My new fingerless gloves!

Here are my new pair of gloves which I just finished knitting yesterday.

I knitted with the excess wool that I had from my doctor who scarf so now I've got a whole winter set safe for the hat which is my next knitting project!

As you can see, it's all done in fair isle which was simple to do. The middle part was a bit difficult though as I was using three strands of yarn at once so it was hard to keep the tension loose.

Sorting out the finger holes were a bit tricky too. The pattern I was using wasn't the clearest so I had to spend a lot of time just deciphering it! Speaking of deciphering, my sisters and I have just been doing exactly that working out how you spell the blinking word!

I couldn't have made the gloves at a better time actually. I've been feeling really cold recently what with the transitions of the season starting.

So what do you think of the modeling then??

Battenburg cake!!

If any of you just happened to be wondering what I've been up to today then here it is! I made a battenburg cake.

Of course, it didn't take me all day. I've been up to other stuff too like guitar lessons and cycling.

Thank you very much to my aunt who gave me the recipe for this. It came out really well as you can see.

I did have a few hiccups though and one rather blonde moment! For some reason the cake just wouldn't cook so I ended up having to whack up the heat. The cake was in for a total of 40 minutes as oppose to the suggested 25-30 mins. Don't know what happened there but eventually it cooked.

I wanted to make my own marzipan too but the ingredients were so expensive for that. I worked out that I would need to buy £5 worth of almonds! 5 quid for a few bags of nuts???!!!! I love almonds but still! For that reason, I opted for the ready made stuff!

My blonde moment in the baking process came at the end when I had to heat up the jam. Ok then, I thought. So on went a saucepan on the hob and I plopped a spoonful of jam in. BIG mistake! The noise and smoke that came from this pan was insane. I'm really surprised it didn't set of the smoke alarm.

I quickly got the jam out and slowly started to pour water in as it was spitting out little bits of boiling sugar everywhere.

Not clever!

If saucepans were to convey emotions, this one would be very angry indeed!

But it all worked out and I've got a big thumbs up from people who have got their chops around a bit.

Isla the snake!

I'd like to introduce you to my most recent creation.

This is isla the fair isle snake. Isla with a silent s which is quite ironic for a snake!

I made her on double pointed needles which I've never done before.

I'm actually quite proud of this knitted make actually as I've successfully managed to do a range of knitting techniques.

For some reason, everyone I've shown has really really loved her. I think it's her colourful body and characterful eyes. Hey! She's like Kaa from the jungle book hypnotising everyone with enchanted eyes!

What effect does she have on you?

My baking extravaganza!

I've been doing lots of baking recently. Allow me to show you around some of my edible creations.

This here is a mosaic chocolate button cheesecake. I made it with my little sister Megan the other week. It was her last day of the summer holidays so I thought that we would have a nice time baking together. She adores giant buttons so I came up with the idea of putting a mosaic design of them on top.

Last week, I got given a bag of apples that were picked from my friends garden so I've spent the week cooking them up into varies recipes.

I made this apple and ginger cake with a hazelnut crumble topping...

And then on your right an apple and raisen crumble.

Gotta make a crumble if you have apples don't you?!!

Then last night we made a coco pops strawberry custard cream flan. We had some coco pop mix left over so I made some sandcastles out of them!

So there we are. Everythinng that I've cooked in the last couple of weeks. Have I made you drool on your computer keyboard yet??

Thou shalt have a knitted fishy!

Here's the knitted fish I made a couple of weeks ago now.

I wanted to knit this little guppy because it involved using a range of knitting techniques. The middle of the body consisted of doing fair isle; something I've never done before. I was a bit apprehensive about trying it but turns out it was pretty easy!

I ended up giving the fish away to my friend who needed a bit of cheering up at the time. With it's funky colours I think it definitely did the trick!

She's named it Willie. A good solid name for a fish I think!

Tip of the Tongue!

This is a song that my cousin Bethan and I wrote together whilst I was down visiting them in Devon. It's called Tip of the tongue.

I had a great few days working with Bethan on this. We seemed to work really well together and managed to combine ideas that really gelled. I really hope that we get another chance to write together soon. What with us living on different sides of the country though, it's going to take a bit of planning. I guess we could do it through skype or something. That would be cool!

The way we're sitting playing our guitars looks really funny doesn't it! It literally is a case of we're mirror image with each other what with me playing left handed and her right. Now if we were identical twins playing then that would look really freaky!

Enough of my ramblings. Enjoy the song and please leave some feedback.

Doctor who scarf...done!!

Yay!!! Finally after months of hard work, I can say that I have now made the doctor who scarf!

I actually finished it last week but things have been so busy that I just hadn't gotten round to telling you until now. I nearly told you about it in my last post but thought I'd leave it so that it could get the full spotlight and attention.

The scarf is now so big that it was a two man job to get the pictures of it done and of course, you need to see a picture of me actually wearing it don't you!!

All of my spare time was spent on this project. Now that it's completed, it really did feel like I found myself at a bit of a loss on what to do instead!

I've since managed to fill this little void in my life now though by doing (yep, you guessed it) more knitting.

The knitting bug has well and truly got it's hold on me.

I'm learning a lot of techniques I've never tried before so I've found it great fun and a bit of a personal challenge to teach myself. So far I've managed the art of Intarsia, fair isle and the double pointed needles. Cicular needle-ing has also been done but I've not been able to do anything on them because I think I've got the wrong length for what I had in mind.

So with all this knitting I've been doing, it's meant that I have/am going to have, lots of thing to show you!

Knit one, crochet one!

Boy it's been a busy few weeks!

I've just come back from a Christian camp called Soul Survivor and on top of that, managed to do lots of crafty projects.

The two little soft toys above I made actually just before Soul Survivor but this has been the first proper chance I've had to tell you about them. The hedgehog (which I name Harriet) was crocheted and the purple penguin knitted. I must be a lot faster at crocheting as the hedgehog only took a few hours but the penguin on the other hand took about a day in total.

It seems quite funny that I should be faster at crocheting as I haven't been doing it that long compared to my knitting. Maybe I just find it easier because you only use one tool to crochet so you're more hands in there.

Anyway, on that little rambling side thought, where was I?

Harriet the hedgehog has gone to her new owner already. I went to visit my aunt who lives in Wales the other day so I made Harriet as a gift to her.

The penguin still has it's residence here with me at the moment but will hopefully go to my other aunt who is, as you may have guessed, is crazy about purple! I'm not sure when I'll see her next so the penguin will have to take a trip in a jiffy bag I think.

I'm hoping that all you lot are having a good summer. I know the weather is a bit of a wash out most of the time here but hopefully you've had some good times anyway and even mangaged to get away to somewhere nice!

Back!

I had a great time in Ireland with my family last week. We stayed in a place called Swords which was just on the outskirts of Dublin.

It's been years since we had a proper family holiday abroad and what with Ellen and I being 18, it's probably going to be one of the last all together so it was pretty special.

I had a lot of fun taking photos! We were out and about in some really beautiful places so I took quite a lot. I'm hoping to be able to get them all printed out and maybe make a collage out of them or something. I have the idea of cutting them out in a way so that they make up the shape of Ireland. The pictures I've chosen are just a few of the photos which sum up the fun we had! I got the little rubber duck underneath to remember that. I call him Paddy!!

Having never been to Ireland before, I was actually quite surprised at how different everything felt. Even though we weren't that far away from where we live, everything felt really european especially the town in which we stayed. That was nice though because it made us feel that we were truely away. As lovely as Cumbria is, it's always nice to look at different scenery.

Most of the time the weather was great which was a bonus. I even got rid of my vampire look by getting a tan!!

Jenna also had a good holiday. She went back to the breeders to stay and when I came to pick her up, she looked like she had put on a fair bit of holiday fat! But she had needed to be wormed so when they kindly did that for me, she put on weight really quickly. But she had a blast there. She looked so happy when I saw her again and that made me feel better about leaving her.

So everyone has had a great week!

It's only just beginning

Whoa! Had a very very busy week this week. As I said, it's only just the beginning because tomorrow me and the family are off to Ireland.

But before I go on about what's going to happen, lets talk about what has been. On the Tuesday to Wednesday, we had a house full of guests. My Granny was up to go to the Open with my Dad and my cousin was up too with four other people as they are doing the cycle challenge of John O Groats to Lands End.

They are cycling in the aid of charity to raise funds for their local children's hospice. I think it is truely brilliant what they are doing as it's not an easy challenge especially on a triden!! (A three man bike!) So when they set off again on the Wednesday, I cycled a little bit with them which was pretty cool.

I ended up doing a lot more then I originally thought which my Dad was not happy about. He wanted me to do no more than 8 miles but I sorta ended up doing double that! Opps! But I was fine and didn't collapse on the doorstep of our house or anything. I even had the energy to take a dog walk but have to run all the way home again as we got soaked in a thunder storm.

Then yesterday, I went to Manchester for most of the day shopping with my twin. I had never been in Primark until yesterday and so was introduced to it. It was insane how long we were in there for. It was just such a big shop that even though we were in there for over two hours, we still didn't see everything.

As my wardrobe hasn't been updated since I was thirteen, I took this opportunity to get some new clothes. As you can guess from the fact that I still wear clothes from being age 13, I needed a lot of help on what to pick. So Ellen was my personal shop assistant and just bunged stuff into my basket all over the place.

I had the best time with Ellen. We haven't had the chance do something like this together for years so I'm glad that we finally did it.

So yes! A very busy, exciting week but a lot more of it to come. I'm away in Ireland for a whole week so probably won't be able to put any posts up in that time but when I get back I'm sure I'll lots of stories and pictures to show you all. TTFN!