Category — Knitting

Here are some well overdue photos of the finished blanket. There was a lot of love put into this blanket. Choosing the wool - sending it out and then receiving the squares, some from people who had never knitted before, massaging each square (or rectangle!) into shape and then slowly but surely joining them together. But when it was finished it was more than just a blanket put together with love. It was beautiful

Best of all, the little person who was so very ill when the project began is doing much better. What more could we have asked for?

Thanks again to everyone who helped with this project. I think we did a great job!

P.S. - for anyone who finds this blog looking for tips on how to sew afghan squares together (the same way I trawled countless blogs looking for this very information) - after much trial and error I crocheted the squares using this method (it’s a Ravelry link so you’ll need to be a member to see it, but if you’re not a member you should go sign up right now because one day you’ll wake up and decide you simply must knit something that very day and then you’ll find that all the good patterns are on Ravelry and there’s some weird waiting list thing you need to go through before you can join and take it from me you will find this very frustrating!).

It is so exciting seeing these squares coming together into a blanket.

And it’s so lovely having a warm blanket on my lap as I sew

It’s going to be hard to say goodbye to this one!

I blocked these squares all ready to sew up:

Unfortunately work took up the rest of the weekend, but at least I have this lovely stack to stare at until I get a chance to start sewing them together.

Squares

Squares

Squares

Plus a few other projects of varying shapes.

I was so excited to get the first square back in the post today Thanks Kristine!! Here is an updated photo of the blanket:

It’s not to late to join if anyone wants to - just have a look at the FAQ and shoot me an email (annabel@earthgirlfabrics.com).

I’m knitting squares for a blanket - and you are more than welcome to knit along too. Check out the Knitting For A Good Cause FAQ for all the details (there’s a link on the top left of my blog for next time!). I must say these squares are highly addictive. I’ve been knitting them at traffic lights and while my toast cooks.

I’ll update with more photos as the blanket grows, as well as some pics from my other square projects.

Can’t talk anymore now…must knit!

Ta-da!  Miss Zoe in her hand-knitted cardigan

I really enjoyed knitting this for Zoe.  It made me remember how enjoyable knitting can be.  And seeing the finished product makes me remember how frustrating it can be.  It’s a cute cardi - extremely practical considering how freezing it is right now and since this is her only woollen jumper she is getting heaps of wear out of it.  Would I knit it again if I were about to embark on my trip again?  Yes!  Am I about to start on a new one?  No!  Which is a bit unfortunate because Hamish keeps asking me when I’m going to knit him one.  I’m thinking I’d like to do hats, which should be much quicker and much cuter.  I wonder how he will feel about a hat?

We were looking forward to arriving in Barcelona and being able to spend some time on the computers catching up with blog posts, emails, websites etc.  Unfortunately the second day we were there poor old Richard’s computer died and before we knew it we were all fighting for the one laptop.  The upside of this was more time for knitting and after sending an S.O.S. to my mum for more wool I managed to finish Zoe’s cardigan.  Well I finished knitting it….sewing it up is a completely different story.  I have sewed and unpicked various seams at least 10 times.  GRRRRRR!  Anyway, the laptop was kindly fixed by Apple in Barcelona under warranty and I hope to have the jumper sewn up some time soon so that it can be worn before we return to summer in Australia.  Watch this space!

It’s been too long since I updated here, but as I’ve said before, travelling Europe keeps us very busy…and we’ve done some pretty impressive travelling lately which has kept us busier than usual. Let’s see…last time I wrote we had just arrived in London. Here are a couple of the sites we enjoyed there:

The changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (which we couldn’t actually see, but hey we got a glimpse of the guys with funny hats as they marched back to wherever they came from).

Hamish on the London Eye (i.e. the giant ferris wheel) with Big Ben in the background:

Ok, so we saw heaps more than that in London, including two fantastic visits to the British Museum where we saw amazing Egyptian and Greek artifacts, but that will have to do for now because internet access is harder to get hold of than ever and there is a queue for the computer.

To get get into London from our campsite we needed to catch a good old double decker bus for an hour each way, which gave me an opportunity to catch up on some knitting. Here is one of the front cardigan panels with a knight poking out of the pocket. It’s my first ever pocket - I’m very proud

After London we drove our van onto a train which took us under the English Channel and 30 mintues later we were in France.  I was convinced that we would park the car and then move into a passenger carriage, but no - we just sat in our car all the way.  Luckily I had stopped off at a supermarket just before getting on the train so we could munch our way under the Channel! This is the view we had - not quite as inspiring as the ferry would  have been, but significantly faster which is why we did it.

On our first day in Paris we went to visit another monument that just happens to be on the list of 10 most diasppointing tourist attractions in the world. The only thing I found disappointing was the fact that it was so windy that day the top story of the tower was closed, so we have left it for our return at the end of the trip.

Here’s the clan eating their baguettes in front of L’Arch de Triumph. I don’t think it made it on to the top 10 list….

We then met up with my sister and her beautiful family for a day together in Paris.  Believe it or not we didn’t set this photo up - the kids were being cute all by themselves:

After a few days in Paris we were feeling a little too cultured so we took the kids to DisneyLand.  I could write a comparative essay on the merits of DisneyLand as compared to LegoLand, but lets just say the kids had a blast (and we didn’t have too bad a day either).

I have to thank Richard for this gorgeous shot as we arrived in the morning:

Here is my snap of the boys in front of the Disney Castle:

And here are my two beauties in front of something more authentic.  After Paris we did some sightseeing along the Loire and as you can see we had the most stunning weather for it. This is Le Château d’ Azay le Rideau:

Let’s see….next up we went to visit the lovely Benasli family with whom I stayed for 10 months as an exchange student 18 years ago. We shared plenty of good food and good memories (and of course a few embarassing ones) and were treated to a real bed for the night. The family now live at the seaside and after buying winter jackets in Paris and sending summer clothes home with my sister the weather turned balmy. Here’s Hamish at the beach building his sandcastle inspired by some silly rocks somewhere in England:

We continued on to La Rochelle and then Bordeaux, and I was quite simply gobsmacked by the beauty of the city of Bordeaux. We only stayed one day but have added it to our list of places that need to be revisited in the future. We then drove straight down to Spain, which is where we are right now. We’re in Madrid to be exact, although we haven’t made it out of the campsite yet. We all needed a day off, so we’re soaking up the sunshine and catching up on emails/Lego building etc. I will post photos of Spain in the next post - this one is quite long enough already!

I guess this sums up where we are, or at least where we’ve been, because that was in England, and we’re in Scotland now. I have managed to skip any photos of The Netherlands entirely which is due to the fact that I finally succumbed to the campervan illness curse and developed a fever on the evening we arrived there. Lucky for me we were staying with the most wonderful friends who looked after us and I was able to fight the fever from the comfort of a real bed (as opposed to poor hubby who had to do it from the top of a campervan). I managed to drag myself up for a couple of hours each afternoon for a small amount of sightseeing but I don’t have many photos to show for it.

We are doing a speed tour of the United Kingdom in an attempt to a) make it to London in time to watch the Hawks play in the AFL Grand Final (which was a good compromise to the initial suggestion of flying home for the weekend), and b) meet up with my sister in Paris before she returns home to Melbourne. The fast pace means that my knitting is coming along much slower than I would like, but I hope to catch up when we get to France and slow things down a little.

We are only managing to find internet access every third day or so, so I apologise for the brief post and promise to catch up again soon.