Sock Progress and Geocaching Adventures

Embossed Leaves Socks

This is a piccie of my current sock project. It's the Embossed Leaves Socks by Mona Schmidt. Normally I manage to complete one pair of socks per month but because I've not been well lately I've not felt like knitting much so didn't complete a pair for March. So I'm hoping to get these socks finished soon so that I have a pair finished for April! I've got the first one finished and just need to get a move on with the second sock! The yarn is Dream in Color Smooshy, which is very nice to knit with!

Colourful beach huts

I've also been Geocaching on the weekends which has meant less knitting time too. We been to some great places lately and although most of them are fairly local we've seen places we've never been to before. A couple of weekends ago we did about 8 geocaches around the Bournemouth area. We had some lovely strolls along the promanade before heading into the various Chine gardens along the way.

We visited Branksome Chine Gardens, Alum Chine Gardens and Middle Chine all of which we accessed via the seafront prom.

Branksome Chine Gardens

Milton Abbas

This weekend we went further into the depths of Dorset and visited Milton Abbas . We did a geocache there which took us on a lovely 2 mile walk around the countryside. We then headed to Bulbarrow Hill to find another geocache. We found the area where the cache was hidden fairly quickly but the sandwich box was hidden inside the tree where a hole had formed and it took us ages to wiggle it out of it's hidey hole!!! At one point I thought I'd gotten my arm stuck!!!!

We then headed to Winterborne Stickland for our final cache of the day. This took us through a huge field which eventually lead to some woods called Field Grove. We walked for about a mile through the woods to find the hiding place and then it started to rain. We noticed halfway back through the woods that we had taken a wrong turning and seemed to have gone in the wrong direction. Eeek.....we were lost in the woods. Luckily the gps helped us to find our way out! It was so quiet in the woods and we didn't see a single person the whole time we were there. Mind you that's probably a good job as my imagination started to get the better of me !! You know what it's like when you hear a twig snap!
Here's a piccie of GeoTed our Geocaching buddy. He comes on all our trips and manages to get into most of the photos! He's not photo shy!!! We've now found 49 geocaches and we're now deciding where to head to for our 50th cache.

Go With The Flow Socks

Well I've been a bad blogger!!! I finished these socks at the end of February and forgot to post piccies on my blog! Most weekends I've been out Geocaching with friends which has left very little time for knitting. But this weekend was a wash out and so I decided to take some piccies and do some sock knitting. (I'll post piccies soon of my current sock wip.) Mind you I have a nasty cold which has zapped my strength so I've not managed to do as much knitting as I'd hoped.

Pattern: Go With The Flow by Evelyn A Clarke

From: Favorite Socks by Interweave Knits

Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Solids
Colour: Natural
Needles: 2.5mm Clover Bamboo DPNs

I made a mistake after knitting the cuff pattern I forgot to knit a purl row and went straight onto knitting the leg chart! Oops! It was a nice simple pattern once I got my head around how to knit the cuff pattern. Thanks to Tiennie and Evelyn herself who helped me to figure it out :-)

The weather has been very dull and rainy this weekend and these are the best photos I can get. It's amazing how many photos you take to get a half decent one to put on the blog. Thank goodness for digital cameras!

Lovely Prizes and an Award!

When I got home from work last night I found a lovely, squishy parcel waiting for me. I had won a prize from Liz at FluffyKnitting who was having a Blogoversary Competition! I couldn't wait to open up the beautifully wrapped parcels but I made sure I took photos first! The tissue paper was so pretty it was a shame to rip it open!
I got 2 balls of Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino which feels soooo soft. I also got a piece of material in a very pretty pale green pattern, some yummy Green & Blacks chocolate and also.....
these very pretty stitch markers. I'm looking forward to using them when I start my next sock project. Thank you so much Liz for all the lovely prizes :-)
I was also nominated by CJ at The Cabled Climber for the "You Make My Day" award!! Thank you so much CJ.

Birthday Pressies, Yarn Aquisitions & WIP

It was my birthday yesterday and I received some very pretty sock yarn and I thought I would share some photos with you. I also got a lovely birthday cake from one of my friends which was very yummy. No, I haven't eaten it all .... yet. I'll be having another slice when I get home from work today. I also got some lovely none knitting pressies of perfume, bubble bath, Disney socks, slippers, hand cream, bath confetti and money. One of my friends also bought me a Geocaching.com waterbottle and accessories which will come in handy for my next trip out treasure hunting.

From left to right they are: Sunshine Yarns Twist - Tundra.
Sunshine Yarns Twist - Swedish Short Snout Dragon
Dream of Color Smooshy - Some Summer Sky.

I also recently treated myself to some yarn and forgot to post the photos on my blog!! I got this lovely package from Socktopus which was beautifuly wrapped.
I chose 2 skeins of Dream in Color Smooshy in Beach Fog and Petal Shower. I haven't used Smooshy before but it feels very soft and smooshy!!!

Here is a piccie of my current sock that I'm working on. It's the Go With The Flow sock pattern by Evelyn Clark. I've haven't knitted anything for the last 4 days so I really need to finish this sock so that I can start a new pattern with some of my new yarn.

I also treated myself to 2 more skeins of Dani's Sunshine Yarns sock yarn. The colour above is called Hedwig and the one below is Dobby. Have you noticed the Harry Potter theme going on here!!! My new birthday yarn is also from the Harry Potter range and Dani has a whole range of Dragon coloured yarns.

Geocaching

Studland Beach

On Saturday I went Geocaching with friends for the first time. Geocaching is a treasure hunting game where you use a GPS receiver to help you find hidden containers which sometimes, depending on their size, will hold treasure e.g. toys, cds, and trinkets etc together with a log book you can sign. Most of the items only cost about a pound and you can take something out of the cache so long as you put something back in for the next person to find. Some of the containers are micro in size which is the smallest container you can find and can range from a 35mm film canister or recently I found a container that was only 1cm in width which had a tiny piece of paper inside to sign to say that you had found it.

You can find cache's in your local area by visiting the Geocaching.com website and searching by putting in your town. Once you find a cache you want to find you enter the co-ordinates into your GPS and then follow the arrow on your GPS to the area the cache is hidden. You have to do a bit of searching but so far we've found all of the caches we have been looking for although some were quite hard to find. There are lots of caches in my area and loads all over the country. You can also search for caches if you are on holiday as they are hidden all over the world!!

My GPS and Travel Bug

Here is a picture of my GPS next to a Travel Bug we found in one of the caches. A Travel Bug has a trackable dog tag attached to it. You don't keep the Travel Bugs as the idea is to move it from cache to cache so that it can travel the world. The Travel Bug we found is an old spark plug from a volvo car and the owner wants it to ultimately travel to Sweden where the car was made.

Cache box and contents

Here's a picture of one of the cache's we found on Saturday. This box had a great selection of items which included a little Forever Friends teddy, a pair of socks, a dvd, face mask, whoopie cushion, a blank DVD-RW, a set of highlighter pens etc. We took the little teddy who will now go on our Geocaching travels with us. We left a necklace and a fridge magnet bottle opener as a swop for someone else to take in the future.

Old Harry Rocks

One of the caches we found was near Old Harry Rocks in Studland. The weather was gorgeous....very warm and sunny, there were lots of visitors enjoying the spectacular views and munching on their sarnies.

The Globe

On Sunday we went to The Globe in Swanage to find a hidden cache. The Globe is a 40 ton limestone representation of the world, three metres in diameter, engraved with a 1880's world map. Again the weather was warm and sunny. My littlest neice is in the photo above and all the kids had a great time treasure hunting and following the arrow on the GPS.

This is the Obelisk on the Purbeck hills between Swanage and Corfe Castle. We had quite a walk to get to this cache but the views were breathtaking and well worth the hike up the hill.

This is a really fun sport/hobby for the whole family to enjoy. Why not have a go yourself???

Crosshatch Lace Socks

Pattern: Crosshatch Lace Socks

From: More Sensational Knitted Socks
Yarn: Koigu KPPPM

Colour: P450

Needles: 2.5mm Clover Bamboo DPNs

These are my first finished pair of socks for 2008! In a previous post I mentioned that I wasn't too keen on the way the yarn was knitting up (I don't like the pooling of the purple and blue) but I am pleased with the finished socks and I think they have grown on me. I did start knitting these socks with a 60st cast on but they seemed really tight and I had made a mistake in the pattern so I frogged them and cast on 72sts (the next size in the book). They fit a treat so I'm happy the frogging was worth it. I really like the pattern so I may knit it again but there are lots of interesting patterns in More Sensational Knitted Socks that I may have to knit first ;-)

Yummy Sunshine Yarns

I haven't treated myself to any yarn for ages and I've really missed getting yummy yarn packages arriving in the post. I find it really gives me a happy boost when I get yarn! Anyone else feel the same way? I placed an order with Dani at Sunshine Yarns on Etsy for these two skeins. The problem with looking at Dani's yarns is that she has the most amazing colours and it's soooo hard to choose which ones you want to buy. Of course, if I were a millionaire I wouldn't have the difficult choice of only choosing two colours at a time ..... I'd buy them all ;-) OK, silliness over!

Dumbledore
I ended up choosing Dumbledore and Seacoast both of which are Twist (100% Superwash wool with a tight spin). Dani has a new website where you can see her lovely yarns. There is also a photo gallery where you can see lots of lovely socks that have been knitted in Sunshine Yarn's yarn.

Seacoast