ask if they needed anything from the shops and just did it without question. It was a different way of life back then. To be fair, back then, everybody knew their neighbours whereas today if anyone knocked on my door, and I didn't know them, I would think that they wanted to steal from me. My own neighbours are very good with me and always ask if I want anything when the weather is snowy, very rainy or it's slippy outside.