Snapshots - August 2016

 Hello again! I'm late with this month's edition of snapshots, but you were expecting that, weren't you? August again was a very mild month. We really got off lightly this winter. There have been plenty of beautiful blooms in the garden, including the camellia Fairy Blush which lines my driveway, and looks absolutely stunning when the low sunlight illuminates the petals. The hellebores are in full swing as well and I have several different varieties now. In the picture above you can see most of my different ones. The only named varieties are the two in the middle - the white double is Mrs Betty Ranicar, and the purple anemone is Tutu. The camellias and hellebores have been great for picking, and all have featured heavily in my Instagram photos this month.

Here is a couple of flat lays I did with some hellebores (and also a lovely print by my Instagram friend @atelier_cocon_m). And also, a pair of crochet cuffs I designed and made. I'm really happy with the way they turned out! I'd had the design in my head for quite a while, and to have them actually work out the same way is quite a feat! I do intend to write up the pattern and publish it here eventually, but it will probably be a while... you know me!

 My other exciting crafting achievement this month is this - I knitted my first pair of socks! I'd been wanting to do this for ages, but always felt too intimidated to try. I'd seen a few people recommend the Sockalong tutorial by Winwick Mum, so eventually I decided to give it a go. Well, it worked a treat, and I discovered that actually, knitting socks is not that difficult! The Winwick Mum tutorial has lots of photos and clear instructions for different needles (I used long circular, also known as Magic Loop).

Now, I'm not saying these socks are perfect or even very good at all. They are in fact quite bad. The second sock I knit turned out baggier than the first, and I realised (I hadn't even noticed as I was knitting) that my tension had gotten really loose. Tension in knitting seems to be a lot more difficult to control than in crochet. I had this trouble with my Linus shawl too - some rows are really loose, and with others I was struggling to get the yarn off the needle!

So there are plenty of areas to work on before I can be a good knitter. I have cast on another sock though, so hopefully there will be a bit of an improvement with my next pair!

 Another project this month was my In The Yarn Garden cushion. I started making the back piece, but didn't get much further than this.

Podrick (red) and Ini (blue) have been as cute as ever this month! We got them a climbing tower (thanks Kmart!) which they love to play on. It wobbles quite a lot, but that doesn't deter Podrick from climbing right to the top platform and curling up on it to sleep. Sometimes he'll have a lovely big stretch and roll right off. (He always manages to grab onto the pole on his way down!) Ini gets into the box to sleep. And they both love chasing each other right up to the top, clambering up the pole like little monkeys.

All right, that's it from us this month! Spring has now arrived... and I'll tell you all about it at the end of September.