My creative space :: honey

For the first time in a loooong time, I have two 'active' knitting projects in my creative space!

You can probably tell I'm a bit in love with the travelling woman shawl I'm working on, but there's so much going on at work this week that I needed something much simpler.

Plus, I wanted I could work on while I chatted to Suzy's customers at the OBDM on Sunday.

Enter the honey cowl!

 

I copy-catted Danielle on this one, after seeing her gorgeous version in BC Garn Semilla I just couldn't resist!

It is knitting up beautifully too - so soft and squooshy!

xo

More creative spaces here!

Lace helpers

I am so very close to finishing my travelling woman, but before I have it all done to show off I thought I might share some of the little lace helpers I learned from Miss Fee at the Suzy Hausfrau lace workshop, which I have been taking full advantage of to keep track of my knitting on this project. 

 

I am super impressed with the pattern - it has every single piece of information you need to make your lace knitting easy, including having the lace presented both in chart form AND written out, and my FAVOURITE of all, which you can see in the pic there, a list of the stitch count after every single row you do! I've been counting my stitches after every single knit (right-side) row, and crossing them out on the list as I go. This has been so helpful since you know immediately if you have made a mistake in the row and it is quick to fix right away instead of only realising a few rows later on and having to try and find where it is and then pull your knitting back. It also helps me keep track of which row I am up to - super handy.

The next really clever trick we learned was those red lengths of yarn there - life-lines! This makes it so much easier if you need to undo some of your knitting for some reason - you just need to move the stitches from the waste yarn onto some needles and you're good to go! I put them in the last row before the lace, just in case I made a mistake on my first go through. The pattern then recommends putting life lines in at row 8 of each repeat of the first chart (did I mention how helpful the pattern is with all the extra info?!) - and since I'm a stickler for rules, that's what I did! I haven't had to use them yet, fingers crossed I won't, but it is such a quick think to do to give you that extra security!

The next tip from Miss Fee was generous use of the highlighter! This is not only very handy for keeping track of where I'm up to, having the row you're working on underlined by your previous highlighting helps keep you on the same row as you read across mid-knit! Another thing that makes it easier to read the chart as you knit across is writing in the number of stitches in a row - like where I have written in the 4 and 5 there - so much easier than counting!

I really think the fact that the pattern includes so much supporting info makes it PERFECT for a beginner!

Fingers crossed for a finished project post next week!

xo

To market, to market

Tonight's slow cookerpalooza dish is paprika chicken (from Slow Cooker 2, natch), and its lesson is that slow cooked dishes aren't all that pretty, especially when viewed via grainy poorly lit photos taken with the iPhone. 

Lesson two however is that you shouldn't judge a slow cooked dish by its grainy poorly lit iPhone photo, as this was really delicious. We tweaked the recipe a little - using a full tin of tomatoes instead of a cup (to avoid leftovers) and adding wine instead of sherry (because we didn't have any). Both these changes worked perfectly, since we served it on pasta and they made it more pasta-saucey. I think lamb will always be my favourite slow cooked meat, but I do like the way the chicken breaks down. Also, Paprika is the first name of my favourite Danish actress.

I was super pleased this evening that we had cooked this up yesterday, firstly because slow cooked dishes do tend to taste even better the day after cooking, but also because I am a bit knackered after spending the day playing booth bitch stall hand for my friend Suzy Hausfrau at the Old Bus Depot Markets Celebration of Wool !

Of course my photos don't do it justice (are you sensing a theme here?), but the stall looked MAGNIFICENT! And obviously I wasn't the only one to think so - we were pretty super busy all day!

I was super lucky to get my hands on one of Michelle's lovely bags (she sold out by 11am!!!), but other than that managed to  restrain myself and only bought some of the amazing salty & sweet popcorn you can sometimes get at the markets. I even walked right on past the Fudge People (although this may have less to do with self restraint and more to do with memories of mum and I trying to get through about 2 kilos of the stuff in the few days between leaving York and getting on the plane to come home from our holiday last year!)

The best part (aside from hanging out with Suzy all day!) was meeting so many yarn enthusiasts, and of course admiring all the beautiful hand-knits!

Next year I'll have an iPad and be adding patterns to my Ravelry queue as they walk past! =)

xo

Travelling along

I left the lace workshop I did with Suzy Hausfrau a couple of weeks ago TOTALLY inspired to get my lace on!

After a few days of faffing about on Ravelry, and poking through the stash, I finally decided to make myself a traveling woman shawl(ette) using this beautiful Anzula Sebastian yarn - it's 70% merino, 30% Sea Cell, and soooooo squooshy!

It's coming along beautifully too - more to share soon! =)

xo

Sweet Monday

What makes a sweet Monday?

Arriving at work to find a colleague has left a beautiful purple and silver box on your desk...

Again with the crappy night time photos - trust me, their boxes are gorgeous!

... which you open it to find these...

 ... brought all the way back to Canberra from La Belle Miette in Melbourne!

It was such a lovely and thoughtful surprise for a Monday morning - I was so touched that I nearly cried! =)

Also EXTREMELY delicious!

x

slow cookerpalooza :: tex mex beef

We love mexican food. REALLY love it. So when we saw the tex mex beef recipe in Sally Wise's Slow Cooker 2, it went right to the top of the list of recipes to try.

Of all the recipes in the book this is probably the one with the longest list of ingredients,but I have quite a good spice collection (especially Mexican-y type spices), and only had to get beef, tomato paste and chocolate (!).
I added some left over corn, as well as frozen peas and spinach, which I add to most of my slow cooker dishes, just for extra veg.

We served it up as burritos, with rice and salsa and avocado, and it was DELICIOUS.

x

Giant

We spent a lovely afternoon at Manuka Oval today - would you believe it's round 7 already and this was our first live game of the season?

It was a pretty cool one to be at too - the AFL's youngest team, the Giants, getting their first win.

There were just over 8,600 footy fans there, with lots of people wearing a jumper or scarf in their favourite team's colours with a Giants cap (I haven't been surrounded  by that many people in orange since I was in the Netherlands for Queen's day!).

And it was the perfect example of what I love about going to the footy, and live sport in general - the energy and the excitement of the crowd was just ace.