Christmas Dreams

A little girl's Christmas dream come true. Christmas meal with BOTH her grandmas.

Whilst a bigger girl is pleased with time to tackle some orignal, lengthways knitted socks in amazing coloured yarn.

Christmas ecstasy

Who's enjoying this most! Me or Lessie?

Spiralling Diamond socks designed byKaren Wessel in Regia Christmas sock yarn. The Photo does not do justice to the cream and sparkling gold Lurex yarn.

A British cuppa

My Italian friends are always a bit disappointed that I don't drink tea. So this afternoon I gave them the works, complete with new tea pot and lemon slice squeezer. Not to mention THe Royal tea Cosy.







Patty and Lorenza trying it out....

Tweed jacket by Debbie Bliss

By me really. Naturally the pcture doesn't do justice to the tweedy wool, waisted darted fit and tartan jaquard patch pockets and elbow patches.

A slight doubt - too many buttons?

I was aiming for a quirky Vivien Westwood look, not a clown!

Highlights of Barcelona

Setting out on bus tour. It looked sunny but we were frozen by end of day.

La Sagra Famiglia, Gaudi's still-being-finshed church.

Empanadas, a taste discovery...

This one is for Gilly. Gaudi's lizard in Parco Guell

Going back to my youth. Dinner in Hard Rock Cafe

Chocolate Fudge Brownies as good as they were 30 years ago.

Another Gaudi masterpiece

The harbour.

The beach

Restaurant with view, tapas, paella and creme catalan..what else?

The gothic part of town where in a back street I came across this...

Allyouknitislove, wool shop, closed everytime I passed on Sunday and Monday but finally open at 11am on Tuesady, one hour before our bus left for the airport. So I just dashed in and brought balls of wool I'd heard of but never seen including Malabrigo, Kauni and Lorna's laces...

Eat your heart out Captain Birdseye

After belatedly discovering an untwisted cable in the back, (which being a perfectionist I naturally redid), and worries about having enough wool (half was frogged and half without ballbands) I reckon this turned out to be a pretty mean aran.

Eat your heart out Captain Birdseye.

Chi poi in italiano è capitan Findus!!!

Happy Birthday to my old man

At this time of year things may seem a bit dismal, the autumn colours are past their best, it's been raining for weeks and to make things potentially worse ....

..one of us has reached an important milestone in life.

But we overcame it all easily .

First a good meal

in good company. V with his flock, and

me with a bright lime green slouchy beret to avoid getting lost in the dark when out walking!

All the colours of autumn in a ball of wool

Mini Mochi by Crystal Palace yarns (4 ply)

In this part of the world Autumn = chestnuts

And according to Ambra the best place to eat them is Zocca.

And she was right, there was chestnut polenta, chestnut cake and chestnut bread, you name it and they can make it out of chestnuts

And when we 'd had enough of chestnuts there was always fresh baked flat breads which puffed up in the oven and helped warm up our frozen hands.

Fussball

Why oh why didn't I buy these several years ago instead of pushing onwards with bent metal needles, which always fall down the back of the sofa anyway......

6 sets of coloured wood sock needles added to this............................................................

Regia wool in national colours released to coincide with this years world cup...................................

Equal these !!!!!

I am definitley not football crazy but this spring we were in Austria at World cup time. It rained and rained and the only thing I could think of to keep my mother, daughter and husband happy was to go to Innsbruck where the former found strudel, the seond spent a fortune in Clair's and the latter found a giant screen to watch the match on (OH and I brought above wool). In the end we all got carried away

The lager and pretzals certainly helped.

And at one point we almost scored a goal!

Good job we lost really, the socks never got finshed on time!

Little things please ...

My mother's side of the family is so creative that they border on being bonkers! As I get older I worry about their genes taking over as I follow suit.

The aunties would have loved this..is it an octopus or a jellyfish? your guess is as good as mine but its certainly a talking point in the bathroom. (He's sitting on the spare toilet roll).

Just a little thing I rustled up this morning.

Socks, glorious socks!

Those of us who have got the sock bug know there is no limit to the imagination as far as knitting socks and yarn is concerned.

Take these for example: a pair of French stockings from Paris, not stereotype sexy long and black as one would expect but colourful, comfy and crocheted!

With thanks to Christine/Amineko.

Barmy socks by Christina Bain. Note how the textured design makes the most of the crazy coloured yarn.

An essential for all serious yoga girls. Yoga socks without heels or toes for getting a grip on a slippery surface. Accessorised with matching nail varnish for the photo shoot.

Farewell to Strilla!

A warm, balmy evening,

a full moon,

a glass or two of wine and pumpkin tortelli

with a view of floodlit castle

and good company,

what more could a girl want?

And all my knitting pals know that nothing beats a chat about yarn and anything else with a like minded gal. (not even George Clooney)

Unfortunately, this was only the second time that Maria and I met up. From Finland she has been researching at the local uni throughout the summer and after meeting virtually through our online computer knitting communitiy we hit it off in the real life too.
But as all computer buffs know, our friendship won't end here but will continue with exchanges of patterns, news, scandanavian roughspun and Italian merino well into the future.

Check out her projects on Ravalry (under Strilla).

When we visited Innsbruck in June I found this wonderful shop full of Shoppenwolle and I couldn't resist the colours of this bamboo, silk and wool sock yarn. Slate grey, purple and lime green. WOW

Once again ILGA LEJA came to the rescue with 'Tidal Streams' a stole knitted on the bias with voluptous flounces at the ends. You'll have to take my word for it that it drapes well as the family photgrapher is having fun at the beach with her mates this week.

Relaxing bank holiday weekend........

...or at least it would have been very relaxing if only that

dam kitten left my ball of wool alone!














We stayed in a very authentic converted farmhouse just the other side of The Apennines..Lunigiana





An area of very steep and deep forested valleys. Pontremoli is the capital.















Cut off from civilisation the farm overlooks the medieval hamlet of Mulazzo









Mulazzo by night.
Local specialities included chestnut tagliatelle and tagliata- sliced Florentine steak with mushrooms cooked at the table in a boiling hot terracotta pot










The sea breeze drifting up the valley enticed us to spend one afternoon at a fish resturant in Lierici










Shades of the Med.
In the distance the Apuan Alps where Michaleangelo picked up his marble.
In the foreground the pool.
Nicely set off by a ball of Schoppenwool sock wool.

In the HEART of the mountains

Hard to play down the reason for my month's leave from blogging. Four Saturdays ago, I came over all 'funny' in Lidl, of all places, and my husband decided we'd better stop off at casualty. I was sure they would say ' silly woman' after all it was blistering hot and the supermarket was over air conditioned, but instead I was whisked straight into the operating theatre where a blocked vein was burst open and a split vein stuck back together with 5 stands.

All very drammatic, I felt fine before and fine now. Am a bit pissed off over wasting 50 years NOT smoking NOT drinking NOT owning a chip pan and going to the gym when I could have been leaving a slovenly lazy life. Why me? one of life's little mysteries.

But what a treat. Ten days rehabilitation in a hospital in the mountains. Take a look at that view from the ward.

And although walking has been forced to take a back seat, the wool side couldn't have been better. I managed to make these two cardis whilst watching the last ten days of the Tour de France. What more could a girl ask for?

Thanks to all you lovely people who sent me cards and visited. Yesterday's check up was near perfect all I have to do is get back in those walking boots now.