In which, surprisingly, Alexia comes good on her word.

I promised another post and some photos. So here goes.

I suddenly realised that the last photo I posted of Tivoli was back in April, when she was less than half finished. I can't remember when I finished her, but it was a while ago.
Anyway, here is a dodgy photo of me wearing her. [edited to add: I mean dodgy only in the sense of the fact that I didn't do my hair and makeup and wear appropriate pants for the photo, not in the sense that The Man took the photo badly ] I love how it fits although I think the Zhivago yarn, while it feels really silky, is probably a little bit flabby for a close-fitting top like this one.
Oh, and I wouldn't normally wear my pants untied, it's just that the bow from the waist tie disturbed the way the bottom of the blouse sat.

I don't think I've shown anyone this photo (below) of Little Petal, from Creative Knitting magazine, can't remember which issue. I made this for a friend's baby girl, and I loved the yarn it was knitted with, which I also can't remember....oh, hang on, a quick look in the overstuffed knitting drawer shows it to be Elle Caress wool/nylon/courtelle blend. Very nice and soft. And I was really pleased with how this turned out. If I made it again I'd be more careful with some of the work around the collar. I redid it about three times as it was, but just as I finished I realised that I'd made a serious misjudgement with some of the picking up stitches. By that time, however, the little petal it was intended for was well and truly born, so I didn't really have time to pull it out and do it again. The Man tried to point out that only a knitter would recognise the mistake but it still eats at me a bit. Oh well, apparenly little Beth loved it (which I think translates to Beth's Mummy and Daddy loved it - how much can a newborn love something that isn't their Mummy or Daddy ?) so I'm happy with that.

I have number two of the Christmas Booga Bags in the washing machine felting as I blog. It seems to be behaving itself and felting nice and evenly, which was actually probably too much to hope for, considering that I was mixing different brands of yarn, including one I'd never used before, and I didn't swatch and felt-test. Obviously the knitting gods are smiling on me today. When I think about it, it was probably the knitting karma (knitma?) I earned by starting to teach The Man's 8 year old neice to knit this morning. She had the good grace and tenacity to stick to it for a good 30 minutes and was starting to slowly get the hang of the knit stitch before she gave up with sore hands, and she insisted on taking her yarn and needles with her. I'm so proud!
Probably because his cousin was doing it (which makes it cool), The Boy firmly stated that he wanted to learn to knit also. I set him up with a pair of blue 6mm needles and a row of stitches, and showed him the knit stitch over and over, and then he took the needles, moved one backwards and forwards against the other and claimed to be knitting. I'm just over the moon that he was interested enough to do that much. He's only 4 - I've got years to indoctrinate him... BWAHAHAHAH HA HA HA. Maybe I should start using the subliminal message audio tapes while he's sleeping.....
Unfortunately, I forgot to get his Dad to get photos of us knitting, so this one of him hard at work at another artistic endeavour will have to suffice.



Oh, and this one of him holding a plastic fish over his nose at a recent birthday party....

And some gratuitous roses, just because they're beautiful.