All I want is a Tall Ship...

... And a star to steer her by.

As you may or may not know Liverpool recently played host to the Tall Ships Race which was absolutely fantastic and stirred my soul making me want to run away to sea again. Last time they were up was in 1992 and I did run away to sea as it were by signing up to sail with the Sail Training Association that August and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think maybe the family history of sailing and working at sea helps the appeal but I don't think there could have been many people who'd fail to be impressed with the ships that were berthed in Liverpool this last weekend. And there certainly were loads there to see them all too!

Anyway enough of the Capital of Culture report for now and back to our usual topic! There has been knitting, spinning and dyeing activity a plenty over the past few weeks, as the blue fingers and blue smudges over the computer keyboard will vouch for! And little Emily has been the lucky recipient for a lot of it. For her birthday this year she had a toy kitchen but she's hadn't got a lot of food to go with it so I decided to fix that by knitting her some more food and I've had a load of fun doing them too as most of them could be churned out in just one evening or less and the huge smiles on her face has been encouragement enough plus they're good little stash busters! So far she has a slice of Battenburg cake, an iced bun, an ice-cream cone, two cupcakes, a cheese sandwich and a chocolate biscuit. I must admit that my favorite is the ice-cream which is really cool, even if it's blue - which Emily chose and who am I to argue!

I almost forgot that Emily also had some new socks ready for Winter using Gilraens Micro Monkey pattern and some Garnstudio Fabel which has lovely bright colours for little feet and is reasonably priced too. A nice simple pattern to knit, the only work is making up the heel and toe numbers to fit as you go. So that's one pair down ready for Winter and more stashbusting socks to go as these only took 28g of wool and I'm sure I've plenty of leftovers for more!

Also for Miss Emily on the knitting front is a really easy knit (again busting that stash!) using just 100g (with leftovers!) of James Brett's Kool Kotton cotton blend DK yarn and a pattern I found on Ravelry here but I modified it slightly to get the ruffled edge which is really cute and girly. It was a quick knit as well and only took 8 days to finish.


Next on the needles will be for Emily as well and is a cable jumper pattern from Sirdar, can't remember which one right now so will give the details later! As for the dyeing they'll all be uploaded shortly to our etsy shop 'Mam a Mi' and boy do I wish I could keep them all!! And, if you hadn't have guessed already, one has got some luscious blues in it!!