Shaun the Sheep cross stitch - finished!

Shaun the Sheep!

 FINISHED! at last! my Shaun the Sheep : Exercise Time x-stitch kit for £5 - apart from a few errors I think this is just about spot on!  For a first attempt, I'm pretty pleased with it!  where I've gone wrong, I at least KNOW where/why and for what it is and what I'll do with it (prolly nothing!!) its fine by me!  I've enjoyed this and am now looking at kits to explore this further! but NOT white on white!!

Back! finished

 I've finished the back of Arielle and commenced the hem panel for the front.  Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced my smallest needles - IF I ever had any!  I've looked in all my bags and needle rolls and can't find a pair of tiny needles so have just gone ahead and knit with the 2.25mm's and I think my gauge is about right to match that of the back hem!  I'm still enjoying this knit and would look to knitting more with this yarn.

the Kate shawl

I've decided to start doing the extra increases on alternate purl rows to bring about a deeper section at the back of this lovely shawl pattern.  Eleanor on the kal that is running with this pattern has been very helpful with suggestions on yarn and needle choices, sizes and variations and I'm still knitting away and finding as it grows it chomps on the yarn but I'm still only on my 2nd ball of felted tweed so plenty still to use before I reach the half way point and head for the finish!

Elsewhere I'm looking at knitting mittens and hoping to do so alongside crafty pals in an informal KAL, easily distracted my queue is now filled with all sorts of (mostly) novelty knits that I've no doubt I'll NEVER actually knit thanks to the thread on Ravelry I think I've frightened at least 2 members of the family and a couple of non-craft pals with some links!! ha-haa!!

FINALLY the other bit of "news" worthy a mention, our no.1.son.18yrs has got a JOB!
A temporary job - for the summer - for the purposes, mainly, of earning some money ahead of his going to Uni in the Autmn.  dh secured him a position via an agency at his place of work which unfortunately means that HE has to fetch/take him due to in part the unfavourable hours - 6am-2pm and also the distance involved and lack of public transport links. 
We feel it will be worth "our/his" while in doing this "taxi" service for our son not least for the cash we hope he'll earn over the summer!  Yesterday was his first day after an initial day of induction, training and the obligatory health and safety sessions .. the alarm was set for 4.15am and it was a LONG DAY! .. zzz .. he came home via the train/s and poor dh used his lunch break to taxi our son to the station and it still took him 2hrs to reach home! (no direct line).  Poor lad was exhausted as this is a physical job, as well as the early start - all he could do was mumble something that sounded like "go away! leave me alone! wahhhh FEEED MEEE ..."
He has a "day off" today and I've left him lying in until about 11am and now he's having a relaxing day in the house ahead of another set of long days wed-fri!!  (poor dh went to bed himself at 9pm and went straight to sleep!!! - it was a long wait from 6am to 8.30am for his start!).