A Day At The Beach

On Saturday we took a trip to the beach.  It was a cold, rainy day but thankfully it wasn't too windy.  It was Scoobie's first trip to the beach and he absolutely loved it, exploring all the new scents and sights and having lots of doggy fun!

Here he is helping our eldest daughter dig a hole in the sand...

 Exploring the rock pools...

And just enjoying trotting across the wet sand!

Me, well I just took loads of pictures and pushed the buggy with our little daughter all snug inside. We had a lovely time and look forward to going again soon.

New Family Member!

He came to live with us just over two weeks ago so I thought it was about time I announced him to blogland.

This is our new puppy Scoobie.  He's a Lhasa Apso breed.  He's the first dog I've ever owned but my fella has had dogs in the past.  Its a big learning curve and just like having a toddler in the house as he's in to everything! Well in the kitchen and dining room anyway.  We don't yet trust him to go into the carpeted areas of our home...

Just a few things...

Here are just a few things I've been working on lately.  This cardigan was made for my 1 year old daughter.  I used a Lion Brand free pattern then added a border at the bottom to lengthen it.

This is the hat I designed myself but I still haven't got around to writing up the pattern.  Its on my to do list (the very long to do list!!).

I knit this Sackboy for my 5 year old daughter for Christmas.  The pattern is by Alan Dart and can be found on The Sun newspaper website (sorry too lazy to go searching for the link!).

And finally this is Herman the Monster, knit for my fella to guard his Man Cave (aka his work room).  The pattern is in the Christmas edition of Let's Knit magazine and he was a great stash buster and I was so glad to find a use for some of the eyelash yarn hiding at the bottom of my stash.

Working on a new Pattern...

Currently (well apart from all the WIP's!) I'm working on a new crochet hat pattern. The plan is to complete the hat, work out the pattern and write it down then crochet another one to make sure the pattern works. Watch this space!

Cheated by Summer...

This picture was taken on a rare half decent day (note the dark clouds to the left, it rained about an hour later). There have been so few days where it hasn't rained!




Truth is I feel really cheated by summer this year.  I seem to have spent the whole summer waiting for it to happen and now suddenly it will be September tomorrow... 

Also my little big girl starts school tomorrow and boy has that crept up on me, especially as I got most of the supplies for when she starts at the beginning of the holidays.  I just cannot believe she is old enough to go to school! 

Anyway here's hoping for at least an "Indian" summer and the hope of at least visiting the beach before the really cold weather sets in....

Hand Winding a Skein of Wool Tip

Here's a handy tip if you have to wind a skein of wool by hand and like me, you don't own a fancy ball winder. When you wind the ball of wool in your hand make sure you wind over your fingers instead of just winding around and around into a tight ball.  It makes the ball of wool softer and squishier and avoids stretching the fibres.

I also sit on my chair in the lounge, feet up on a stool with the skein wrapped around my knees and I find that position for me avoids nasty tangles and knots. Strangely I do remember my mum have me hold out my hands to hold skeins of wool for her when I was a child and can recall how much it made my arms ache! I remember dipping my arms from side to side to help her wind the wool off my hands. Oddly enough I don't really remember her knitting anything!!!

Muffins!

I decided to have a go at making muffins.  After having a browse on the net for suitable recipes I sort of half followed one, adding or subtracting as I saw fit for a blueberry muffin recipe. I'm not very good at following recipes.  I couldn't see the point in adding oil and melted butter.  I only had self raising flour so I used that and added a little extra baking powder and put in a whole egg instead of just the white the recipe called for. I also used frozen blueberries instead of fresh. They turned out beautifully, a surprise really as I'd chopped and changed the recipe...

Then I decided to have a go at double chocolate chip, using the same basic recipe with my changes...

I mixed all the wet ingredients together, all the dry in a separate bowl then combined the two together. Urgh!  It was stiff and dry!  I assumed I must have weighed out too much flour so to compensate I added an extra egg and some more milk (goats lol) and the consistency was better but now I worried I'd overworked the batter.  My eldest daughter helped me to spoon it into the cases which was fun, then I got a little mixture on my finger and couldn't resist tasting it. Double URGH! I'd forgotten the sugar! Following some drastic scrapping the mixture back into the bowl out of the paper cases and adding the forgotten sugar we tried again....

This is never going to work I thought, not with all the messing around with the ingredients and the overworking of the whole thing. Do you know what though? They were gorgeous!  Even Daddy had one (I think he forgot there might have been goats milk in there...) and he thoroughly enjoyed his too! Just goes to show that you can wing it and still get great results!