Fabulous Flowers

I love flowers. I spent a lot of time in the garden as a child and have always dreamed of one day having a house with an enormous garden. Shortly after we moved in, our landlady announced she wanted to concrete over our garden and I was devastated! Luckily she soon changed her mind, and even if our grass is slightly lacking in fullness, we have some lovely fragrant flowers.

I also have a very good macro setting on my camera, and so love to take close ups of stunning flowers - especially one's that you can't quite believe are real! Here are some recent photos:

Ever Heard Of An Ankylosaurus?

Me neither. But he featured in my Knitted Dinosaurs book and looked pretty awesome.

Throughout my dinosaur and zoo animal making escapades, I have gradually been improving my knitting techniques and learning new skills, so they have been incredibly beneficial. I've learnt: Loopy Stitch, Picot Edging, and Bobbles, amongst others. The Ankylosaurus (meaning Fused Lizard) has bobbles all over his back, interspersed with a knitting and purling geometric pattern, so I thought he would be perfect for my next challenge.

For the bobbles, the pattern is as follows: 

Row 1. (k1, yf, k1, yf, k1) into next stitch

Row 2. P5

Row 3. Turn, K5

Row 4. Turn, P2tog, P1, P2tog

Row 5. Turn, Sl1, K2tog, Psso

 

And what do dinosaurs do in their spare time....play dinosaur dominoes of course!!

Beautiful Beach Huts

Last year, in addition to my usual sewing and knitting activities, I spent a lot of time playing about with card and making some houses and beach huts for the Baby Boden Spring & Summer shoots. Below are some of the images.

 

Oh, and I also made some paper windmills! So much fun!

Whipsnade Zoo

As my growing menagerie of knitted animals have been so well behaved recently, I treated them to an outing to Whipsnade Zoo. Having not been there for probably around 10 years, I was thrilled to find that it was just as exciting as the last time I'd been. I think Brian, Percival, Arnold and Trevor had fun too!

A Small Polish Adventure

Keen to go somewhere on holiday for his 30th birthday, keen to visit a new country (1 new one a year is our aim) and because the flights were so cheap we went on a long weekend break to Warsaw last weekend. I didn't really know much about Warsaw but it turned out to be a very nice city to visit.

Museum of Science & Culture - A Gift from Stalin and visible from most places in the city

Colourful houses in the Old Town

There were loads of beautiful buildings, especially in the Old Town, lots of interesting museums, and some very quirky little bars and restaurants with some delicious and very cheap food and drinks.

I love that an alcohol shop is called an 'Alkohole'

Another Knitted Friend

A friend was complaining recently about having to find someone to look after their cat while they went away for a week and saying about how hard and expensive it is. Plus the cat will inevitably sulk and be rude to them when they get back to make them feel too guilty to ever go on holiday again. This made me think about how nice it is to have knitted pets instead. They don't need feeding, you can leave them along when you go away, and it's not cruel, and they don't smell! Perfect. Plus you get a cooler pet than just a boring old cat or dog.

Now i'd thought that my book 'Knit your own zoo' was the coolest thing ever....but that was until for my leaving present from my old job I was bought 'Knitted Dinosaurs'. It's amazing!! And I particularly love the picture of Dinosaur Carnage a few pages in!!

So I got started straight away with knitting a beautiful Triceratops. The only problem is....they are massive. Now I know that sounds stupid as dinosaurs obviously were big, but my lion is miniature in comparison to these. My finished dinosaur is almost half a metre long!!!! That's a lot of knitting!!

So here is Trevor, the latest addition to my knitted family. He likes eating all the plants in my garden, and making sure the other zoo animals behave themselves.

New Job, New Knitted Friend

Today was my first day at school (below is my photograph taken in the sunshine outside my house as I believe is traditional on a first day at school). Although I am actually working at the school, I did somehow feel several years younger when starting today, as though I was actually back at Secondary School. When I got to go in the staff room, as of course I should be allowed to go, I felt like I'd somehow sneaked in!

So on to my new knitted friend. I have been working on Arnie for a while but have been very busy making lots of other little bits (mostly elephants) and so hadn't got round to finishing him.

So I made myself sit down and finish him and I didn't get up until he was complete. So here is Arnie the Armadillo. He says 'hi'