WIP Wednesday: I Have Learnt a New Skill!

Do you all remember that lovely meadow green hat I blogged about last Friday?

Well on Monday night, after finishing another mug hug (I'm sure that you're getting bored with mug hugs by now, because I certainly am!) I decided to take out the hat, and finally finish that 18cm of GS.

Everything was going good. Great actually! I was knitting quickly and was enjoying myself.

Then it happened.

I messed up. I don't know how, but I messed up. A couple of stitches started to look retarded. I decided to ignore it and carry on. 

That was a mistake.

By the end of the row, my wool was tangled, my stitches looked retarted, and worst of all my favourite character from the TV show I was watching, left. 

So I had a meltdown. A big one. Before I knew it, I'd frogged most of the work I had done, my Mum then saved the day by snatching the 'hat' away from me. It is now hiden away in my craft bag, waiting to be picked up and knitted on the 2 1/2 hour car journey next weekend.

Onto happier news though, its WIP Wednesday!

Today, despite being stuffed up with a cold and hayfever, I decided to try my hand at Fair Isle. (If I'm going to do mug hugs, why not learn a new skill while I make them?) The pattern is (creatively) called 'Fair Isle Hearts' and is from the book Knitted Mug Hugs (Twenty to Make). 

I don't know why I didn't do Fair Isle weeks ago! It is so much fun, and definitely not as hard as it looks! The only thing I didn't enjoy, was constantly untangling the two yarn balls. After a couple of hours of knitting, this is what it looks like so far:

I am extremely proud. Especially since I didn't need any help. The mug hug is almost finished, I just need to pick up and knit the ends, to make the buttonhole so it can actually hug the mug. Afterwards, I'm going to try and do the Gold Fish mug hug pattern, which should look quite cool once it's done!

So thats the blog for today, I do hope you enjoyed your visit :) Before I leave though, I would like to pose a couple of questions for you...

• I'm really eager on learning how to knit in the round, as my Mum doesn't know how I have to learn from a book. Are there any particular books you would suggest?
  
• My best friend is about to start her very own cross stitch and knitting blog, but she (and I!) are stuck for blog name ideas... have you got any?

Thank you and have a great evening!

FO Friday: Time for Tea!

Once again, I actually managed to finish something! In fact, I finished two projects! And I don't mean to pat myself on the back, but I think they turned out pretty well.

My family revolve around tea. When we need a solution for a problem, we drink a cup of tea. When we are depressed, we drink a cup of tea. When we're happy, we jump around the place then put the kettle on for a cup of tea. If we need a chat, first thing we do is head straight to the kitchen to, you guessed it, make a cup of tea.

So as you can see, tea plays a big role in this household. That is why I took it upon myself to solve the problem of 'tea gone cold'. For my first mug hug, I decided to use up some of that gorgeous turquoise I had left from the Baby Set I made last week.

I decided to use the Time for Tea pattern from the book Knitted Mug Hugs. 

I coped very well, seeing as it was my first time following a non-beginner pattern. I did get into a bit of a pickle with making the buttonhole, and ended up undoing the same 4 rows a total of 8 times. When I finally managed it it still didn't look right but I was so bored by that point I needed to get it over with before I stopped knitting altogether. 

My Mum loves it, she is even happier that she got to choose the button for it.I personally don't think it matches, but hey. She's the artist, not me.

My sister was extremely jealous of this mug hug, and repeatedly stole it for her own use, so I decided to make her one as well. She decided she wanted it striped, it needed to be thicker and it needed to be tighter. (I would have said no, but she is about 3 inches taller than me, and is a lot stronger. Case closed)

I had to change the pattern (and I will make a PDF of the pattern once I've had another shot of making it the same way, just to make sure that it works, nothing worse than a bad pattern!) but it didn't turn out half bad!

I'm quite pleased with how they've turned out. The only problem is though, that as soon as my Mum saw the pink & white mug hug, she immediately decided that she needed a striped one as well.

I don't think this is ever going to end!