Weekly Wanderings and Knitting

All my Posts lately revolve around my little wanderings with Flynn or knitting........and I'm afraid this week's Post will be no different. 

We are still working on the weekend thing but we are getting into a nice little weekday rhythm. The days I have with just Flynn are broken up into a day at home pottering around and catching up on a million loads of washing and the other day we go on a little adventure -  a bit of sightseeing combined with exercise. Not that it's made an ounce of difference to my waistline mind you, but it does do wonders for restoring the soul. It's a little ritual I look forward to every week. It's nice to be able to linger longer, take some photos and spend some special time with my baby. He's rolling over now. I know! We all went a bit ballistic when he did it - telling him how clever he was and what a big boy he is now. Yep, next he'll be backpacking around Europe. 

Anyway, today we spent time walking around the Hobart Waterfront. I love looking at the boats, looking at the names of the boats and watching the hive of activity that occurs on the boats. It was grey and the sea was a bit angry but contrary to how it looks, the wind was hot.

The other thing I did today was finish Eleanor's Tiny Tea Leaves Cardi by sewing the buttons on. 

I made myself a little challenge at the beginning of the year to knit all the kids a jumper this year. That would be 5 jumpers in total. Now some people would probably start off with the smallest person in the family - a faster knit that would provide the motivation to go onto the larger sizes. But I decided to do the reverse. I like to do the hard work first and be rewarded at the end. When I knitted the Boys some snakes last year I lost motivation and ran out of puff by the third one and it ended up half the size of the others. This is OK on a snake but I didn't want to get to the fifth jumper with anyone's midriff exposed so I decided to do Eleanor's first and then finish with Flynn's. The only problem with this is that I ended up losing motivation because of the enormity of the job - at size 12, this was by far the biggest project I've done. So I went on a little frolic of my own, knitting myself some smaller projects - the scarf and then a hat - before finally being guilted back to the task at hand.

But it is finally done and we have one very happy 8 year old. It is the beautiful Tiny Tea Leaves Pattern by Melissa LaBarre and it was a joy to knit even though it took me forever. It is the perfect Cardi for Tasmania as it can be pretty much worn in Autumn and Spring and with a long sleeved top underneath in Winter. I used Cascade Superwash in the Seafoam colourway. Eleanor chose the colour - her favourite - and I think it's just lovely. I love the ruching detail around the neckline, it's pretty but not frilly. It looks OK at the moment after blocking but I may do a row of crochet around the neckline to avoid it stretching too much and I think it provides a nice edge too. I followed the pattern for the most part, except I added 3 buttons instead of 2, I didn't do any decreases on the sleeves and made the sleeves elbow length as per Eleanor's request. I really wanted some pretty wooden buttons but she wouldn't have a bar of it - just plain old boring ones. Ravelry notes here.

And now onto some jumpers for the Boys and the joy that comes from losing oneself in Ravelry searching for the perfect pattern and a trip to the yarn store for some yummy new yarn.