Busy Being Retired

Ten weeks into my husband's retirement and we have settled into a lovely routine.  We potter around the house and garden, go for long country walks and watch a lot of sport on television.

We've been enjoying plenty of walks along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.  The canal is 127 miles long and this year there have been celebrations to mark 200 years since its completion.

Burscough

Lydiate

It really is a beautiful and peaceful place for a stroll.

And besides all this loveliness, I'm finding lots of time for knitting.

The past six weeks have flown by in terms of my knitting projects.  I've been joining in with a stranded knitting KAL with one of the groups I belong to on Ravelry.  I've put links to the relevant Ravelry project pages for each project.  Since chatting to you last time, and sharing my Fair Isle cardigan, I've completed my first ever pair of Fair Isle socks.

I can't believe I have put off knitting colourwork socks for so long, because I enjoyed knitting these so much.  I'm now busy browsing all the colour work sock patterns on Ravelry and I can't wait to start another pair.

I've also completed this cute Bumblebee Hat.

I was inspired by one of the other knitters from the Ravelry group to make this pattern.  She had had issues with the size of the hat, so I reconfigured it to match my favourite hat recipe, keeping the charts from the original pattern.

It was such a joy to knit and I couldn't put it down once I started.

So a very productive six weeks in terms of stash-busting.  For the four projects I finished for the KAL, I used 532g and 35 different colours in total, all in 4 ply weight.  Very satisfying.

And if that isn't enough, I knitted up a shawl with the Cuddlebums yarn I bought at Yarndale in September this year.

I love the little pops of colour in the pink background.  I used a favourite knitting pattern (it's free on Ravelry) called Age of Brass and Steam.  It's simple but very effective.

Lastly, I've been at the sewing machine again.  This time I made a simple skirt.

I used the skirt sections of my favourite Simplicity 2444 dress pattern and added a waistband.  I'm very happy with the fit and will be making more skirts like this in the future.  I would have liked to have shown you a picture of me wearing the skirt but to be honest, I don't trust my husband's photography skills!

I've recently bought two lots of new dress fabric and one lot of skirt fabric, however, I'm in the middle of decorating one of the bedrooms so crafty projects may have to take a backseat until the decorating is out of the way.  So until next time, I'm off to my pasting table to get suitable sticky.  Enjoy your week.

Exciting Times

September has proved to be a very eventful month so far.  At the beginning of the month my husband retired.  It was something we've been planning for quite some time, but even so, it's a big change in our lives which we are going to have to get used to.  The plan is for lots of holidays and days out, but I'm sure we'll settle into a slower routine over time.

As a celebration of his retirement, we had a holiday away with our daughters for a week. It's been a while since we've all been away together.  As a reminder of holidays gone by, we booked a holiday cottage in North Wales, in Pwllheli to be exact.

It was a wonderful week, I enjoyed every minute of it.  We had some lovely walks around the coastal paths on the Llyn Peninsula.  The landscape is amazingly beautiful and rugged.

Hell's Mouth

Mynydd Cilan

We had a paddle in the sea at Abersoch.

So cold!

And I was quite emotional at finding the gravestone of one of my ancestors in the church yard in the village of Llanengan.

Llanengan Church

Lovely old pub in the village of Llanengan

It was all over far too quickly, but now that work is a thing of the past, I'm looking forward to lots of time away.

Our holiday cottage

The cottage we stayed in was lovely, but the internet reception was poor so I'm trying, this week, to catch up.

Before I went away, I finished my Fair Isle cardigan.

I love the colours, but I'm a bit annoyed with myself that I didn't check my gauge properly.  The cardigan is a lovely slim fit, but maybe a bit too snug on the sleeves.  Never mind, it's still wearable but would be just that little bit better if there was a little bit of ease around the arms. Details of this project can be found on Ravelry, here.

I also completed the button-through skirt I had been wanting to sew.

I used leftover fabric from a dress I had made last year and buttons recycled from an old dress.

I was so pleased with how easy the button holes were to make.  I'll definitely have to make more of these skirts.

It's less than two weeks to go until Yarndale and I'm so looking forward to it.  My knitting mojo has deserted me lately and I suspect that the stash busting has had an impact on this.  It will be lovely to have an injection of new yarn.  I'm sure that will get the creative juices flowing again.  In the meantime, I'm knitting up a cardigan in some frogged yarn - not very inspiring but I've only got one more sleeve to do.  I'm now busy dreaming of the new yarn that'll be coming home with me shortly.

Have a good week everyone.