Ania M

…blue and red.

Another wedding and another bride, well, two actually. I have a fascination for the unusual and it is always more fun creating dresses that are not your usual bridal attire. On this occasion, the gowns had a Victorian flavour and did not involve white, ivory or any of the usual shades associated with brides. One bride was in a full length red coat-dress and the other was corseted and bustled in blue, as you can see below.

I hope to have more pictures of both brides to post up soon. Both looked absolutely stunning, though it may be immodest to say so, but I did get a great deal of pleasure in seeing them in my gowns.
The brides also invited me to the reception, so I got a rare opportunity to dance my stockings off (and anyone who knows me will know how much I enjoy that)

I’ve started yet another sock, this time for the October SKA Sockdown on Ravelry. The pattern is Esther by Steffi Linden and it’s my first time doing a picot edge cuff. As always, I’m using luscious merino yarn from Violet Green. Here are the first few rows:

I’ve split the skein into two balls and as soon as I have knitted the picot cuffs on DPNs, I’m going to have a go at knitting both socks at once on a pair of circulars. This should make it easier to get both socks identical

Well, here it is. I cast on Cookie A’s Flicker sock last night so I’m off and running for the September SKA (Sock Knitters Anonymous) Sockdown on Ravelry. Yay! It’s a gorgeous colour and matches my hair

I was so excited to have received my invitation to join Ravelry the other day. I’ve joined the Sock Knitters Anonymous group there and will be participating in the Challenge, where you have to knit a different pair of socks each month. For September’s Challenge, my dilemma is which of the wonderful Cookie A patterns to opt for. I have a few of her freebies from Knitty in my archives and the Twisted Flower, but they are all so gorgeous, it is hard to choose between them :S Whichever, I do, the rest of the patterns are on my wishlist (cheap Christmas presents Either way, opting for Cookie A was a no-brainer as the alternative was to knit and orange sock and orange is just not my colour at all. Besides, I still have loads of lovely Violet Green yarn in my stash to use up Watch this space for updates on my progress.

I had a go on a friend’s Wii the other day and was completely and utterly hooked. Not on the video gaming aspect, but on the sports. Now I am not a sporty, exercise-y type of person and the idea of going to a gym fills me with horror at the anticipated boredom and sweatiness of it all, but I have discovered that I love exercising on the Wii. We had to have one and as luck would have it, even managed to find a Wii Fit board (they being as rare as hen’s teeth at the moment). Now I’m doing 45+ minutes of Yoga, Aerobics and workouts every day on the Wii Fit and we spend most evenings playing Tennis, Bowling and even Boxing on the Wii Sport game. It’s great fun and beats blobbing in front of the Telly every night, but the best thing is that the whole family (without exception) absolutely love it and we can play together. My DS has shown an unexpected talent for Ski-jumping and my DD at the tender age of 5 has a curiously effective bowling technique. The other really great thing is that according to my responses on the Fit board, the Wii calculates my age as anything between 6 and 13 years younger than I actually am, which is an ego boost that has to be worth having

We just got back from the Herstmonceux Medieval Festival . My new tent arrived in time last week, so we spent a dry weekend, despite the intermittent drizzle. We had to pitch the back edge on a slope to stay in line with our neighbours, so we ended up half sleeping on a slope, which is why the tent looks a bit skewed in the pic, but it was very capacious and comfortable nonetheless Sadly, I will have to sell the tent on, since it is octagonal and not entirely suitable for my purposes – I can’t lay out my reading and stock tables properly unless they stick outside and given the weather recently, this is not a good thing. It is a shame as it is a nice tent – it is about 14′ across but the canvas folds up into a couple of compact bags and I can pick up all the poles together easily. Drop me a note if you, or anyone you know might be interested in buying it.

Also for sale, or rather, available to order, are Gothic chairs as shown above. My DH managed to get this one finished in time for Herstmonceux and we found ourselves speculating about introducing a fee for all the people who sat in it to have their picture taken over the weekend We have plans for a variation with a shorter back and also a two-seater storage bench in the same style. Watch this space or drop me a note if you are interested.

I have rather been bitten by the knitting bug lately. My travels in search of intersting patterns to add to my ever-growing library have led me to some really weird, wonderful and totally bizarre knits. Just as a few examples, controversial knitter Rachael Matthews, responsible for Knitler the Knazi (though reports of a book of knitted dictators would seem to be somewhat exaggerated and just something whipped up by the media to get comments from the outraged), has also come up with such bizarre knitted objects as a penis and a grenade. Of course, there was also the recent storm about Mazz’s knitted Daleks and Ood that caused the BBC to foam at the mouth over copyright, but being highly entertained by the idea, some diligent searching on my part unearthed the Extermiknit pattern. You can also knit mushrooms, a Witch’s hat, a Vlad the Impaler hat and all manner of things limited, it seems, only by your imagination. I look forward to hearing about the strangest knitted object you have come across – post them here

I’ve just taken some pictures of the fairy wings I made for my daughter recently. They have little pink and lilac seed beads knitted in, but you can’t see them in the picture. She loves them, as you can see, although she does finds the mohair around her neck itchy, so I’ll have to see if I can rinse them in something to help with that. Suggestions welcome

I also just finished the red bamboo silk slouch socks today. I’d put them aside for quite a while and finally picked them up again earlier this week. I’m really pleased with them and they feel really comfortable. These were knitted toe-up, but on balance, I think I prefer top-down, simply because you get a nicer finish on the cuff, but perhaps I should just see if I can find a springier cast-off method. Again, suggestions welcome :)