UGG booties

Recently I had the urge to buy the newest knitting magazines but I wasn't quite into the Christmas season yet.. One night after work on my way home I went to my local 24 hour supermarket. I had a sneak look down their News and Magazines aisle and found two of my fave knitting magazines and automatically picked them up. I continued my shopping around the store not for much longer though. 

As soon as I got home, I was getting ready to snuggle up in my bed with my magazines. I jumped straight to the front where you see photos of what the magazine had patterns for. I instantly fell in love with their UGG style booties... I also got good Christmas present ideas from it too. 

Next day, I browse online to see what deals I could get for buying all the wool that I required to make my own UGG booties and presents. I know this isn't significant but it was Wool Week. What does this mean? I got discount on any wool or wool blend yarn. As I wasn't looking to getting the stated wool mentioned in any of the patterns I had to choose from a page of suggested substitute wool. Once I chosen which brand which one would be a reasonable price, I only had one problem with choosing the colour I wanted to get for each one. I love personalising my gifts. In the end I chose Debbie Bliss Paloma in Mallard along with Rowan British Sheep Boucle. 

I can't wait to wear these during the cold and long winter nights.  They are so cosy even though they are a little bit loose but it makes it easier to get my feet in and out of them. =)

little creations

I have made these little creations earlier on this year but never really got round to putting these up...



Mobile phone sock




Cable detail

 The phone sock design is a perfect fit for almost any phone as demonstrated above. I really love the cable twist in this design as it adds a bit of texture to the knitting. This was knitted with an acrylic double knit wool in fuschia.

coin purse



Bobble coin purse

 Above, is something that I created using a very simple stitch found in my Stich Collection book. This purse was inspired from seeing a similar purse somewhere. It is perfect for using up some of the yarn that I had left over from the mary jane slippers. I absolutely love the bobbles in this stitch and the fabric used to add a bit of strength to the actual purse. It also ensures that no coins could escape too. If anyone is interested in this purse then let me know =)

With winter on the way now I also have these cute owl mittens below

Owl mittens

This is a pattern that I found in a magazine so I didn't design this one. I just used a different colour of yarn, Artesano Aran. This is lovely and soft to the skin and it keeps your hands warm when it gets chilly outside. This would make a perfect gift for Christmas....

monkey adventures

It has been a long while since I last blogged... one reason - no card reader available until today!! =D



Monkey @ the hotel in London


The monkey above has been made with lots of love. It has been on a little adventure too from Aberdeen to London then over to Colchester.

No doubt I absolutely love it. This has been made with Hayfield bonus DK in chocolate and Wendy DK in biscuit. The size wise is probably slightly smaller than it should be due to smaller needles being used. It was recommended on a 3.25 mm but I just used 3mm needles.

let's go dotty

As a present for my friend who bought a house with her husband a few months back I have made the dotty cushion below.

Again, it may not be the perfect finish but it's the thought that counts. =)

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My day off (Tuesday) started really early at 9am.. not through choice but my body and warm sunshine. I headed into town to grab a few things as I didn't want to spend a whole afternoon in town not knowing where or what to do.

First stop was the bank and then over to Boots to hand back an umbrella to a customer who left it at the restaurant the night before. The Body Shop was on the cards until I walked past and seen it closed for a refurbishment... =( 

John Lewis seems to be my favourite place to get all my little bits and bobs for my crafty stuff at the minute. They may not stock on a wide range of wool but their whole Rowan collection is enough for me to look at. After a quick browse on their wool with no intention of buying any since money is tight at the minute I just ended up getting the zip I required to finish off the cushion above.

Next stop whilst on my way to Yorokobi for lunch was Primark in getting a new shower curtain... Although I've been on the hunt for something nice for going to London next week I couldn't find anything in the sales or Primark. Don't you hate the feeling of looking through your wardrobe in hope to find something nice and you don't? Then you say to yourself 'I don't have any clothes.' I guess thats why girls seem to have a lot of clothes in their wardrobes and drawers since we don't really throw much out.

Anyways, I just got on with what I was there for - shower curtain. They have shifted things about and I had to walk around all 3 floors until I found them upstairs with all the PJ's. I guess it's good to have burned off a few calories before indulging on some yummy food.

Lunch at Yorokobi was a breeze. I think that is the only restaurant that I can go to by myself without feeling wierd or pitiful for myself. 

Vegetarian Jabchae

California Hand Roll with Tobiko

Soft shell crab Maki

All of that went into my tummy. =)

That is all for my day off as the rest was spent at home watching Glee and The Vampire Diaries.

right kind of wrong

Yes I took the name of a song sung by LeAnn Rimes as the title for this post. It is true for my knitting journey that I have been on so far. It's meant to be summer just now but it feels like it's Autumn. I'm loving our traditional Scottish weather though.

Recently I've finished knitting up a pair of slippers which are very similar to the mary jane's one. 

I love the little bowdetails on them... =) This was knitted with Sirdar Crofter Chunky wool on a size 5 mm needles.. This has taught me to spend some time to knit up a tension square first. It's a little bit loose but it's good. So the 1st right kind of wrong is knitting a pair of slippers in the summer. 

the next one is I went out for a dinner date with my girlfriend C about 2 weeks ago.. I dressed up.. I was wearing a dress with stilletto heels  and the weather was pretty much miserable.. wet wet wet. However it felt good not to be dressed according to the weather though. 

My next in the car project is a pair of fingerless mittens... All I need to finish is the right hand mitten.

 

Ready to use

It has come to my attention that I haven't written in this blog for a whole month now... Where has the time gone? To be perfectly honest I think it's just all done to laziness. It's hard to think of a topic each time I open up this page on my screen and I know I have a lot that I can write about since this is very broad on what I can tell online. Here is one anyway... ready frosting..

I was invited to a gathering at a friends house during my week off in May. It was just all finger food and games night really.. I offered to make something sweet e.g. cupcakes.

Cupcakes itself is easy to bake and doesn't take long either.. I find the decorating part can take longer than the actual baking.. It's always about the looks or the cover of book that one would find appealing to their eyes. We always say 'never judge a book by it's cover' or a person by their looks. Well, thats not the case for cakes... with this in mind I didn't know how I wanted to decorate these cupcakes that I was going to make. Whilst shopping around in the supermarket I found their own brand ready to use frosting icing in a vanilla flavour. I thought this would be perfect. I have never been sure of using the ready to use or bake packs. I was surprised by this though..

To be fair, these cupcakes were delicious. The mini marshmallows just finished it off nicely in terms of decoration wise.

baking marathon

Well, after a week of holiday it has come to my weekly day off even though I've only been back at work for 2 days. My only day in the week that I can rest and recharge my batteries for the following 6 days ahead of me whether it's busy or not I still need the energy to get through them. Sometimes it can be crazy - depends on how I feel and those around me. It can get to a point where I just have some crazy fun with colleagues or even customers. Dependent on their nature if they can take a joke and not take it to heart. 90% of the time it's ok to ahve a laugh with them. Or it could get really bad where I just put on a fake smile and to me then everything and everyone will some what annoy me, except for those who know me well and will steer clear of me. At that stage I wish that I could do such and such a thing but it never seems to happen since I usually have a few errands to do on my day off. However, today was an exception. I didn't.

I thoroughly enjoyed a real lazy lie in today, I didn't really get out of my bed until near enough 1pm. Don't get me wrong I was awake already from a phone call from the MR asking me what I'd be getting up to - I didn't know. After the phone call I rambled on in my head what I wanted to do. I said to a girl last night that I had quite a lot of plain and self raising flour to use up. *ding ding* why not bake? Whilst baking I can watch Season 1 part 1 of Glee and knit too. How amazing would that be? I can tell you it was. I got up and dressed and chose what I wanted to make from looking at a cook's book. It sure has some goodies in there. I then wrote down what I needed from Asda which was my closest supermarket and headed out. I came home and decided which order to make the baked goodies. Then I realised I forgot to get the right amount of butter which meant I had to do what I planned on making last first so that I could head out whilst it was sitting in the oven baking.

After the 2nd trip to Asda the house was already smelling of baked chocolate mousse. It smelt yummy. Whilst still waiting on it to be baked I moved onto my 2nd bake - chocolate brownies. The timing was just in time for everything, by the time the brownies was ready to go in the oven - the mousse was ready. I had 15 minutes to do the cleaning up and prep for my last bake of the day. The strawberry and cream sponge cake. The only problem I have at the end of all this baking was who is gonna help me eat all this? 

Chocolate Brownies

baked choc mousse

Strawberry and Cream Sponge Cake

After the baking marathon, I made myself dinner which compromised Chicken wings and pasta with some cheese. A simple dish. My entertainment was my LoveFilm DVD which consisted of Season 1 part 1 Glee. =) 

Finished eating and I still had a few more episodes of Glee to get through so  to round off the evening I picked up my knitting needles in front of the telly. As I finished off a little bit of my cardigan the DVD came to an end.