Where I'm up to

The shawl has reached the point where it's back on a staright needle - I'm down to 121 stitches so I'm still hoping to get the body of the shawl finished this weekend so that I can do the ruffle next weekend. According to my spreadsheet that I use to track this shawl pattern I've knitted 70% of the body knitted. I much prefer this bit of the shawl when I have ever decreasing rows!

I finished knitting the body of my sweater and I've picked up the neck stitches, I won't quite get it finished this month but it's close, once the neck is done I have both sleeves to sew in and then it wil be a finished object at last!

Left over from yesterday

I didn't knit much last night - I was so sleepy even garter stitch felt difficult! I had to buy this book after I saw Eunny's version of one of the shawls in it, the Pine Cone I think, it has several shawls in it that I yearn to knit when I'm Spanish Dancered out!

This has more patterns I want to play with, I found it on amazon marketplace and treatd myself.

As usual I've returned fom time away with postcards, I have a huge collection, mostly of vaguely political and/or humerous ideas, I couldn't resist these 3 from the Oxfam book shop in York. For those of you curious about my knitting, teh red shawl is a bit bigger and heavier but pretty much looks like the last picture I showed you. Sheila, you'll find Fyberspates at http://www.fyberspates.co.uk/ or you can buy from www.getknitted.com, hope that helps.

Memory like a sieve

I'd intended working on the red shawl while I was away, but being terminally disorganised I managed to leave it behind, luckily I had the yarn and needles with me to start the next one so I cast on and merrily knitted my way to this point. It is frustrating as I reckon I'd have been close to the I cord and ruffle on the red shawl if I hadn't left it at home, this probably serves me right for not starting to pack until 5 am on the day I was going away.
Hecate has missed me and is being very clingy this evening, she'll forgive me when I bribe her with salmon though - she soon forgets to bear a grudge fortunately as she's bitten me several times since I got home.

I did some shopping in some of the charity shops in York, I've been after a straightforward plain baby pattern for a while and was pleased to find this.

This is the sort of ultra girly pattren I recall from when I was first knitting (what seems like many years ago), I rarely make anything like this but I wanted a pattern like this to go in my library.

I used to have a mohair cardigan pattern but lost it, I'll need to adapt this but as it only cost 25p I couldn't really lose!

A chunky pattern with a little imagination whilst remaining quick and easy - I like!

I couldn't resist this book for £1.99 as you can see from the two pictures below it has bot the history and some of the stitch patterns for these garments, one day I will knit a gansey - maybe when I'm 100!

I couldn't resist these 3 books, they are quite technical and once I've read them I will probably pass them on - leave me a message if any of them particularly interest you, they weren't expensive and I'll happily trade them

Ultra fine pure merino to go into my 'to be lace one day stash' who could resist this for less than 1p a gramme? I do have a few other things to show you, but they will have to wait until tomorrow - thanks to some idiot who had been in my hotel room before me I was woken at midnight last night by the alarm clock going off and I'm suffering from sleep deprivation (my room wa next to the lift shaft too). Nic, thanks for the information about baby surprise, I'll check that out and see if it helps me!
Now, fingers crossed that blogger and my ISP let me post as my connection is currently slightly intermittent.

On one finishing straight!

I've made real progress on my sweater, I'm on the second side of the front neck now then all I need to do is seam one sleeve and shoulder and I can get the neckband knitted. then just teh sleeve seaming to do. I'd hoped to finish it this month but I think now it will be Easter when I finish it. I started it last June so it's about time I got it done!

The baby surprise is past the neck decreases now although I still don't really have any idea what I'm doing with it, I just keep plodding on with it. It will have to wait for my return from York to grow further, I'm not taking it away when I'm so clueless with it.

I've been digging through old stash today an dound these, the two on the left are brushed acrylic, quite fine and I think will go into winter shawls, it's amazing what I find when I dig through the stash mountain I have a kilo of each of these, total cost including postage was £17.

I found an old brown mailing sack and left it for Hecate to play in - she loves it and nests happily in it, unfortunately it rustles loudly so isn't great at night.
After ringing around 15 dentists today I finally found one that took NHS patients - nowhere near where I live and a 30 minute journey from where I work but accessable by bus. I had to spend the afternoon queing but I managed to get my crown glued back in which means I can eat while I'm away!

Something finished!

I finished the Sublime hat, it seems to have turned out a mite smaller than I had expected, I'll just have to hope that it will fit the intended recipient, if not I'll be making another and this one will go into the Christmas gift pile, my plan is to keep with hats and scarves in amongst my other WIP's to be able to give knitted items to charity as well as to my family and friends.

I was completely worn out yesterday, I didn't get out of bed until after 1pm, something that I never do, I wasn't up to much knitting so I finished winding this yarn into balls, I like this a lot although I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it - it's going into my waiting for inspiration pile.

I did another 14 rows of the front of my lilac variegated sweater but it isn't worth taking a picture yet, the shawl is growing steadily, I've done around a third of the rows of the body which gives me an idea that I may possibly get this ready for the I cord and ruffle in around a week. I'm going to have to spend tomorrow hunting for a dentist to rescue my falling out crown, it's making it pretty much impossible fro me to eat safely. I don't know if I'll be able to find anyone before I go to York for work though which is a real nuisance and raising my stress levels considerably.

Bared teeth

The hat is progressing nicely - I'm enjoying going back to the pattern and still enjoying the yarn. Nic, I have so many WIP's I couldn't even begin to count them but I am trying to reduce them by a few, probably in compensation for the huge increase in yarn that has taken place lately!

Despite all the yarn I couldn't resist this, incredibly fine variegated acrylic, I love the colours in the yarn and it was ultra cheap on eBay. The bared teeth are as a result of a crown falling out just now, I don't have a dentist that I can go to - no NHS ones available around here and they'll all be closed for the weekend now, not only that, I have to go away for work on Tuesday morning so trying to find anyone to glue it back before then is going to be a trifle difficult! (leaving aside the fact that I'm terrified of dentists)

I hadn't got round to showing you these, dye lot ends from our House of Fraser that has started doing haberdashery again, I'd gone in looking for buttons for my Freedom Sprirt wasitcoat and came back with these at 25% off.

I did bring back buttons as well although I'm not sure now if I like them!

Adding to the WIP's!

Firstly you can see the progress on the latest Spanish dancer shawl, it's just under one third done now so I should finish it for my self imposed deadline of mid April easily, all that garter stitch is dull but safe on the bus and I'll definitely take it with me to York next week, that should see another third done I think.

I realised last night in that moment between wakefulness and sleep that I had promised to knit a hat for the daughter of a colleague - I'll be seeing my colleague in York so it makes sense to get the hat knitted before then - this has led to me casting on the rib of a tam o shanter in Sublime extra fine merino double knitting, so far I'm enjoying knitting with it and the rib is nearly done. The hat will be my weekend knitting, from memory I can finish one completely in 2 days so there should be no danger of this not getting finished for next Tuesday. Yet again I have far too many things started but the hat is at least a short term addition to the WIPs and the shawl will be finished fairly soon too, I don't think there's much chance of baby surprise or the variegated yarn sweater getting finished before the end of this month but I'll prioritise them in April when at least easter may give me time to get them finished.

ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm away to sleep, going back to work has left me shattered, Hecate is hell bent on knocking anything she can find onto the floor and is driving me crazy and the knitting is going terribly slowly although the left hand ball in the picture shows how much of the first 100g I've managed to knit this week! Hopefully I'll be more awake tomorrow with some knitting to show you ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It's the yarn cat!

Knitting yarn has to be inspected by the yarn cat, this is the skein of yarn I wound into balls last night, I think this may become a baby blanket although I haven't made up my mind yet.

She lost interest when she found that this was acrylic, she turned her back and climbed into my back pack hunting the ball that I'm currently knitting from.



Hecate does like to spend her time in my back pack but it does make it difficult to knit when she sits on the yarn in use.

I was trying to get on with this shawl although it has grown a little bit at least.

Once she'd stolen my yarn I gave up knitting and wound another skein of yarn while I watched an old episode of Last of the Summer Wine.

Progressing slowly

I'm still plodding on very slowly with this sweater - I'm aiming at knitting 4 rows a day until I reach the neck shaping so I have about 4 inches to go before that.

I'm focussing on the centre of this shawl, I've about 40 more rows to go before the next stitch pattern, I may take this one away with me next week when I go to York for a conference again, it's a toss up between this shawl and the one below.

The next Spanish Dancer shawl, 7 of the 99 repeats done, this may be a better bet for taking away with me but I'll see how much I get done. Nic, thanks for your comments about baby surprise, I do find it an unnerving pattern to follow but I'm persevering, I found a couple of sites with pictures of how it looks and how it goes together which is helping my confidence in the process!
I made it back to work today and found yet again that my computer had died, it's been rebuilt for the third time in as many weeks and I'm hoping that it will be working tomorrow. I managed to stay awake all day which is the first time since the cold struck, I'm going to have a quiet evening winding off another skein of SkipNorth yarn watching a DVD then an early night.

More shawls

I made a little more progress on baby surprise, and found a website with a picture of one in progress which has given me a little more confidence in what I'm doing.

The landscape shawl has made a little more progress despite me having to frog several rows again today, I have another 44 rows to go before starting the moss stitch V and each row is (of course) getting slower as they grow longer.

Here is a close up of the centre panel. the stocking stitch is beginning to show up the variegatiomn of the yarn for the first time.

I realised that I ned a birthday present for a friend very soon so did the boring casting on bit of another Spanish Dancer shawl - I may end up knitting shawls on the bus all summer at this rate.
Denise, well done for finding me - I'm recovering from the cold and plan on returning to woork tomorrow despite the fact that I'm permanently shattered at the moment.

Today I have been mostly sleeping

Although the baby surprise jacket has grown a bit further, I'm still no closer to understanding the pattern but so far I don't seem to have messed it up. I had to frog soem of the landsacpe shawl due to my inability to know which of 4 pattern rows I needed to knit next but I've fixed the mistake at least.

Two of these arrived today despite the local mail office losing the parcel for a week, I had resigned myself to never seeing them so their arrival was a pleasant surprise! I had thought I was pretty much recovered from the cold but today I've been sneezing and running a temperature again, I'm still hoping to be fit for work by Monday though.

Oddments of progress

As you can see, I couldn't resist casting on for the baby surprise jacket although I'm already wrestling to comprehend the instructions, I find them as clear as mud I'm afraid, I can follow most written out patterns and I'm learning to follow charted designs but this one is already confusing me 10 rows into the project!

Wibbo, I'm really enjoying the Fibretrends shawl despite the seed stitch, I think because you knit it point upwards it isn't as traumatic. I've just reached the stocking stitch V so knitting across the row you do garter stitch, sed stitch, stocking stitch, seed stitch then garter stitch again. It means that each row contains a mixture of stitches that makes the seed stitch and then (I hope) the moss stitch less traumatic.

Fred, I'm blaming you for these, I'm thinking of a knitted Christmas stocking with bells on, you are clearly a very bad influence on me!

Onwards, ever onwards

I've mostly been asleep again today but in waking moments I wound another skein of yarn, I'm thinking of using some of this as I have 3 skeins in total as the second yarn in some fairisle. Admittedly I'd planned on this year being forworking on my aran knitting and next year being for fairisle but plans are for changing!

This shawl is growing nicely, unfortunately being knitted point up it will inevitably get slower and slower but it is an nice easy pattern and will do for mindless knitting on the bus for a good while, I'm currently doing garter stitch and seed stitch, I think the next V may be stocking stitch.