the Tour - the last days

I didn't do much blogging about the last week or so of the Tour. I wanted to but I signed up to do another test knit and started a mystery shawl. By nature both of these are hard to share. Mind you in a few more weeks I'll have lots of knitting to blog about.

I can show you a few photos of what my garden has been doing though...

Ignore the weeds. I've spent the last few days pulling them and the garden looks much better. A bit less green but I'm sure the plants are happy.

I'm amazed by potato flowers... who knew they were so pretty!

the Tour - day 11 update

Here we are at Day 11 of the Tour already! I've been knitting/crafting pretty steady these last few days.

I finished the knitting on my lavender satchels at the Montmartre Folk Fest on Saturday and on Sunday I did some needle felting embellishments. I still need to weave in ends and weave a ribbon through them to close them up but they're basically done. I'll post a picture this weekend.

I finished the needle felting on my Fairy Castle. This project is now done. Thank goodness!

I would love to make another (but not this year!) for my crochet needles and maybe make it more of a castle tower like the one Rapunzel was locked in. I think I could needle felt enough detail to make it look like a tower...

I also did some embroidery on Friday I think, on the dress for my Princess and the Pea toy. It isn't very good really but it works. I just need more practice. I like the flowers but I'm not crazy about the curly cue bits... 

Don't mind all the ends, I still need to weave them in. I'm also hunting through my stash for a good doll coloured yarn. I think I may have some in Knit Picks Palette that I can hold double. And hair... I haven't decided on the colour yet, maybe brown like me, maybe black...

I started a sock on Sunday and have powered through the leg and heel. I'm halfway done the foot. I tried a short row heel this time. It was really simple and seems to fit great. There's a little hole at each corner I'll seam up.

The yarn is from Knit Picks. It's a lovely bunch of blues called Lullaby. The sock is striping up nicely and I like it.

I'll be using this short row heel for my next few pairs of socks I think. It's pretty good!

The Tour - Days 6 & 7

TGIF! Hurray for Fridays! I love having this extra day off every week (and yes I'm bragging).

In Tour news, yesterday was a dud. I didn't knit yesterday (gasp). I did move most of my Irises to my new fence line after work though and got offers from 2 lovely neighbors to add some more to my collection. I think I'll take them up on it too as they offered me yellow ones. I only have deep purple and purple and white. Besides, I'm a sucker for yellow.

Speaking of yellow (wasn't that a great segue?), I finished the knitting on my Princess dress this morning.

I still need to turn and sew the hem and seam the shoulders. I'll also be crocheting a pink edging around the neckline and arms. After that I'll be embarking on some embroidery.

I spent about an hour looking for Sweet Pea pictures on Google this morning. Then I turned around and pinned them on Pinterest. Seriously the biggest time suck I tell you. If I'm going to loose countless hours to the Internet I'd rather lose them on Ravelry. Anyway, I found many that were lovely but one that will be simple enough for a beginner but still capture that look I'm going for.

Then I went into the dungeon and dug around my cross stitch bin for colours to match the ones in my head (always interesting and a wee bit frightening). I pulled out these 4...

I'm in love with these colours together! I think they have an old fashioned feel and a Victorian romantic look to them. So now that I have the perfect plan I sure hope I can pull it off... yup, no pressure...

PS - this weekend is All Folk'd Up so I may not get to post when I want. The weather is supposed to be scorching hot too... I love summer!

The Tour - Days 3, 4 & 5

Ok here we are at day 5. I'm back at work and it's still crazy hot outside. Thank goodness for air conditioned offices!

On Monday (day 3) I started my Princess and the Pea toy from Itty Bitty Toys. It's our July/August toy for the ongoing KAL on the Itty Bitty forum on Ravelry. I got 6 panels finished for the mattresses. I also tweaked out a plan to do some embroidery on some of the mattresses. I'm not very practiced at embroidery but I really admire needlework.

Yesterday (day 4) I finished another panel and a half. And tonight (day 5) is Knit Night at the Library so I hope to at least finish the half and maybe most of panel 9. Anyway, I'm tempted to cast on a pair of socks because holding this fingering mohair double and knitting on size 4mm needles is making my hands ache a bit... I won't though. I have too many projects coming up.

PS - Happy 4th to my American friends and happy birthday Mary Rose! 

Tour de Fleece days 1 & 2

Well it's that time again. Time to compete in the Tour de France knitting style. The Tour started on June 30th and in true Jill fashion I forgot about it until Raili posted about her goals in the Itty Bitty group and on her blog. Thanks Raili!

I have the same goal I have every year... knit (or craft) for 20 minutes a day while the Tour is going on.

It doesn't seem like much of a goal really to me. I tend to knit everyday anyway. Not always for 20 minutes though, usually it's way more!

So on the 30th we were busy fencing and I didn't get much knitting in until B said "Lets go see the Avengers" and I said "Hurray!"

It was a great movie. It was also 2.5 hours long. Lots of quality movie theater knitting time.

I know that doesn't look like much but that's a whole inch on the body of my laceweight cardigan. I think I'm at about 300 stitches. Each row is taking forever now but I'm almost at the length I want.

You know I also did some needle felting on Saturday too. I'm trying to finish up my gnome home but I broke both of my felting needles.

I love needle felting. I can't wait to pick up some more needles. I have a whole lot of project ideas buzzing around in my head.

So now that takes me to Canada Day (yesterday) which was fabulous. It was another scorcher so I sat on the front porch in the morning and did a weaving-in-of-the-ends session. I got my Spruced Mitts finished and wove in the 2 little ends on my Truffle Ishbel shawl (I'm so ashamed it's taken me over 2 months to do that 5 second job) and I wove in all the ends on my test knit. I also knit another chunk on the cardigan but that was after we finished the fence and weeded most of the garden.

Today is day 3 of the Tour and I plan to put another inch or so on the cardigan and hopefully bind off the body. There aren't any plans to do chores today, I think it's a day of rest. We could use it!