How was your WWKIP?

I had a ball at WWKIP last Saturday. There was a fantastic turnout, I was shocked! It was great to see so many knitters, and to catch up with friends. As usual, I brought my camera but only took about 4 photos which turned out really badly. Sigh.

I really struggled to pick a kipwip beforehand. I went up to my yarnrobe and stuck in my hand. This is what came out:



I bought this yarn last year in Sip & Knit in Florida. I'm not really sure why I did, I'm not the worlds biggest fan of tweed, let alone tweed sock yarn. Remember the clown vomit incident? Yeah. So I've no idea why I chose this one. I consulted the knitty oracle that is Twitter to find out what I should make with it, and Multnomah (Ravlink) emerged. I knit about 4 rows of it at WWKIP and decided it wasn't for me. Too much counting to do! It'd never work for chatting. So what to do now?



Plain socks. That always works. Or does it? One side looks nice:



The other? Not so much. I don't like the stripes. Sigh again.



But, I've started so I'll finish. Maybe they'll turn out better once I turn the heel, and I can make sure the weird stripes are to the back of the socks.

Some stash enhancement happened on the day too:



Mmm yummy Blue Sky Alpacas Worsted Cotton. This is Knit had a special offer on World Wide yarns on the day, so how could I resist? I've no idea what to make with them, but I fell for the colour. I think I'm having a green phase.

Some other knitting is taking place too:



I'm making a hot water bottle cover. That's a teddy bear. I don't know why. I'm making it with the recommended yarn, Lion Brand Homespun that I got in Florida too. It's YUK.



I suppose it doesn't look too offensive in the picture, but see the strand of yarn? It's twisted really loosely around a central thread, and it puckers up on itself all the time, resulting in lumps of twisty yarn. It also squeaks like a mother. The worst part? You see in the first picture there's three different bottle covers, a bear, ladybird and turtle? Yeah. I bought enough Homespun to make them all. Help.
Another thing about the yarn. Homespun? I think that gives spinners a bad name. Like they'd churn out stuff like this. Ugh.

In other knitting, I finished one Waving Lace Sock!



I'm pleased about this wip. So that's something! Once I finish my kipwip then I'll do the second one as a reward.

There's loads of other knitting going on, in case you think I didn't have enough wips! It's wip city round here. I can't show them though, they're all sooper seekrit baby knits for the TON of pregnant friends I have right now. I'm becoming more and more convinced that someone added something to the water here. They're springing up everywhere!

Good knitting!

Green Fingers

It seems Dublin knitters have become somewhat obsessed with growing your own veg, and this house is no exception. A discussion started some while ago about growing veg and a few of us decided to give it a go.
I think I posted before about what we planted, so here's an update.

We have peppers!:


I planted 4 different varieties of peppers, from sweet to spicy Jalapeno. We tried these ones before last year, and nothing grew. It seems we got a bit luckier this year. These are the ones we transplanted today, and there are loads more left over that we put into pots outside.

These are courgette and broccoli. Every single seed that we planted has germinated and thrived, so they're all over the place! I have some in this Belfast sink:



And here's just a taster of the others. There's sunflowers there too.



We also planted a herb pot of coriander, parsley, chives and something else I can't remember now. I'm too lazy to get up & go find out. :)

There was a sad discovery made in the garden:



Aww. A whole birds egg. I think it's a robin egg? I wonder what happened to it. Poor little thing.

While hubby & Alice were busy in the garden, I got busy in the kitchen. I'm sure I've mentioned it loads of times before, but I love this man:


We discovered him several years ago when in the States on holidays, and have since acquired every single episode of his show, Good Eats (recently ended, BOO). He's a brilliantly witty chef, who disects a different ingredient each episode and comes up with the most amazing recipes.

I made an apple pie:



Yep. No-one could wait long enough for me to get a photo of the whole one. ;)
I'm also making his southern fried chicken for dinner, with buttermilk biscuits. Biscuits in the States are like scones, but lighter and way more NOM. I can't wait! The chicken takes ages (soak for 12 hours in buttermilk before cooking) but Oh. My. God. it is so worth it. I'm drooling just thinking about dinner tonght!

Just so you don't think I've lost my knitty marbles altogether, I started on a sock:



I posted previously that Mam had picked out a pattern and I was going to make it, but that fell by the wayside. I was out meeting a lovely knitter from Australia with some Irish knitters and also CosmicPluto recently. We went for dinner, and of course all took out our knitting. Not having the pattern with me, I just cast on a foolproof 64 sts and ribbed a bit. So, I had to go back to the book and find a pattern that matched! I came up with this one. Waving Lace Socks by Evelyn A. Clark from Interwave Favourite Socks. That'll do nicely.

I recently downloaded the Vogue Knitting App onto my iPad. You can download issues of the magazine there, so I nabbed the Early Fall issue that came out last week. It was only €3.99! Great stuff. I'll still get the print issue though, I think. I like keeping the print mag. We'll see. Anyway, you know what that means! I hope to get the review done this week.

Good knitting!