I've moved blogs

You can now find me here http://www.castoncastoff.co.uk/blog/

We have been waiting for some decent weather to ripen these little darlings. We put in 6 plants this year in different places, some in the beds and others in pots. We had alot of hot weather in May/June then August was rubbish and it's only just warming up again now. Here's hoping we can get the others ripe before I have to find a recipe for green tomato chutney. :-)

A new home

The purple circles are winging their way to a new home in Amsterdam! Hooray. Not been able to do much today. My darling husband has done his back in and needs lots of attention.... :-)

Needle case £7

Plus postage - 60p to Europe, £1.05 to USA/Canada, £1.12 to Asia/Australia. I accept UK sterling cheques or Paypal. Enjoy!

purple circles needle case

purple circles needle case,
originally uploaded by cast on cast off.

Thought I'd try and see if anyone would be interested in these little needlecases I made and blow me down, someone wants to buy one! Amazing. Better get cracking and make some more.

Misty River

River,
originally uploaded by cast on cast off.

Mist is coming along very slowly......found some mohair I'd bought 2 winters ago on sale and thought I'd see what it looked like for River. Not as nice as KSH but is knitting up alright. Decided on 8mm pins rather than the 7mms as it's slightly thicker than KSH anyway. You can't really see the pattern forming here....not a very good shot but will take another in a few days when I've done some more.

Cleaned up the tomatoes this afternoon and am hoping this will help them ripen. Have loads of green ones......but the weather has been so crap that I'm not expecting them to ripen in a hurry.

Crochet roll and stuff

I enjoyed making this and needed to make one for a while. I have all my knitting and crochet paraphernalia in an old whiskey tin. It's a great idea BUT you have to tip everything out when you want to find something. As I've been doing bits and pieces of crochet recently, it was a pain to search for a hook. I made up my own pattern and used two fat quarters of Kaffee Fassett shot cottons, sewed them together, bagged it out then folded over what was needed to hold the hooks. Stitched about 1/2" apart and added the vintage hexagon; one to add a deeper and wider pocket and for a bit of detail. I had some interesting synthetic trim and caught them in the side seams, et voila.

Have done about half of the sleeve on Mist and am pottering along with the multi-directional scarf. Not getting much done during the day as I've been visiting friends and going out for lunches! Gotta do it while the summer lasts.

Vintage casein buttons

Vintage casein buttons,
originally uploaded by cast on cast off.

Had a jaunt to a charity shop this morning and had a ball. I got heaps of stuff. Loads of vintage knitting patterns, 7m of pale blue ric rac, fabric, felt, elastic and these fabulous buttons. They were filthy when I found them lurking at the bottom of the box. I cleaned them up with some washing up liquid and an old toothbrush. Good as new. I did the hot water test on them and they're definitely casein. They smell like old socks!

Started Mist last night and is coming along nicely. Doing a sleeve first - just to mix things up a little.

Had a fantastic time at the Festival of Quilts this past weekend. It is always an inspiration. So many talented people there with their work. The highlight was Joan Schulze's retrospective - mindblowing. I was sneaky and took a shot of Steve Martin's brain. Got lots of bits and pieces. You can see some marbled fabric in the card I made for a friend. Lots of projects all lined up for the winter!

This is my favourite shot of the festival.

Elspeth Finito!

Finito!,
originally uploaded by cast on cast off.

How exciting, have spent most of the day doing the crochet round the edge of Elspeth. I ended up doing two rounds of dc on the sleeves with the picot to finish off but only one round for the body plus picot. I need a bit more coverage in the arm department. I guess I went into the second or third stitch to start the dc but used my eye more than anything particularly when coming around the curve on the fronts. Check out these other finished Elspeths, here and here I love Kristin's idea of using ribbon for the tie rather than a strand of picot. I quite fancy making another one and extending the body a bit but otherwise it's a perfect fit for me. I know a few people had mentioned they would knit a size smaller than their usual for this one but it worked out for me. The crochet was fun, mainly because I haven't done any for a while. Hmmm, what next............