To help you along the way, a knitting tutorial, your first slip stitch

Terminology that I will use:

yarn - this can apply to all from wool to acrylic.

Working yarn - the yarn that you will use, as you knit.

Hold the end of the yarn in your hand.

Whatever hand you are using make sure your ball of yarn is on your working side/the side where it doesn't move across your work so it gets tangled.

 

Place the yarn between your thumb and your second finger, so that the yarn is over your first finger.

Wrap the yarn around the finger (not too tight, you don't want to cut off your circulation) So that it crosses over your first finger.

Holding onto the cross that you have made, pull the yarn from the front of your finger, underneath the  circle you have made, and pull it through.

Holding the yarn that you have pulled through, you let go of the hoop, hold onto the end and pull the hoop at the top.

There you have done a slip stitch, you can use this to start your knitting or your crochet. 

Lax behaviour will not be tolerated

Yet again I have lapsed with my blogging, even though I have been quite thorough with my Ravelry there come a lot to be said about actually having the time to write everything down so  there have been times where I have focused more on the knitting and crochet.

   Since the last time I have learnt how to:
1) Pick up stitches
2) Make an iCord
3) Read a crochet pattern without much help

	The mitts that will keep a child warm, shame about the massive thumbs but I'm guessing i can work on the sizes :)
Octi-pie	or is it RastaDread?

Friday is the day!

So bummed that I'm not able to go to any knitting/crochet evenings, due to circumstances but thank goodness for Craft Angels in Crosspool, they have a meeting from 10am to 12 noon on a Friday.

Next week is learning how to make a crochetted baby blanket that looks a little like this, but I will be using just two colours.

So excited!!! I think I know how to do this but I can't be sure of  it because every time I have tried it as messed up along the way :(.....now I  really need to finish something before I buy more wool!!!.....

Talking of more wool....the king size is getting done although really really don't like  the green that I got,  so I am making  RAK squares instead of  adding it to the blanket, it will do at least 4  squares and if I have any left over I can always do one a row!!
I also have been watching some anime (about  time, she says to herself) it was a free DVD on SFX, it's not usual that I like all the anime that are featured on these freebies but this time was a winner, there was Romeo X Juliet, a Japanimation look at Shakespeare's play, Fate Stay Night was pretty neat too, about a boy who finds out that he is part of the seven warring Magi, in this, while I was watching I thought how amazing the clothing was and how good it would be to cosplay it, oh and Rozen Maiden too, if Nori's skirt was a little a lot longer, this OVA is a little like Chobits in the fact that it centers round an inanimate thing, coming to life, well worth catching the rest of the series, me thinks :)

Talking of cosplay, I was talking to a friend about making a Codex Staff, for those of you who don't know about it, it's a whole series of webisodes, 3  seasons, to be exact about a group of online gamers

Left to right: Tinkaballa, Zaboo, Codex,Vork, Bladezz & Clara.

..anyway you see the staff? it's actually got a video tutorial of how to make it, how cool is that?! Now all I need is to see if I can go to a convention dressed as Clara with what looks like a wand! and I will be the happiest person *does a funky dance*

Knitting much?

Not really, to seems to be more about the crochet, since my last update I have done more squares for the boy and his splash blanket, I even was able to put some wool by, via The Wool Baa, so I will have the same dye lot, I just hope that I can finish it in time - I'm working on the 30th January 2011 (eek that sounds like ages away) so it will be a nice birthday thing for him. The other crochet project was somewhere to store my crochet hooks as the knitting needle storer wasn't quite big enough to store all the accessories, so violá I have a totally new crocheted thing that I didn't even use a pattern for, to be quite honest I don't really like patterns - well maybe if I can read them /wink

It looks a bit fallic but I think that's just because of the thickness of the wool.

 

I think it looks lovely inside, just enough space for more hooks.

I also got told that the girl didn't want red, so after all that knitting (well nearly) she wants a pink blanket - now I don't know whether she means all pink or just bits of pink we shall just have to wait and see, let me finish and see what she says.

Knitted things:

• Cable scarf - I got the wool, then needles and the ehow tutorial to get going, then I realised that the wool was really tight on the needles and what do you know the wool is for 6and a half and the needle 6mm, who would of thought.
• The Dennis the menace scarf, I think is half way through and I got a whole lot done while waiting for the christmas play at school, which I'm really impressed about.
• The gloves that I made on two needles turned out pretty well but I will put it down to a good pattern and really expensive baby wool.

 If I get both lots of squares today it will be enough to keep me going, spending time on Ravelry I have had some good hints about how to make blankets/afghans. I also saw this ver sweet Christmas knitted star it also comes as a crochet pattern too, I might try it next year if I remember.

Watched Castle, matching scarves from both Castle and Det. Beckett, the one she wore was a lovely blue colour. Also the lovely Marc Blucas who has been in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and recently Lie to me & House and had a nice, very green scarf on

Crochet attempt No2

Well, I tried it again, and I'm sure that I have must have seen my grandma crocheting or something because it seemed to click into place. although I am sure it looks a little messy but not to worry - practice makes perfect.

For today I mainly will be....

Whinging and moaning about the fact that I haven't seen a whole lot of anime in the last couple of months - it's all very well saying that I like anime and then not bother watching any of it, so we went down to the Space Center and I bought a copy of Neo - I know it's not my usual magazine, but at least I can have a rundown on what has been going on in the comunity. so looking through it, I see that they are really pushing Negima! which does look really cute. There are others that I look quite interested in, which are Oran High Host Club,out on dvd april 2009. The Myth, a Jackie Chan movie, which is always good to watch, I even enjoyed Around the world in 80 days. Ghost Hunt, on dvd from may 2009 looks good but havent seen it yet, I guess it's going to be your standard Japanese anime story. Manga shakespeare? oh yes if it wasn't bad enough to be having to do it at school, they now have Much Ado about nothing and & King Lear in Manga. Origin, heard good reviews, another to put on the list and is now on DVD with Moon phase and Mushi-shi out.

My honey, after months and months saying that I couldn't get Setanta working on the box, pretty much left me for dust in the technical department when he got it working. So instead of getting Setanta because of the recent collapse of it, it is replaced by ESPN America, which isn't too bad although it is a hardship trying to get use to all the scrolling lettering but it's baseball and I'm so excited to actually be able to watch it here. July is the month for sports in our house as there s the Tour De France too!!

I tried a bit more crochet and I was slightly surprised in the fact that it actually looks like something - all I need to do is add some googly eyes and it will be a perfect finger puppet.