Normally in our house we just have one dog Kenny…given how large he is that is more than enough. The boys adore him so much, he is regularly used as a cushion/piece of furniture for reading on. Apparently he seems to enjoy this, I think he likes all the attention.

Over the last few weeks my brother has been traveling a lot. His dog Molly has been here for about a month now and they are so cute together. It is fun to go out a feed two little black heads in the morning. I think we’ll all miss her when she goes home.

Kenny

Molly

This picture of the dogs playing in our local woods is from last year.  A couple of weeks go we went down there to go for a walk but couldn’t get in.  The woods is accessed by a wooden bridge but it was washed away by the floods this winter.  I really hope that it gets rebuild, they are just perfect for Sunday walks and only 10 minutes drive from our house.

We came back from our holiday at the end of last week.  At 7 in the morning we came into Shannon airport to -7 degree temperatures, freezing fog and a dead car battery.  10 minutes from landing the pilot announced ‘ we are coming into freezing fog, with minimal visability.  We are going to attempt landing but if it’s not possible we’ll circle around and land in Dublin.’   Now this is probably not a big deal if you are not travelling with 4 kids from 3 to 11, mountains of bags and a home that is not in Dublin (we would still have to get back to Shannon for our car!).  Luckily we still landed, hacked our car open with a credit card and got a jump start for the dead battery.  My poor frozen husband couldn’t even get a coffee at the first petrol station we stopped at as their water was frozen!!

Strangely we must have all been in a very good mood from the holiday because somehow it just didn’t seem like that big a deal.  Even coming home to a frozen (brand new) pump, leaking heating system and broken shower….. at least we  had our new wood stove, it really came into its own.  Having parents living next door helps a lot too, you are never stuck!

The boys all got to enjoy some great snow on Sunday, the first we have had in years.  The slid down the front lawn, built snow men and tossed snow balls at each other.  Now today we are being battered by rain storms with flooding.  Life is never dull.  Now if only the schools would reopen and I could get back to work.

I got lots of knitting done while I was on holiday (and bought lots of wool!).  My sister in law gave me two big bags for alpaca from peru so several pairs of mittens were finished before we came home to be prepared.

I finished (and photographed) a wrap with some more lovely Fyberspates Scrumptious yarn (sneak peak below), photographed a cotton cardi and knit up my first sample of a vest idea I’m working on.

Sneak peak of new Fyberspates Wrap

A little while ago I finished up a pair of socks with an entwined cable pattern I love.  It took a lot of experimenting and several pairs of socks before it worked out just right but it is almost ready to publish now.  They will be called ‘Casadh’ which is the Irish for twisted which seemed rather fitting for them.  This version was knitted by my friend Sue for her husband.  These socks are designed for a man but as the pattern is ribbed there is an awful lot of stretch.  With the foot length shortened they fit me fine as well.

I’ll post a few more photos of our holiday and the holiday knits in a few days when life starts getting back to normal.

I was talking yesterday about the hoodie I made for my oldest son.  It uses the same lattice from the Interweave Holidays Terry’s Sweater but is obviously a hoodie!  I knit this from Drops Paris, originally I had gotten this color to make something for myself but he loved the color so I used it for him.

I’ve had a busy day of people visiting today..all knitting related! Sue who I am doing the Knitting Workshop with in November came over for some knitting and breakfast in the morning and I had a lovely visit from Woolly Wormhead in the afternoon.  It’s not too often that you have a fellow designer passing right by your doorstep (especially in West Cork!).  We had lot of fun talking design and here little boy is so very cute!

Most of the time I find it really easy to knit with the kids around.  However I am working on a fine laceweight project and the stitches have a great love of sliding off the needles if you take your eye off them for a minute.

Yesterday my 3 year old came in to me (for the fourth time) asking me to close his shirt buttons.  Now I was in the middle of a 170 stitch lace row working a double decrease so I mumbled something to him hoping he’d wander away.  Instead he went behind me and hit his cheek on my ball winder.  So now we  had tears and open buttons – that’ll teach me to ignore a button call!

I’m very lucky to have such a sweet niece to knit for.  I knit this gilet for her at Christmas, and you have to agree that it looks pretty sweet on her!  I had a hank of Colinette Prism with a wonderful varigated colorway and I was trying to figure out how to knit it.  I loved the way it knitted up from the side and once you added in some short row shaping it was so fun!

The addition of the fuschia pink was a fortunate accident.  I was using the pink to hold some stitches and really liked to way the two colors looked together so I unravelled the start and gave myself matching pink sleeves and sides.  Now maybe you don’t like contrasting color – then just knit it all in a single yarn.  If you perfer solid color you should be able to get gauge easily knitting two strands of dk weight yarn together.

If you want to see some more details take a look at ravelry.  I hope to have this for sale around the same time as Laced Leaves at the start of May.

If you want to be emailed when the pattern is released just let me know.

The temperature is dropping here in Cork again, what a good excuse to get my heavy wool jumpers out!  It’s great as a knitter to have a positive side to cold weather.

I’ve been slowly working my way through a cotton hoodie for my oldest son.  I made one for him last Christmas and he has grown so much that it looks like a belly top on him now!  (Maybe it shrank a little in the wash too).  Last time around I just knitted a plain stocking st hoodie with bright colourful stripes.  However this time I had lots of one colour so I decided to add some cabling to add interest.  Now while the plain body flew I am now knitting 12 inches of a hood with cables on the front and it is taking me an eternity.  I really need to sit down for a day or two and just get it done so that I can move on to something else!

I’m back from my holidays in the UK. We spent a week in a yurt in Devon which was just heaven – if someone has told me that having all four little boys in a glorified tent for a week would be heaven I’d laugh at them but it was so perfect. The weather never rained, they could run free and we all went to bed at the same time at night. Needless to say knitting didn’t get much of a look in! The next week we were more civilized and stayed in a cottage so I did manage to finish Lucas’s Robin hood.

I was a bit worried about the fact that I had two such different colors in the yarn but I’m happy with the end result. I added raspberry stripes after the fact to the front bands and made the arms in stripes of the two colours. I’ve never tried striping a cable pattern before and I quite like the effect. As it was every two rows there was no need to break the yarn so it was tidy.

By the time I came to the hood there was only Raspberry yarn left so it is a solid colour. I had originally envisioned this striped also but it works still!

Best of all it is very loved by my son. In fact even though it is August (but not too warm) he wouldn’t take it off for bed last night.

I finished my son’s hoodie yesterday.  He was just delighted with himself!  He likes the Shine yarn so much that he just keeps telling me how soft it is…now hopefully it’ll stay that way.

This was mostly done on the knitting machine but all the edging and the hoodie edging was done by hand.  I have to tell you with this many colour changes I had about 3 hours worth of solid work just to weave the ends of the yarn in.  If he wasn’t standing over me waiting to wear it I probably would have chickened out and left it for weeks.

I am currently working on a piece made from Araucania Patagonia Nature Cotton.  I got a skein from This is Knit several months ago and have been wondering what it will become.  I swatched it a few weeks ago and came up with some lovely results so now you will have to wait for the surprise outcome…I must figure out what to do with the resulting pattern.

I finished the second sock for my toddler last weekend and he really likes them.  I’m happy that they aren’t too thick so I have no problem fitting his shoes over them.  Their feet are so small I was a little worried about the extra thickness of hand-knitted socks causing problems with the shoes.

I am being very good and also finished the second one of my husband’s socks.  I will not allow myself to start on anything new until this is done.  I better finish up fast – there are two many interesting projects sitting waiting for me to get started on them!