Holiday Fun (and a little bit of knitting and crochet)

The summer holidays are in full swing over here at Magpie Towers and we have been getting out and about as much as we can. Over the last week we haven't managed to get to the beach, but tomorrow's forecast is looking good so we will be getting out the buckets and spades once again.

In the last week or so we have enjoyed picnics aplenty in a variety of touristy destinations; it is great living in a seaside town, you feel you are on holiday just by popping a mile up the road. Actually, last year every time we went to the town centre, the littlest Magpie would gleefully announce 'We're at the holiday!'

As well as the picnics, we have been crabbing, swimming, walking, playing at the park (well, several parks) exploring a model town and having a few adventures.

Examining the catch, the final tally was 7!

A brave new friend.

A Model Town



The littlest Magpie wanted to take this cutie home.



That's me - I did the monkey bars!!

My Hitchhiker#2 has been living in my handbag so that it can be whipped out at any available opportunity while the boys are otherwise occupied and has been growing steadily. The missing Hitchhiker#1 got to 45 teeth and I think that the yarn ball looked slightly smaller than this one. I'm on tooth 30 now, so still a way to go but I am proud to say that there are still no mistakes in this one and I aim to keep it that way!

I have also been adding the odd new stripe to my Granny blanket when I get settled enough of an evening. This picture shows 20 more stripes than when I last blogged about the blanket here. Because we have been using the blanket so much already I have changed my mind about making this double-bed sized because I think that if I do it will get left on a bed and would be too big to be carried around by the kids or to be a useful size.

I have just completed stripe 55 and think that I will probably continue to a nice round 60 before moving on to the border.

Granny Magpie has been making her very own Granny Stripe, her first crochet project and I can't wait to see it. A good friend of mine who asked me to show her how to crochet has also been making her own blanket so hopefully soon I can show you pictures of three finished masterpieces!

This weekend we will be having a visit from Grandad, who will be taking the middle-sized Magpie back up to the Midlands to spend a week with Granny Magpie. After a relatively quiet week we will be visited by the Magpie cousins and are looking forward to all the Magpies enjoying some holiday time together as Mr Magpie will be off work too.

I hope that you are enjoying your summer too,

Thanks for reading,

Beth x

My Hitchhiker Hitched a Ride

You might recall me starting a knitted scarf at the end of May, from the Hitchhiker pattern; you can read the post here). Over the course of June, alongside crocheting the ripple blanket, I happily knitted away on the Hitchhiker. The pattern is very simple, perfect for me as it requires little or no concentration. 

At the end of the month, just after I completed the ripple, my Hitchhiker was also finished. No sooner was it off the needles, I was wearing it almost constantly. I am something of a scarf junkie, never really feeling comfortable without something to keep my neck warm. A kind of adult comfort blanket, if you will.

I was waiting for a nice day to take some pictures of my beloved creation, but unfortunately, that day never came because the weather was so awful. It was however perfect weather for a wool scarf and I wore it daily.

Alas, one Friday night I wore it on a night out and consumed one too many Babychams. I became warm, put the scarf on my chair and then when I staggered walked home later, it got forgotten. When I realised that it was missing in the morning I made lots of strangled 'Noooooo' noises ( and a few swear words may have escaped my mouth) and did some frantic scurrying around trying to find it.

Two return visits to the local hostelery in question failed to yield my precious possession and even the power of Twitter was unable to help me; I have declared my scarf lost. Last night when telling the girls about SnB about it, I recounted the tale of when my car was stolen with my son's buggy inside it which had a rather funky liner that I looked for everwhere for ages afterwards. While telling the story I realised that losing the scarf was actually more annoying than losing my car, what does that say about me?!

My car was found, and although it looked like this, at least I knew what had happened to it, and got some compensation (three teenagers took it and were chased by the police before crashing, unfortunately they were un-injured and eventually not prosecuted either, grrr). Sadly, I may never know what happened to my Hitchhiker. I can only hope that some lucky (or un-scrupulous) person is enjoying wearing it as much as I did, and it is not currently residing at the local tip.

Anyways, I have done my mourning, and yesterday I began Hitchhiker #2. This time I am using Arucania Ranco, which is not quite as nice as the hand-dyed yarn I bought from Bex and used last time, but is a passable substitute. To avoid the horrors of the four hour skein to ball nightmare I had last time, I enlisted some help to transform this one (thank you Teresa!). I also happened to have a perfectly co-ordinating project bag which was unsold from Larmer Tree to keep all my bits in.

This time, I will try not to eat Malteasers and watch tv while knitting, to avoid the mistakes I made last time. I have also devised a better way of keeping track of the row I am on, in the form of a little flip-chart (the green card you can see in the picture).It did annoy me that tooth 10 wasn't pointed on my original version, and the first 20 teeth are the most visible the way I wore it so this new scarf will hopefully be a vision of perfection.

Wonky Tooth 10

Perfection! (so far)

Whilst browsing in Michelle's shop (Carly's Crafts) yesterday, I also found a reasonably priced sock yarn which I will use to attempt my first lace pattern, also a shawl. I just have to wait for some more needles and need to make some stitch markers.

If you are a member of Ravelry, you should be able to find the pattern here. If not, if you enjoy knitting or crochet you should join. It's free and is a fantastic resource for patterns (lots free), advice and inspiration.

Today is the last day of school for my children and I am really looking forward to a good long break with them. We have got a few things lined up to keep us busy, but mostly we will just be enjoying the change of routine and the chance to have some little adventures.

I hope you all enjoy your summers. Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you soon,

Beth x

Hitching and Rippling

As predicted in my last post, I did cast on my Hitchhiker scarf over the weekend, which was easy, since the cast on row consists of only two stitches. The pattern is very clever really; you always increase on the toothless side (with a one row exception) which gives that edge the lovely curvy shape.

The pattern is worked in sets of eight rows, with one tooth being formed with every set. As you consistently increase by nine stitches in each set and only cast off five (the horizontal edge of the tooth) the scarf gradually grows outwards.

My mind is a strange world, and some things have to be ordered just so. In my said strange mind, it doesn't feel right to stop knitting until I have reached the end of a set of eight rows. This was fine when the rows were smaller, but I can see me having to have a word with myself soon to prevent myself from becoming chained to the spot until I finish a set.

Anyway, I digress. This was my progress as of yesterday. I was going great until somewhere around tooth ten, which was reached on Saturday night, whilst channel hopping and eating Malteasers (other choccies are available).

I was reminded of why I fell out with knitting. I don't possess the necessary skill to knit backwards or to retrieve dropped stitches and I usually end up having to pull the whole lot of the needles (apparently known as 'frogging' so I'm told) and starting again.

I was determined to rescue my mistake and did eventually succeed in picking up all those tiny little 4ply loops with an even teenier DPN and managed to make a good impression of a salvage job. Tooth ten looks a bit different than it's pointier brothers but nonetheless, it's staying.

I did manage to discipline myself enough to finish my zigzag baby blanket before casting on the Hitchhiker; I am really really pleased with how it looks and will be taking it with me to Larmer Tree. Thank you to everyone who has complimented me on it so far, it really means a lot.

In the end, I decided against my original plan of doing two rows of trebles along the long sides as I felt that my beginners luck in shaping the corners might not extend to a second row. Sometimes knowing when to stop can be an art form!

Since I managed to complete this project in under a month by utilising time that would normally be spent just sitting (on the bus, in the park, waiting for a train, watching rubbish TV with a bag of sweets) I decided that I should have enough time before the festival to hook up a sister blanket.

The pattern I decided on for this one is from Lucy of Attic24. You can view it here. I decided I would have to learn the mysterious tr2tog stitch and it turns out that it's really not that difficult, especially following Lucy's excellent instructions.

So here is what we have so far:

I'm using Rowan Handknit Cotton again, which I have really come to love working with, it seems to suit crocheting perfectly. This time I am using less colours, and dividing each colour strip with a half-stripe of a lovely crisp white.

I have done a thick wedge of the gorgeous mauvey-purple shade at the bottom, which I will repeat at the other end and the around the sides at the end. There is also a green shade to be added (the same one as the darker green of my first blanket).

This pattern will not be random like the first, but a repeat. I didn't consciously plan to used red, white and blue together in the design, but I think my aforementioned scrambled brain carries on blithely without me sometimes, and sometimes things work out all the better for that.

Next week we are camping in the New Forest and it has been pointed out to me that it might be unwise to take a crochet project that involves a beautiful white yarn to a place where cleanliness may be somewhat compromised. With this in mind I have decided to take my Granny Stripe to work on, and no doubt some other little portable bits of stitchery that are festival-bound.

I wish you all a lovely Bank Holiday weekend however you are celebrating (or not) the Jubilee and look forward to updating you on festival and non-festival progress again soon.

Thanks for stopping by,

Beth x