Random South African eye candy and a FO in angora, cashmere and silk

Today I thought I would post some random scenes around South Africa. All of these pics have been taken by me, on the various trips we have taken around the country. Gerry is a fanatic mountain bike enthusiast (when the poor thing gets some time off work on the odd occasion :( ), and at one point I was doing bike races with him (this is surely testimony to my deep abiding love for him, as I am yet to be convinced of the "pleasure" aspect of this activity...). Because of the amazing diversity in terrain across SA, there are mountain bike races for all kinds of bikers, from the mud lovers to the climbers.

In addition to taking trips out for mountain bike races, we have taken many short breaks around the country, lugging all our gear on the roof of the Landy and strapping everything but the kitchen sink to the rest of the vehicle. Luckily, the cost of domestic cattle class flights are not too exorbitant, so it is possible to travel by air if the destination is too far to drive...


The picture above, was taken at the Bridal Veil Falls near a tiny little "dorp" (local Afrikaans language for a town), in the province of Mpumalanga, called Sabie. This area lies in the very heart of a truly enormous scale forrestation program, run by a big paper giant. It is very hilly (ok...by "hilly" I don't mean the preferred place of residence of your average hobbit...mountainy, but climbable on a mountain bike is more like it...), and one of the places locals and tourists alike like to go to because it is also quite close to the Kruger National Park. While it is hot and humid, and can rain in the blink of an eye, the area includes some spectacular sites such as God's Window, the Blyde River Canyon and the Sudwala Caves, Bourke's Luck Potholes and many sites of historic interest, such as Pilgrim's Rest, the Jock of the Bushveld Memorial, and...(in my humble gastronomic opinion...), Harrie's Pannekoek Shop in Graskop. Pannekoek is the Afrikaans word for pancake, and let me tell you, on a cold, rainy day in Mpumalanga, there is surely nothing better than eating Harrie's pancakes...there are gazillions of options for fillings and toppings, and together with the beautiful art that hangs on the walls, you may find that you never want to leave :)



The pic above was taken at the Cape Town Aquarium. This is the predator tank, which holds 2 million litres of water, and contains a bunch of different types of sharks. We went on a trip with Gerry who was attending a conference, while we went sight-seeing. The kids loved the tank, and we spent ages walking around and around, following the cruising sharks... If you are crazy enough, you can dive in the predator tank with the raggy's (ragged-tooth sharks), or if you are slightly saner, have a lovely Penguin encounter with the kids...



We have had many encounters with elephants, ranging from the east coast of South Africa, to the province of Mpumalanga. Elephants are of course plentiful in the Kruger National Park, as well as many other private and national game reserves, but there are also small independent conservation groups/owners, and these often allow up close interaction with the elephants, in order to pay the bills.... An elephant eats a truly enormous amount of food and keeping them healthy, protected and happy costs a fortune. The girls have ridden on ellies, and fed them and have developed a deep respect and love for these magnificent beasts. When we were in Hazyview, in Mpumalanga, we went on a elephant ride with Elephant Whispers. They care for and love these creatures and we had a wonderful experience....



The picture above was taken in the Golden Gate National Park , near a small town called Clarens, in the Free State. The picture is of a so called "Vulture Restaurant". Vultures are endangered, and the "restaurant" provides cattle carcasses for them to feed on in safety. Nearby, at Falcon Ridge, you can enjoy a wonderfully entertaining nature lecture, with the avid participation of two vultures called Chaos, and Hazard. The kids can also hold some birds of prey on their arms, and feed them bits of chicken (!).


Above is a picture , again of the Mpumalanga area, this time near the Mac-Mac falls.


The picture above was taken at Camps Bay in Cape Town. Cape Town can be a wonderful city to visit...it has countless natural attractions, and for those who like City life, lots of restaurants and shoppy type places to visit. I am not much of a fan of the city stuff, so mostly we go and do the nature thing. Among some of the absolute musts, include a trip up the Cable Car to the top of Table Mountain, a visit to Robben Island (where Mr Nelson Mandela spent a great deal of his life), a visit to the Kirstenbosch Gardens, the aquarium as mentioned, a visit to Boulders to see the penguins, and a visit to the Cape Point Nature Reserve.



The picture above, was taken en route to Clarens in the Free State. I loved the fact that it looks like a doggy, forever frozen in nature. The Golden Gate National Park, is amazing. The hiking is absolutely spectacular. The girls and Gerry and I went on several hikes over the years, and on each one we discovered something special. Clarens is a wonderful little town, unspoiled and welcoming. It is a very well known artists' town, with many galleries and shops specializing in art, from sculptures to paintings, to carpets...you name it. There is the most divine deli, called the Purple Onion...I am putting on weight just thinking about it......



The picture above was taken at the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town. Spectacularly beautiful!


The Picture above was taken in the area of Cathedral Peak in the Drakensberg. We usually stayed at the Cathedral Peak Hotel, which is in the very heart of the mountains. Again, hiking is spectacular and the peace and quiet incredible.
The whole of the Drakensberg Mountain range extends from north east to south west along about 1000kms. The Zulu name of the range means "Barrier of Spears", and it is a truly spectacular site from the air ( I once flew over the range after it had snowed quite heavily and luckily I had my camera in my handbag :) ), seeing the dragon-like crest of rock stretch heavenward.

I will occasionally do posts similar to the one for today...let me know if this is the kind of thing you visitors like to see... :)

And now....drum roll please...I think that this may be the first FO in knitting I have posted! You have all probably wondered if I can actually knit? These fingerless mittens were made for yours truly, but quickly hijacked my my oldest (who, just for the record...gasp!...doesn't like pink), who couldn't resist the allure of cashmere, silk and angora..... :) The pattern is by Karen Adams, and is called Glorious Cabled Mitts. I adapted the pattern a bit, and overall I was very happy with how they turned out. It's really well written...I had no trouble following it :)





And now, my dears I shall retire to bed...it's been quite a day...

Hopefully tomorrow will bring good light and some time stretching, so that I can do a tutorial on how to make the most adorable bobble edge you have ever seen... :)

Good night all
♥

African Flower Hexagon Crochet Tutorial now in Spanish

Hi everyone :)

I wanted to let everyone who speaks Spanish know, that the African Flower Hexagon Crochet Tutorial now has Spanish subtitles ;)

I hope this helps :) You can find the tutorial here.



Tomorrow I'll do the second part of the picot story... what if you want a big fat picot (aka a bobble), instead of a small little critter? Well, you make a bobble cast on!

Have a good evening folks!
♥Heidi

Natural Visitors

Welcome and random visitors....



Wild Coast of South Africa...taken from my balcony.....



Nesting finches...taken from my porch....

Have a good evening :)
♥

The Pretty Picot Cast On...a Tutorial

Well today was quite a day! I had to do some proverbial emotional tap dancing, but it is testimony to my blogged determination to bring you a small post, and keep my promise! To this, I must add some explanation...

I have uploaded two videos demonstrating the details of today's post, but in the first video, I was alone, and had to content with severe body contortion and a deep sustained squint (I was eventually sure that I was looking myself in the eye...) in order to film this here little clip...

Normally my precious daughter does the filming while yours truly demonstrates knitting bliss, but in the first video, I set up my trusty tripod and after considerable trial and error , I managed to get the whole thing focused, while leaning, arms akimbo, back pretzeled, around the darned tripod. This resulted in me only being able to see what the heck I was doing , by looking at the video viewer a half inch from my nose :[

Ok, so what am I trying to say? The video makes me look like I am trying to knit while demonstrating sign language, so please forgive this ambisinistrous knitter...

The Picot Cast On...with a twist!

Ok, so you know how you sometimes want to make something uber-girly and adorable, and you are not sure exactly what kind of embellishment will add that certain " Je ne sais quoi..." without making you (or your recipient) look like a deranged escapee from the Barbara Cartland fan club? Well, search no more! 'Cos here , on your friendly neighbourhood blog, you will find just the thing!

Now, I am sure that the vast majority of readers out in Blogland, have already come across or even mastered this little cast on, and if you have, I am sorry... a tedious description will now follow...

The idea with the Picot Cast on is to create a set of little bumps at the cast on edge of your knitting. This adds a bobbly , pretty border, and is useful for a variety of items, including the ever mentioned babywear, blanket edging, mittens, gloves, scarves, hats, sweaters etc etc .... in fact anything that you can cast on for :)

If you Google "Picot Cast On" you will get a gazillion hits, and your monthly download package will be used up if you just watch the first twenty videos that pop up, so please don't think this way is the only way...it is merely how I like to do things :)

Most of the web sources will describe the picot cast on by using 5 stitches initially.

So it goes something like this...

Cast on 5 stitches.

Knit 2 stitches.

Bind off one stitch on your right hand needle, by slipping the far right stitch over the second stitch that was knitted.

You have one stitch left on your right hand needle.

Knit one stitch.

Bind off one stitch just as before.

You have 2 stitches left on the left hand needle, and one stitch on the right hand needle.

Slip the right hand needle stitch (remaining), onto the left needle.

You now have three stitches on the left hand needle.

Cast on four stitches.

(NOTE: You started with 5 stitches, bound off two stitches, and were left with three stitches. The stitch you slipped from the right hand needle to the left COUNTS AS THE FIRST STITCH, of the five you need in total, ie you cast on 4 extra stitches to make up FIVE stitches to work with, just as in the beginning).

You will have a little gap between the first two stitches on your left hand needle, and the stitch you slipped from the right hand needle to the left.

Repeat from process from the beginning...knit 2, bind off 1, knit 1, bind off 1, slip remaining stitch to left needle, cast on 4. There you go :)

Your knitting should look like the pic above. I am not wild about the look of these funny little picots...they kinda look like (please excuse the phrase...) little udder teats...not nice and bobbly-like... So I sat in bed one night, knitting and fiddled with this. How could I make them look rounder and cuter?


First I thought I would make the picots, using only FOUR stitches instead of five, making them crowd together and perhaps make them fatter that way. Above is the result. The bit of knitting has a natural tendency to curl up, since it is stocking stitch after all, but I think that the four stitch picot cast on worsened the curl up. Hmmmm...so back to the drawing board....



In the pic above, I have taped the knitted piece down to force it flat, so that you can see the effect. It's better, in my humble opinion, but the curl up is too much to deal with....

Then I added a twist...and I had a zen moment. In the pic above you can see the roundy, fat little picots that were made. It is extremely difficult to describe a three dimensional technique in written words, so I have made a video showing exactly what I did. It's the second video. I am going to add a written description as well...just in case ;)

Cast on 5 stitches.

Knit 2 stitches.

Bind off one stitch on your right hand needle, by slipping the far right stitch over the second stitch that was knitted.

You have one stitch left on your right hand needle.

Knit one stitch.

Bind off one stitch just as before.

You have 2 stitches left on the left hand needle, and one stitch on the right hand needle.

BEFORE SLIPPING THE STITCH ON YOUR RIGHT HAND NEEDLE ONTO THE LEFT HAND NEEDLE, rotate your right hand needle through 360 degrees, moving away from you .

Slip the right hand needle stitch (remaining), onto the left needle.

You now have three stitches on the left hand needle.

Cast on four stitches.

(You started with 5 stitches, bound off two stitches, and were left with three stitches. The stitch you slipped from the right hand needle to the left COUNTS AS THE FIRST STITCH, of the five you need in total, ie you cast on 4 extra stitches to make up FIVE stitches to work with, just as in the beginning).

Repeat from the beginning...knit 2, bind off 1, knit 1, bind off 1, slip remaining stitch to left needle, cast on 4.

I must say, I really like these little critters! When I started knitting, I realised that I had inadvertently created a set of eyelets just above the picots :) Of course, I had to try the four stitch picot with twist option, and yes, of course the thing looked adorable, but curled like mad.

So I went back to the five stitch picot cast on and proceeded as follows:
Row 1: Knit all
Row 2: Knit all
Row 3: Knit all
Row 4: Purl all
Row 5: Knit all
Rest of work: alternate purl and knit ie stocking stitch.

I found that this helped to uncurl the work a bit and I liked the effect of the row of purl above the picots.

Right...back to the four stitch problem...
I decided that I liked this look better, but obviously needed to add stitches to the work to allow for a bit of uncurling ...so this is what I did...


On Row 1, I knit into the front and back (thereby making one extra stitch), of the stitches shown above. I then proceeded with Row 2 exactly as described earlier on. And it worked! I made little eyelets, the picots were a little closer together, and the knitting curled a bit less...happiness!

The video above is the self flagellation one...how to make a five stitch picot cast on...

The video below is the demonstration of the twist...happy viewing!

And now, Scotty beam me up.....

Night all,

Heidi :)

Hoo are you?

I found a lovely post on Night Owl Crafting, a random questions about me called "Hoo are you?"
So, in the spirit of sharing, here are my answers... I don't for a moment think that the majority of the readers who travel on this little blogger road of mine, will feel the earth move when reading this post, but, as I said before, there may the odd owl who enjoys a bit of distanced gossip... :)

1. Are you married/single/in a relationship?

♥Married♥..... yup! fortunately to my best friend....
My husband's name is Gerry, and we met at a huge general hospital here in Johannesburg, while I was doing my medical internship. Gerry was, at the time, a registrar in Internal Medicine (he was busy with his specialization rotation), and was given the onerous task of supervising my first official forays into the quagmire of patient care.

Of course, the romance blossomed in typical "General Hospital "style ;) , and after approximately 3 months of having been together (around a hundred and twenty hours of working together a week...yes, those were tough days, my friends....), decided that we should get married... Life and exams intervened, and 2 years passed before we eventually got married in 1995. By then , I was also in a specializing post, and although we did have a honeymoon, our lives consisted for a long time, of stumbling from one exam to the next in a kind of round-robin hell.... Thankfully, Gerry's last set of exams took place in 2006, and he is now an Intensivist (this is a doctor, who is a specialist in Intensive Care Medicine).

Although we sometimes drive each other crazy, and are capable of quite spectacular fights (both being somewhat passionate beings...), we are very happily married.

2. What do you do for a living? Do you enjoy it?

As noted above, I am a medical doctor by training, but prefer to think of myself as "the accidental tourist".... joking...
Seriously.... my walk through medicine has been interesting, and varied. I spent several years in a specialist training post, but gave birth to my oldest daughter shortly before my final exams, and once she made her presence felt in this world (as opposed to the over-crowded neighbourhood of the liver and the bladder), I couldn't go back to work and leave her with someone else... This resulted in some serious financial difficulties, as Gerry was till working in a government hospital post and earning the odd peanut here and there...
Somehow, though, we managed and I became a stay at home mommy. Best thing I ever did!
Over the years, as the girls started going to nursery school, and then school, I have worked part time in medicine, in a big variety of fields...I have spent some time in HIV medicine, Accident and Emergency medicine, a bit of Aesthetic medicine, and more recently, I am working part time in the ICU with Gerry.

I have also run various small businesses over the years, including embroidery, photography, artist bears design and making, digital scrapbooking, to mention a few. I am very easily bored and find I have to change creative outlets often. The longest lasting crafty type thing that I have stuck to , is knitting, crochet and sewing. I KNIT EVERY DAY FOLKS! Love it...love it....love it!

Other than that, I organize our lives (Gerry has a hectic practice and the admin of running our lives is virtually a full time task...), ferry kids around, do homework, meet with my friends at our knitting group once a week and generally plot and scheme what our next month will hold.

3. In what state do you live? Where were you born and raised?

Born and raised in sweet 'ol Gauteng, in South Africa. (For you folks across the big blue...Gauteng is one of South Africa's provinces /States).

4. Do you have children? If so, how many? If not, do you want them?

Yes! Two daughters aged 10 and 13. We absolutely adore them and probably spoil them far too much....it's a weakness :{ .......

5. Who is your favourite blogger to follow, and why?

Oh man, that's hard! If you take a look at my bloglist , you'll see quite a diversity in terms of type of blogs...I love the knitting and crocheting blogs, and I also enjoy the not so often listed kind of stuff, like the Marginal Revolution, and the Adventure blogs... I love antique jewellery, so I check in daily at The Three Graces :)

There is so much creativity and goodness out there, it's difficult to choose....


Right...so in a nutshell...there it is!

Tomorrow...a tutorial :)

Lo♥
Heidi :)

Eskimimi's fabulousness personified giveaway...

Ok, folks... some serious goodness to enjoy today...

One of my favourites: blogger/designer extraordinaire, and all round technically perfect knitter, Mimi, is having an amazing giveaway and offer on all her patterns. Needles afire! this girl's stuff is beautiful and her blog inspirational, so have a look... after all...she with the mostest stash wins...

Have a good one !
Lo♥
Heidi :)