false impressions....

I've realised i've given a rather false impression of myself so far knitting-wise. I have had two posts in a row, both of the same project, both showing a fair amount of progress and within a very small space of time.

My knitting reality is somewhat different... if you are, like me, a member on Ravelry, you can find my project page here. for the rest of you, let me break it down for you what terrible consistency i have when it come to my favourite hobby. 

Quite a few of my abandoned projects were started just before my son started to walk, before then it was easy to knit for hours at a time while he sat and played and crawled, but once he got moving my amazing skills for churning out new projects weekly disappeared!

I planned to make a pair of christmas stockings for my cousin and his wife as their wedding present, they are soon to celebrate their 2nd wedding anniversary! I have not done anymore to them since I missed the original date, i'm hoping to get it together so they can have them this christmas! before they give up on me and go buy some! It's so stupid that I haven't finished them yet, I spent a fair bit of money on them too, I normally just knit in cheap acrylic but these are pure wool. This picture shows the first half-knitted stocking ---> as you can see, i've done all the tricky fairisle, intarsia bits and cables, turned the heel and stopped. Easily distracted or what?

This is an unfinished teddy bear.It should look like this, but there was an error in the short rows on the head, and me being the anal person that I am, i re-knitted the head about four times all with the same mistake but refused to think outside of the box enough to correct it myslelf, and then gave up. I have been tempted to sew a pair of eyes on the stomach and be done with it, but it has hung around the house looking like this for two years now. Have you noticed sometimes that when something remains unfinished for a really long time you simply stop noticing it? The weird blob on the top of the body is actually a really cool feature, the main reason i chose the pattern to knit, the head is able to turn around, which makes the bear far more posable and therfore fun to play with! lots of knitted bears look very flat, i can't stand that!

Another major cause of my huge pile of unfinished projects is due to my being easily distracted! All it takes is a quick pattern search on ravelry, or looking at someone else's profile and their collection of knitted items and off I go on a knitting tangent, pulling needles out of old projects, foraging for yarn, breaking yarn balls off other projects....tut tut!


I'll share more forgotten projects later...

wash the dishes, 30xp!

every now and again I find the 'perfect tool of escapism' and for a while all the chores get neglected and I get to the point of having to bribe myself to do housework. At the current present moment this 'perfect tool of escapism' takes the form of The Sims Medieval! 

It is a PC game that is so good it feels like my two favourite games had a baby game! I've been playing Runescape for years. It's a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) it's a game when you make a little person run around and fight loads of monsters, do loads of different quests, meet loads of characters, get gold, buy cool stuff...etc, it goes on forever, they are constantly adding new stuff, so you never get bored and you can't complete it. I've also been a fan and avid player of Sims for as long as it's been around (2000) where you play as a god and create and boss around these little people in a world you can customise in a million ways. 

This game, Sims Medieval, got a really bad response. I think a lot of people had the same hopes as me of it being a beautiful hybrid of my two favourites, but a lot of people did get disappointed. The best part of this was that I was saving up for it, the original price being a ridiculously high £39.99, but within a month (which means it's really bad for the company) it had gone down to £19.99 so I got to buy it much sooner than I thought! But yeah, it has less combat than Runescape, which I don't mind at all because I'm more of a collector and quester than fighter. It's on a smaller map too, which I'm actually preferring, it makes the quests achievable much faster (less frustration) and you can really get to know the map like the back of your hand! It has less choice of items and clothing and character personalising than Sims3, but actually, do you really need all that anyway? The clothes are all super cool medieval gear and they get two traits as well as a fatal flaw, which is loads more realistic really, don't people get sick of making nice sims all the time~?! The biggest difference at the moment that pissed people off the most (people who get excited by the hype of a new game then don't like it are hard to win back!) was the way you couldn't move around 360'' in the world or in the buildings, you can't build the buildings yourself, you can only furnish them and change the wallpaper and carpeting. I really don't mind in the slightest! The thing you have to realise about the Sims Medieval is that it's a completely new game unrelated almost to The Sims as we know it. And I reckon it stands in it's own right. I can't wait for the new patch today! They've basically fixed so many things that players moaned about! And to think my mum always says don't give in to peer pressure?!

p.s. just reaslised they've now put it up to £29.99! :( still good, still good!

as for avoiding the chores it goes like this; do a quest, wash up, do a quest, hang out the laundry, do a quest, tidy up the toys and sweep the floor, do a quest, go to bed! haha!
I'm 'making up to my house' this morning by making stock - a chore that doing it makes me feel like the perfect housewife! Go on the link to see how I got on....!


p.p.s bloody hell from £19.99 to £39.99 in a week! I sure got it at the perfect time! also the first release of Sims Medieval was so faulty and bugged they've given everyone who bought that a free copy of the limited edition game, as in the game that works!

dusting out the cobwebs

I've just got back from a weekend break, I went away from Friday to Sunday with a group from my church and we just chilled the whole weekend, it was fabulous, I didn't have to cook, clean, get up early, deal with tantrums, be selfless, it was fab and I came back refreshed then looked at my house and got a bit grossed out! But it's okay because I had such a nice break that I have that extra bit of energy to tackle those chores that build up quietly in corners, or ceilings...

I had to use flash for this cobweb to show up at all, seeing as it's not a very dusty one, but there was many very dusty cobwebs around my flat this morning. gross. they're fine and un-noticable high up in the ceilings until you do notice them, you notice a big one, you walk around and notice that there are nasty big cobwebs in every corner of every room. oh.

I shockingly enough don't own a feather duster (shocking because of my infatuation with feathers) so I grabbed the broken blind twisty sticks and waved them around in the corners till they looked like this and the cobwebs were gone! gross, huh?

it's dragin on...

ahh nearly there! i decided to change the design from a scarf into a puppet seeing as it was knit into two pieces anyway, it just seemed the logical thing to do...! so here's the photos so far

it still needs a face and ears (made out of 12 separate pieces!) and a tail. im also thinking of maybe continuing the belly stitch after the arm entry hole to even it up, and maybe to make some arms and legs to attach to the sides and maybe a spiky back spine running down the length. also maybe some stuffing in the cheeks to pad them out and a bit of face shaping.

knitting scales

My auntie Gywne gave me some gorgeous homespun yarn for my birthday, it was so lovely it was worthy of an extra special project to really show it off! So i hunted around for a bit and came across this amazing scarf! It's been in my favourites on Ravelry for a while, but now i had the perfect yarn! 

This is my progress so far

This shows the 'top dragon head & body' and the beginnings of the 'lower head & body' The top body is knit in a variegated yarn in a dragon scale stitch and the lower part is knit in a 'belly' stitch after the head. I have to make a few more parts including ears, nostrils, eyes, a tail, a mouth and flames but these are the main two parts. 

The pattern is such a pleasure to follow, so well written, if i were to write a pattern myself i would have to use this as a base for a good, easy to follow pattern which is accessible for knitters of any stage. having simple things like stitch counts at the end of every row makes it so much easier to figure out if you're unsure. Check it out and cast on one for yourself!

I'll keep you updated on my progress as it continues....  :)

welcome to my blog!

that first post was to compete against my lovely boyfriend's new blog. i like to be a bit of a smart arse sometimes, i'd prefer to be simply 'witty' but i'm not really clever enough you see, so i just act the smart arse instead.


Noun: smart-arse  'smaa(r)t,aa(r)s

1. Someone being or trying to be irritatingly clever; a smart alec
   - bright spark, smart-ass [N. Amer], smartypants, smarty, smartie

Derived forms: smart-arses

i really like genuinely clever people (such as people who don't need to use spellcheck to spell genuinely) and i like them even more when they're witty. 

i thought i'd let you know some of my favourites;

• Oscar Wilde - genius, witty, joker, rebel, gay and proud, great eye for detail
• Jerome K. Jerome - he wrote my all time favourite book 'Three Men In A Boat' he. is. hilarious. and he makes me enjoy being english, because it's obviously so funny!
• Terry Pratchett - mad. bizarre. eccentric. fantastic. very funny.

So...the battle of wits has begun!

My blog is better than your blog!

Neh neh neh neeeeh neh!