Bad blogger

It has been nearly three weeks since my last post and I feel very bad about it. I probably started blogging at a bad time; I've been studying for the last four years and took my final exams just before the summer vacation, but due to illnes last year, I have to do one last course. In these four years I've had very little time for myself; most of my time was taken up by taking care of my children, housekeeping chores and study. Oh, and I squeezed in some time with my husband, Peter, so we could keep our marriage afloat. Basically, my focus was on study for these past years. Then the summer vacation came, and I actually had time to do things again, it felt so good! I've been incredibly lazy and totally lost track of time.


In the early months of this year I discovered the knitbloggin community on the internet, and since then have spent most of my free time reading blogs and getting inspired by them. An gradually, the thought of having my own blog and becoming part of this community grew in my mind. So I did, regardless of the fact that I still haven't finished this last course, and will have to invest a considerable amount of time if I want to finish it successfully. I've been worrying about that for the last few weeks and stalling. I feel like a horse that is afraid to jump a fence, but have decided to finally start actually doing it and finish this thing so I can get my degree I've worked so hard for.

I will try to blog in between hours of study though. I just like it too much.
I will end with a few things that I've been doing for the last few weeks;
first of all, we visited the "dolfinarium" two weeks ago, when our daughters had their autumn vacation. We had a great time there. Look at the extremely relaxed walruss; if he could whistle he would:















We went to visit friends in the east of our country a week ago. They live in the most amazing place, and have the same hobbies we do, so the men got to go fishing and the women and children got to do some crafts. Look what I did:





















I got so curious after reading lots of blogs about spinning, I decided I wanted to try it myself. I thought I would take to spinning like a fish to water, but I'm afraid it didn't quite turn out that way... I don't think I ever swore so much in my life. But luckily I got to take the wheel home so I can practice and swear some more in private. I also got half a sheep to practice with!

















The girls also went riding on the pony. Renee loves horses and would like to start horseriding when she has finished her swimming lessons, so this was a big thing for her.

And Maud is terribly scared of horses (of anything bigger than a cat really) so it was a big thing for her too.












And then there was some knitting as well: I started, and nearly finished the second sock for Maud, our five year old. She chose the yarn herself and I think she did very well. They'll go very nicely with her high shoes. I'll post a picture of her wearing them when they're done.

see?

I just checked site meter and saw that someone has actually been reading my blog! Of course this may have been my husband spying on me to see if I write anything bad about him, which of course I would never ever do.
I took some pictures of the finished sweater yesterday:



As you'll probably be able to tell, I haven't taken many pictures of myself lately, so they came out a bit odd, but you get the idea. I'm very pleased with my work. The only thing I don't like very much is that although the yarn is soft to the touch, the collar is a bit scratchy, so I'll have to remind myself not to knit any high collar sweaters in wool anymore. I think it probably was the 42% of kidmohair that did it.
The yarn I used is "Pearl" by Lang yarns. I like Lang yarns so far, I like the quality of their yarns and the colours. The price range isn't bad either.

I'll end this post with a picture that I took last weekend. A friend came over to help with some jobs around the house and he brought his children along. I took my two girls and his two sons to our local zoo (which we are very fortunate to have) and we had a very good time. It's a small zoo which has mainly small animals. It's set up more like a park than a zoo and we love to go there for a few hours on weekends. As you can see the weather was great and we had a new arrival: the cheetahs that we had been promised for a long time are finally here!

done

I finally finished the sweater that was still on the blocking board in my last post. Blocking went well, putting the pieces together went well, it fit me like a glove, and then I went on to knit the collar. First I tried a circular needle which was the right size but the wrong length (ever tried to knit with a circular needle that is too long?), then I tried a circular I had lying around which was the right lenght, but I knew that the size was too small (in too much of a hurry to go buy a new one), found out (surprise!) that the collar was too narrow, couldn't get my head through it. So at last I ripped it, bought the perfect needle for the job and knit a new collar. Done. Or so I thought, untill I tried it on, and realised that I had cast off too tightly, so my head still wouldn't go through. Aaaaaagh!!!
Last night I summoned up the courage to rip the last row and tonight I cast off again: perfect.
If I'd learn from my mistakes, this would be a great lesson (sigh........).

I'll post some pictures tomorrow.