Saturday, August 18, 2012

It must be August again....

Did I mention me and August have a bit of a love/hate relationship?

August is a month that's probably good for my soul but hard on my heart. I'll apologise in advance if you feel like you've read this blog entry before from me - you probably have .

August is a month surrounded by memories of my Dad - his birthday, my mum's birthday, the date of his death and funeral, father's day - but then whoooosh, it's over for another year.

And because it's compounded, you can't really just get on with life and pretend nothing happened. I think this August has hit me just recently with the awful loss of other people, others remembering their children passing, friends with terminal cancer, a mother in my knitting community losing her toddler to SIDs, the toddler nephew of a friend of mine's little heart and body fighting to hang in there.

And then there's my house on the market, with it's 5 year old little blossom tree growing, getting ready to flower. A tree that popped up just after my Dad died that I wanted to leave and let grow and bloom when it was suggested we dig it out or chop it down. A tree that I love to see in my garden, that would make me very sad if future owners chopped down.

And then whilst looking for real estate these days I happened upon this. My family home for what feels like my lifetime before leaving home...and even continued past then for when I came home for summer holidays and visiting. We moved in when I was 2, in 1980 and it was sold to the current owner in 2005 from memory. It doesn't look much the same anymore tbh, well, besides the shape and functions of house and rooms. But what a super childhood I had living there with my mum, dad, sisters and brother.

Just seeing it makes me wish I could turn the clock back and just go lie on the floor of the lounge with my siblings watching tv and making too much noise whilst Dad was trying to watch the news and Mum was knitting.

If only, even just for a little moment we could.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Introducing Greyson

Well there's nothing like a new pattern release to spark a bit of blog writing!

Greyson” - son of the grey-haired man. This pattern has been affectionately written and named for the men in my family, my distinguished looking silver haired husband and our delicious sons.



I'm actually really proud of this pattern - written in 3 yarn weights with 14 sizes (for each yarn) from NB (15") to 10-12 years (28"), I think this is a pattern people might like to knit more than once. I've knitted 6 of them already! And one of my testers Rachel has knitted 3 already too!

Greyson is a classic raglan style V-neck sweater – all ready for you to personalise as you wish!Simple to knit, with a straight forward and easy-to-follow pattern, it is knitted top down and seamlessly.

And I've got a quick knit a long for it running till the end of August too - come and pop over here and join in!


This pattern is also accompanied by a fabulous Watermellish PDF for argyle charts for duplicate stitch, which are worked if you wish after your sweater is knitted. These are included for both the vertical and horizontal argyle with both a unisex diamond shape as well as an alternative heart chart. They are very straight forward - an excellent introductory duplicate stitch project if you’ve never attempted it before!

You can buy a copy by clicking this buy now button - it is selling for $6USD.


Hmmm - and how about a little pattern giveaway whilst I'm at it? Leave a comment here with your Ravelry name and I'll randomly pick a commenter tonight to gift a copy of the pattern to. If you've already purchased it then I'll refund you the pattern price instead!

Happy Knitting!

xx

Julia