Ooooh, is that for me?

5 minutes before I left for work yesterday (and about 5 minutes after I should have left for work yesterday) a knock on the door signalled the arrival of the postman with 5 parcels.  I only had time to establish that 2 of them were for me, 1 from Texere and the other from Fabric Rehab, before I scurried out of the door.  Unsurprisingly I spent most of my working day willing it to be 5 o'clock so I could get home and get into the contents of those parcels.  So the second thing I did after closing the front door ( the first was feeding the cats who were apparently STARVING judging by the volume of the miaowing) was dive straight in.

Look, a big pile of colourful potential! I love that all of these were speculative purchases - I have no firm plans for any of it so I'm looking forward to a good few hours of looking at patterns and colour combinations and dreaming of all the possibilities.

These are 2 very different sets of mixed merino top from Texere.  Looking at these I am very clearly a person of light and shade.  I love splashes of bright colour, but I do enjoy darker colours especially blacks and greys.  I guess this is what stops me looking like a clown on a daily basis.  Anyway, I think this little selection satisfies any colour whim I might have for a while.

All of the fabric I purchased from Fabric rehab, however, is a touch on the less subtle side.  Plain colours and simple patterns are relatively easy to find so I was looking for something a bit different.  There are certainly some unusual prints here that will be perfect for bags and as accents on garments.  I'm sure you'll agree that I have plenty to keep me busy here and hopefully plenty of news for my next post!

Knitty Winter 2011

I was having a little browse about on Ravelry yesterday and spotted a few threads on the forums which suggested that the new Knitty was up.  Luckily, I think I was a little late to the party, which meant that I had no trouble accessing it.  As usual I head to the website half hoping that everything on there is completely fugly so I don't end up adding anything else to my queue of things to knit now.  It sure is nice to have loads of choice, but every time I find a new pattern which I love love love another pattern ends up lying fallow for another few months.  I really should learn not to look, but look I did and thankfully there is nothing there that is screaming out to be knit right now.  Most of the patterns are not really for me, but I have faved a few on Ravelry with the vague intention that I might knit them one day.  Jacqueline is a bit of a long shot, bulky cardigans are not something I often knit, but maybe one day I might feel the need.  Shetlander I actually really like, but I'm still; feeling quite intrepid about colourwork so these will have to wait until I'm feeling brave.  Maeva I also really like, there's loads of socks in my queue and I tend to choose a yarn and then match it to a pattern so maybe these will get lucky soon, or maybe they won't.  Finally is Quest, which I think I really like but I'm not entirely sure.  I think I'll wait until there are a few more completed projects on Ravelry before I make up my mind.  So that's it, another 4 patterns in my favourites, but none of them are really threatening to leap to the top of the queue.  Thank heavens!

Spin, spin, spin

All advice I've read about learning to spin mentions spinning a bit every single day, so I have been.  I must say that this seems to be doing the trick and I really feel like I'm starting to get there.  The photo above probably doesn't look all that impressive, but I'm really rather proud of myself.  I was expecting my first yarn to come out really thick and thin, but this is mostly thin and a bit thinner.  It is by no means consistent yet but it is not as wildly varied as I thought it would be.  The plan for this is to spin until the bottle green runs out and then spin another strand out of a lighter green and then ply the two together and see what I end up with.

I've ordered a load more top in various different colours, as well as some to dye myself and hopefully if will arrive soon so that I can take some pictures.  Now obviously if I have all this tempting fibre on the way I'm going to need more spindles.  Much as I wish that I could be the type of person who is 'project monogamous' I'm just not, so I've been busy crafting my own spindles.

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They don't have hooks in yet so I have no idea how they spin, but they are only made from chopsticks and fimo so it won't break my heart if they turn out to be sucky.  I've also got a length of dowel to use so I can make some that are a bit meatier than these dainty little things.

Believe it or not I have actually also found some time for knitting.  The back of Stu's cardigan is done and I'm about 1/4 of the way up the right front..  I'd love to take a picture but every time I try there is magically a cat in the way.  Maybe I'll try again when they are eating or chasing the laser pointer or something.  So in lieu of a cardi pic here's a pic of the chief photo bomber herself.

Izzy cat

So....

I've finally got myself into gear with the photos of my Christmas knitting and I guess this would be a good time to talk about all of the knitting goodies I got for Christmas too.

In the end I finished 5 projects before Christmas and they all went in the Christmas box until I decided on a recipient.  Only 3 items ended up being given away as it turned out I'd been rather efficient buying presents.  I could have given a couple of people something extra but I decided against it a) because it is so easy to forget the value of handmade items and give them away as a 'little extra' when they represent a huge undertaking and b) because I had rather taken a shine to the cowl I made and rather liked the idea of keeping it!  Last seen modelled on the cat, you can see why I wanted it can't you?

I did however give Rob, my pub landlord this hat
Subtle twist hat (rav link) in Knit Picks Wool of the Andes

This scarf of my own design went to Emily, my sister in law to be

It's also made from yarn I dyed so I'm really quite proud of it.  I'll be putting up a pattern for it as soon as I manage to find where I wrote down how many stitches there were before I started decreasing after the point!

Also an improvised pattern in a hand dyed yarn, this went to my auntie.

As well as all that I finished my 22.5 degrees shawl/scarf I've been working on for a while, pics will have to wait til I've blocked it though.  So, that's what I gave but what did I get?  So much lovely stuff, that's what.  Stu's brother got me some Hiya Hiya sock circulars which I have been wanting to try for ages.  I wasn't sure if I'd like them but I've nearly finished my first sock using them (will take pics of that soon too) and I'm getting on just great with them.  I still needed dpns for the heel and will need them for the toe, but I have so many 'loose' dpns floating around that I won't need to hold a set back just for heels and toes when I'm using these needles.  Stu's sister got me Cookie A's latest book Knit. Sock. Love.  I love Cookie's patterns and I love this book.  Em is totally knitworthy so I'll be making her a pair of socks from the book as soon as I can.  She also hand made me this bag for my projects:

See, totally knitworthy!  I also got Vickie Howell's Not Another Teen Knitting Book from Stu's mum and a scarf kit as well - lucky old me.  I didn't get any knitting stuff from my own family though, I think they are all still struggling to understand that it's not just a phase.

Well, that was Christmas, I'll get back to looking forward again from now if you don't mind.

The cat sat on the.....

As I still haven't got my photos sorted of my Christmas projects I'm sticking with looking forward today.  Although a lot of my time (and daydreaming) is being taken up by spinning, I have finally managed to cast on for Stu's cardigan (the cardigan from Knits Men Want which I mentioned a couple of months back).  I never normally knit for men because... well because I am lazy and I don't like to knit for anyone bigger than myself - unless it's a hat or something small.  However, the silly man is going to marry me so I guess I can break the rules for him!  I started knitting about a week ago and I've got a couple more inches to do on the back so it's knitting up pretty quickly in acres and acres of grey Cygnet Wool Rich Aran I got from Modern Knitting.  Unfortunately I don't really have a good picture of it so you'll have to take my word for it.  I did take pictures, but this happened:

I suggested that to Izzy that she might like to go and sit elsewhere.  She responded thusly:

That's right kitten, make yourself comfy!

And this was when I knew it was game over for that little photo shoot.

However I do have a reasonable picture of my latest dye job, mainly because the cats haven't worked out how to photobomb a picture of things hanging from doors.

It's not a great picture, but it'll do.  This was achieved with yellow and red Wilton's, poured in opposite sides of a dish so that the stuff in the middle sort of mingled into orange and then microwaved..  The red isn't quite as red as I'd like but the overall effect is what I was after.  Hopefully it will be dry tonight and then I can twist it into a skein, because it always looks prettier like that.

2011

Christmas and New Year have come and gone, for the most part pleasantly and I'm looking forward to a year ahead full of creating and inspiration.  The holiday period boded well for this, lots of projects finished and much progress made on new projects.  More on these soon (i.e. when I'm at home and can access my photos!), but today I'm all about my new project.....spinning!  I know I promised myself I wouldn't think about it or even learn anything about it, but I couldn't help myself.  Once I started hand dying the idea of knitting something from fibre I dyed and spun myself just seemed right.  Like something I could really call my own.  So for now here is a nice little pic of what has been exclusively occupying my mind for the last few days, not bad if I do say so myself.

...and a bit more...

Now the snow has started it apparently does not want to stop, this is my back garden:

Not that my back garden is terribly interesting, but I think the layer of snow on top of the bin illustrates nicely the kind of weather we've been having!  Just for fun we sent the kittens out to play in it, they were a little trepidatious about the whole thing but they didn't want to come in at all.

So due to the weather I got to skive off work and have actually been quite productive.  We went for a long stomp in the snow and took lots of pictures whilst being continually amazed that there was snow halfway to our knees and then went to visit my currently incapacitated brother who can't actually go out in the snow at the moment.  Once at home I decorated the Christmas Tree, made marzipan for the Christmas cake, made a whole batch of lip balm for Christmas presents.  This evening I'm going to do a whole bunch of knitting and frame my latest cross stitch project - phew, I think a day at work would have been less crazy!