What I made, by Sharon

 I bought a kg of "wool" last time I was at Bendigo Woollen Mills. After If finished my last project, I decided to do a sample spin. I made fauxlags and using longdraw spun up 50 grams. I plied it on Monday night, and got about a ten ply - 78 metres for 50 grams. Meanwhile - Leon and I drink a lot of tea, both black and herbal. We have a lovely, traditional tea pot with a very nice cosy. For a while we've been discussing the problem of washing the pot - we don't want out black tea with breakfast to taste of last night's camomile, yet it does. I have a glass tea maker, and we've been using that for herbal tea, which solves the problem of cross flavouring. But it didn't have a cosy, which means the tea gets cold.  You can see where this is going, right? Beautiful handspun tea cosy. I used this pattern , but flipped it around, because my tea maker has an insulated lid, but looses heat through the bottom. Or it did - now the bottom is covered! I'm so happ...

 In 2011 I made my mother-in-law a tea cosy . She drinks even more tea than we do, so it's had a lot of hard service.  You can't see it well in this picture, but the openings are stained with tea and starting to fall apart. I did attempt a new one for her in 2020, but that disappeared into history. So, when word came to me that she needed a new cosy, I got out my hook and got to it. I found t his basic pattern  and adapted it for her smaller pot. I can't explain what I did, it's crotchet and I free formed it.  I used left overs (of course) and fuzzy alpaca. I think it's quite ugly, but it fits her odd shaped tea pot well, and she seems to like it, which is the point.  I find making tea cosies very satisfying. They have a great return for effort, perform a useful function, are a fun crotchet project and make tea so much better.                                

I identify as a minimalist, but not an especially good one. Leon and I share a rather small closet. When we moved here 6 years ago it just had a shelf and a hanging rail. We bought some Ikea baskets, and it was OK. But I keep knitting things, and thinking about getting the cupboard fitted out properly. About two months ago i got two quotes and we ordered new insides! Very exciting. We had to pull out the insides of the cupboard and do any filling / painting and sanding that we wanted done. We did this, and on Thursday, ready for Friday's install we moved all our clothes into the living room. On Friday morning the company texted me to say the installer had called in sick and it would be another week. Now all my clothes are in the living room. I texted this photo to a friend and she said "at least it's tidy".  But tidy isn't enough for me, I want less stuff. Not no stuff, but less and I want it all out of sight. Which brings be to this book I requested from NetGalle...

18 months ago I knit a teeny tiny tiny hot water bottle cover. It was pretty much the cutest thing I've ever knit. I sized the pattern down from Kate Davies Hottie Tottie and nicked the colour-work from Birkin. So cute: I barely used it, so when Sally, my manager, asked me to knit her a cover for a tiny hot water bottle, I gave it straight to her. Which gave me the opportunity to  knit another one. This time I decided to nick the colourwork from Anna Zilberg's half-stranded socks.  Comparison with a full sized bottle it came out quite well, although I am tempted to reknit it, starting the colourwork 4 rows higher, with a row of the contrast colour, and finishing it with a similar line. In retrospect I would also do a checkerboard over 6 or 8 stitches at the edges, rather than the welt I actually used. And maybe go to 68 stitches, rather than 72. We'll see if I knit it again, or if I'm ready to move on. When i was looking for this bottle I found an uncovere...

 Did you know you can make rib in crotchet? Me neither, but now I do: Elise asked for a replacement hot water bottle cover, because she's worn through the bottom of the one I made her in 2014.  I know I could have offered to repair it, but the chance to get some crocheting  in was too great. I took the yarn I had unravelled and dyed and went looking for a pattern... And looking, and looking. In the end I made it up on the fly.  I'm really pleased with how it came out. I'm considering writing up the pattern, but I only speak crotchet as a second language. What do you think?

Recently Katie put a question on Instagram about growing her own ginger, because she was spending a house deposit on fresh ginger, for fresh ginger tea. I got inspired, and used some of the ginger I had received in my weekly grocery box for ginger tea. Delicious. So I ordered a kilo of fresh ginger. I gave half of the kilogram to Katie, and put a third of the remaining lot in whisky, to preserve it - also so at the end I'll have ginger that tastes like whisky, and whisky that tastes like ginger. The ginger was making our tea pot taste like ginger, and it was almost impossible to clean out between uses. I love ginger, but probably don't need everything to taste of it all the time.. I also realised that our cafietiere would be better, because it has a filter, and our tea pot doesn't. BUT the cafetiere didn't have a cosy, and this tea needs to steep. So I crocheted one! I haven't picked up the hook since July last year, and it's always fun to get bac...

I finished the Left Over Sock Yarn bathmat I mentioned the other day. It was a really fun - and surprisingly quick project, although i suppose holding 7 strands of yarn together , and using a 6.5mm needle is likely to have that affect. This pic was taken outside blocking, and really shows the colours: I love the ombre  effect, although I still can't believe I had THAT much left over sock yarn in blues. Over half a kilogram of them. This pic was taken in situ, in the bathroom. \I love my bathroom, but it doesn't have any natural light, hence the glare of the heat lamps. I love my heat lamps. It was also quite fun to be crocheting for a change. I haven't picked up the hook for anything bigger than a cat toy since early 2017, and I do enjoy it. All around a very satisfing  project. 

I was tooling around on Ravelry, looking for bathmatt patterns, when I found this pattern. Hmm, crotchet, colour blending, I wonder what my sock yarn scrap stash is looking like? When I went to investigate, I discovered I have an absolutely bizarre amount of left over sock yarn in blues, especially navy. I also pulled my Cloud out of the wash and realised it's kind of dead. As well as being stretched out, it had what looked suspiciously like coffee stains on the front.  S o, I've rescued some of that yarn and, combined with the strange amount of blue sock yarn (where did it all come from?) I'm going to crotchet this bath matt. I'm pretty excited, colour blending really is a lot of fun, which might be why I keep on doing it!

You may well ask why I would be knitting my 8th bathmat. (Also, why i sometimes spell it as bathmatt). Well I knitted my first one in 2009. Here's a picture of it now.  Holes! Actual holes! and uneven felting causing it to buckle. Bathmats are a high wear item, particularity with three cats, one of whom occasionally... well lets just say Tarragon's actions mean i sometimes have to put them through on a hot wash. But I still keep knitting them, because they are a knitted thing that given me joy every day. Now, I have one bathmat next to the shower, and one in front of the toilet. I also like to have a spare set for when one lot are being washed. So, I need four bathmats at a time, they are a high wear item, and I often use them to experiment on, or l earn new techniques with sometimes mixed results.  So that's how I'm up to knitting my 8th bathmat . The latest bathmat is finished: I mainly enjoying the mosaic knitting too. I thought I might no t , because so...

So, I'm making another bathmat. My seventh, and they've all been for us! I'm using left over handspun and the same design as I used for our current toilet mat , made four years ago. That one is a touch too small, partly because I may have felted it when washing cat pee out of it. So this time I cast on 141 stitches, rather than the 121 stitches I used last time. I'm a bit paranoid that it will be too big for the space I'm making it for, but if it is I can always felt it down a little. I'm sure, sooner or later, Tarragon will cause it to need a hot wash anyway. Also, and randomly, when I was checking out the space I realised our toilet is not centrally located in the space. I wonder if this is normal? If I was designing a bathroom, I'd put the toilet centrally in the room. But then I like things to be symmetrical. And maybe I've been spending too much time thinking about the smallest room in the house...