A Christmas Message......

Wishing all of you the warmest of wishes for the Christmas and Holiday season. May you enjoy this time with your family, may you not over indulge, may you drive safely, may you stay warm if you're in the Northern part of the world, may I wish you sunshine if you're holidaying in Australia, and if you have to head out to the shops in the next 24 to 48 hours, I wish you good luck and I pray you get a great parking spot!....but seriously thank you for all your love, laughter, kind words and friendship since starting this blog and may it continue through 2012. Vicki xx 

 

Knit happens!!

I'm still struggling with this blog thing....I find it harder and harder to come up with something interesting really....bit like yesterday.  I was trying to finalise the last of my hat collection for the Southern Hemisphere Winter....I knew I had to add in another hat as I'd taken a few out .... just for a rest and sometimes I do really tire of knitting the same hat over and over and over again!!

I knew it had to be another earflap hat and as I mentioned in a previous post I really struggle with the design element of knitting....I like the practical but that's about as far as it goes.

I had decided on the perfect hat....full garter stitch earflap hat all in one colour and with a contrasting pom pom....I set off down to the Wool Baa yesterday....the place where I go to concentrate and to get away from the computer and the phone and I sit down at the tables and knit and design and ask the wonderful ladies there, Joanne, Sarah, Ainslee and Leonie what they really think...and they tell me!!....and I take inspiration from being surrounded by 1000's of balls of colourful yarn around me.

Anyway here is the hat I got started and then.....

I just ended up with this mass of blue garter stitch knitting that just looked awful....a big blue blob of nothing really.....it got unravelled and unfortunately I didn't have a phone or camera to take a photo of it...anyway I was too embarrassed....it was a shocker!!

I had two further balls of colour in my bag, a burnt orange and a coral.....I pulled them out of my bag and I knew they would always look stunning with the blue and I previously used to knit my CASH hats with 3 stripes of colour as per the picture below, and I knew that I had to create a hat with 3 colours in it again.

And from the most awful mistake of the garter stitch prototype came the most beautiful hat.

Introducing RIO....named after the city and the song....for those of you who remember Duran Duran!!

So here in my collection of hats for the Australian Winter 2012....I'm going to be extremely busy....but I'm looking forward to immersing myself in colour.  These little hats will start to filter through to my Etsy store in the New Year...some of the hats have already started to filter through.

And if there is no post before Christmas to you all.

Merry Christmas
Happy Holidays
Glædelig jul
Hyvää Joulua
Joyeux Noël
Frohe Weihnachten
Selamat Hari Natal
Buon Natale
メリークリスマス
메리 크리스마스
С Рождеством
Vesel božič
¡Feliz Navidad
God Jul


Enjoy Vicki x


Baby photos courtesy of Joy Wright from Alabama US and Peta Mazey from Wellington New Zealand and Kelly David of Wasilla Alaska.

A Random Act of Kindness

I'm doing some book plugging in this post.....I came across the book Goodbye Sarajevo earlier on this year when actually shopping for another book. 































I was instantly drawn to the cover of this book and the short description "A True Story of Courage, Love and Survival"   I did a quick read on the back cover and knew that I had to read this book.....In actual fact as I said previously, I was shopping for a book that I was meant to be reading for the book club I belong to....that book turned out to be a real fizzer so I gave it the flick and started reading Goodbye Sarajevo instead.  I couldn't put it down and after reading it over a week I instantly knew it was going to be the next book our book club reviewed.

I managed to contact the authors that wrote the book, sisters Hana and Atka who were lovely enough to write a letter of introduction to our book club which went down a treat with the other members.  It was so kind of both ladies to do this and considering they didn't know any of us or me for that matter it was a very kind thing to do.

The book provoked a lot of discussion from all of us and we all admitted that at some stage throughout the book we all had a bit of a cry. 

I think one of the reasons I was drawn to this book was the fact I didn't know a lot about the Bosnian War.... the book is set during this awful, awful conflict....I was living in London at the time when the war broke out, and I guess being on a working holiday, it was something that I really didn't feel I needed to know about...I didn't know anyone from the region, the countries involved were certainly not tourist destinations back then and I was just having too much fun to be bothered really, and as mentioned in the book it really wasn't anticipated that this war would last that long.....how wrong that turned out to be.

I think as a book club we all learnt a lot from this book, not only historically, but as the blog post says....A Random Act of Kindness....that gives you a little hint as to what the book is about....considering all the terrible atrocities that happened during this war there is a beautiful story that came out of it and that is what the sisters wrote about....it is their story.  Anyway the girls are giving away a copy of their book on their Facebook page.  They just want to hear about a random act of kindness that has impressed you.  So "like" their page tell them about it and you could have yourself a copy of this super book.....and if you don't happen to win, look out for this book in your local bookstore or if you aren't a book buyer....search it out in the library.


I've included some photos I took a couple of years back on holiday in Croatia, Slovenia and a day trip into Mostar over the Bosnian border.  I remember so vividly being in a little museum at the foot of the Mostar Bridge looking at all the images taken during the war and feeling rather foolish for not having taken more notice, I still remember how I wiped tears from my eyes......these places mean a lot more to me now having read this book....I loved this holiday and all of these places we visited and always regret that we didn't have the time to go to Sarajevo a city that is now on my "Must Go" list......Maybe in a few years time.

and me...I hate having my photo taken.

Enjoy

Vicki x

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a ......Yarn

Some of you may know about my obsession with finding a discontinued yarn called Patons Fuzzy Wuzzy.....as a child growing up in the 1970's, my Mum and my Nana's knitted with this yarn like mad.  Apparently my sister and I had little bolero's, cardigans and hats all made out of this yarn....a mix of rabbit angora and lambs wool.....It probably stands to reason why I'm so obsessed with knitting and finding this yarn today.

 

Every now and then I decide to knit from my stash of Fuzzy Wuzzy when I get enough yarn gathered to make a reasonable amount of hats.....and the Fuzzy Wuzzy Gods have been very kind to me of late....2 huge stashes of this scrumptious yarn came my way.  Delphinium Blue with white angora fuzz, and fire engine red in it's original box.

Anyway, I've decided my obsession is costing me way too much money and often when bidding on this yarn when I purchase off eBay it has become more about winning rather than the yarn, and that's when it becomes dangerous, and this yarn has now become very expensive.  Thus it's time to knit it up and send it back out there for others to love....I only ever re-knit this yarn into original Patons Fuzzy Wuzzy patters, and the only one that I truly love is the little Kitty Kat hat.

I knitted quite a few of these a couple of years back when I had a huge stash of pink and ice blue Fuzzy Wuzzy and these hats sold like hot cakes....funnily enough most of them went to Norway and Sweden....and I still get requests every now and again to knit them but due to the lack of yarn the answer was always no.

So my stash is big enough therefore I'm knitting these hats again and I adore knitting with this yarn although it
does tend to shed a little of the angora fuzz, but that's part of its charm....it obviously didn't bother us when we were babies.

There is a Ravelry page dedicated to people with stashes of this yarn....including mine, which from time to time I love to look at just to see if anyone has added to their stash or there is a new find but as I said it is becoming harder to collect so that is why I'm giving up my search.  So if you want to purchase one of the last of my vintage Fuzzy Wuzzy Kitty Kat hats....you'll find them here in my Etsy shop....the blue and the red will be added shortly.

Does anyone else remember this scrumptious yarn?


Enjoy Vicki x

A Ni(e)ce Weekend......

All good things must come to an end......an enjoyable time spent with my nieces.  I don't often speak about my two favourite little people because due to a fractured relationship with my sister, I just don't get to see them anymore......so to have the opportunity to spend a few hours with them to celebrate Niece no 2's 4th birthday was enough to make me drop the knitting needles and drive an hour and a half down to my Mums place where they were staying.....It's been a long time....school has started for one, daycare for another, teeth have fallen out, hair has grown, other birthdays have passed.....but unlike adults, children don't hold grudges nor do they judge, but they are one thing....brutally honest.  Anyway here are a few pics from the weekend...... present opening, laughter, swings and slides, jelly slices and hot chocolate.

P.S. Apologies for some of the photos....I'm still coming to grips with my new camera....and yes it is true, the 4th day of Summer and we are inside freezing and drinking hot chocolate....What the.......!!!

Enjoy,

Vicki x