snow day!

We're having some "arctic" weather here in the UK, so my day off has mostly been spent watching the snow from under a blanket with lots of tea and maple pecan cookies. Yum.

Some knitting progress has been made as well (in between cookies and cakes). We're leaving for Berlin on Wednesday and I still haven't finished the Boys scarf, which is panicking me slightly! The weather there is cold, and I promised him I'm make him this scarf ages ago. Trouble is it's on 3.5mm needles so progress is annoyingly slow, and I'd completely forgotten how much I loathe scarf knitting. It's too monotonous for my tastes! I love a bit of repetitive knitting as much as the next knitter, but with hats and socks and jumpers and everything else you get to vary things up with at the very least some some shaping! A scarf is just a huge big long strip. Still, knitting is knitting and the yarn (Sirdar Balmoral) and pattern are lovely. I did just come across a knot in the yarn, but it's the first one and luckily I was able to unpick it. Although even if I couldn't I would have just snipped it off and knitted the join, I absolutely hate knots in knitting. I'm almost halfway through the scarf, so hopefully if I force myself to keep at it tonight I'll just about finish it and then have time to pack and knit myself a quick hat on Tuesday! Fingers crossed...

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Happy Chinese New Year!

Gong xi fa cai!
A silly (but so true) fortune & my cutest ang pao

Chinese New Year began on Monday. The year of the Ox. We ushered it in on Sunday night with the most delicious steamboat. In essence it's a Chinese hotpot style dish which basically consists of a big simmering pot of stock and a pile of chopped vegetables, seasoned meat, seafood, noodles etc which you drop into the pot and fish out when cooked. At the end of it all you're rewarded with the most delicious soup, flavoured with all the food that was cooked in the stock. Quick, easy and delicious, it's one of my Mum's favourite dishes and we have it quite often. No pictures of it this time round though, I was too exhausted from work and a weekend of slaving away in the kitchen cooking and frying food for my cousins CNY party at his deaf club on Saturday night! Next time round.

Knitting news: the wedding afghan is coming along nicely. Slowly.. but nicely. In a moment of ridiculously optomistic insanity last week I challenged myself to have whole thing finished by Saturday when I'm seeing the happy couple next, but I clearly came to my senses 30 seconds later and realised that was never going to happen. I have managed to finis the first flower panel and have started on the second tree panel. I'm getting a bit anxious that it won't be big enough, I may have to order another cone of yarn and add some more panel repeats, but I'll cross the bridge when I come to it! I'm even toying with the idea of picking up the side stitched and adding a cabled panel to each side, but that's a worse case senario! Must remember that the garter border will add about 3-6 inches to the overall width and length.

The Boy's Scarf Askew is coming along quite slowly too. I blocked it again and it feels a lot better than the first draft, I just wish it would grow a bit faster on the 3.5mm needles!

Hope you all have a happy and prosperous New Year!

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January roundup

Over halfway through January already, can't believe it. Hope everyone had amazing Christmas & NY. It was a bit strange in our household this year, my aunt's not doing too well, and things just didn't feel particularly festive. It still managed to pass me by in a whirlwind of work, Christmas baking and home made marshmallows though!

Spent a cosy Sunday night snuggled up in front of The Mist with a big bowl of kettle corn. The caramel ended up being a little bit burnt, but it was deliciously crisp and sticky! It was topped up with a nice big mug of hot chocolate and home made marshmallows for me (I have an enormous pile of these marshmallows to get through!) and a soothing hot toddy for the Boy's cold, made with maple syrup as we were out of honey. It was such a lovely substitution that I hope we run out of honey more often.

Some finished projects from December:

How to knit a flower corsage by Rachel Henderson
Yarn: Texere 100% wool plyed bute

Pattern was fun to knit. The trickiest bit was lining up the petals into a nice shape and keeping it together long enough to sew together. Love the colour too. It was one of my bargain Texere cones that I got from my big birthday haul thanks to the boy. Love the colour and the light blue that runs through it (looks more like white in the photo). All I did with the flower was sew a brooch back onto it. I meant to sew a button onto the centre but couldn't find anything I liked enough, so gifted it to her as is. It would look better with a button, but it's still cute as is!

Bow-Knot Scarf by Katherine Burgess
Yarn: Boyes Aran dug up from about a 5 year stretch in my stash

Loved the pattern. Worked up super fast, simple enough to not need much attention but with just enough to keep things interesting.


Also finished was a feather and fan cowl for my Mum for Christmas in
some scrummy RYC extra fine merino in a lovely purpleyish burgandy
colour, but I keep forgetting to takephotos.




Just a chunky cowl I worked up in the round using a diamond stitch pattern and some cheapo acrylic. My fingers were restless for some quick and selfish knitting after Christmas, and after seeing some out there on the blogosphere I really faniced a super chunky slouchy cowl. It's not quite a loose and slouchy as I wanted it, and the texture is barely noticeable when worn but we live and learn. Next time I think I'll make it wider around or just a lot longer so it slouches more. It also needs a much looser bind off, this one isn't tight but definitely isn't as stretchy as it should be. I might investigate alternative cast off methods or just use a larger needle.

I'm still not too sure if I've come around to the cowl way of life, as much as this one is cozy and warm and I love the slouch, I'm a hardcore scarf addict (I wear them all year round, with practically any outfit, indoors and outdoors) and a cowl just leaves me feeling a little naked from the neck down! We'll see. I'm off to Berlin in a few weeks, so have lots more chunky knits in the pipe line.

It's not chunky, but I also cast on for A Scarf Askew by Emily Elizabeth for the Boy for Germany. Quite a fun pattern, and easy to memorise. I'm using Sirdar Balmoral, and while it's a yummy yarn, I keep feeling like it's just too thin for a cozy scarf. I've already frogged it and gone down needle sizes once, but we'll see. Think I might give it another block on the needles and see how it feels.

The wedding afghan is STILL not finished! How shameful. Progress is being made though, and I'm also going to have to get started on little bundle of joy gift for the happy couple too. I'm thinking it'd be quite cute to make a little baby blanket and gift it tied up along with the wedding afghan. I think after Berlin I'm going to have to get cracking full speed on that, I feel quite awful about how late this gift is!

And speaking of little bundles of joy, I finally found buttons for the February baby sweater:

and just in time too, adorable little Molly was born at 07:06 this morning weighing in at 7.3! Big congrats out to Gems and James.

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What happens when you knit in the dark...

Spurred on by the fact that there are only 22 day's left til Christmas, and thus only 22 days left to finish knitting my Christmas gifts, today I pulled out the Boy's socks. Despite a relatively quick start they're still not very far on at all and I haven't even reached the heel on the first sock yet! Thinking I could get a few rows in before lunch, I took a look at them in daylight for the first time in weeks. It seems that all the night time car knitting hadn't gone as smoothly as I'd thought!

 

The front of the sock showed nothing but row after row of beautiful rib, but turning things over...

Can you see it, just a few rows down from the working row? I guess it's not really too clear on that photo.

 

See it now? Row after row of perfect little knit stitches marred by a perfect little purl stitch throughout the entire back row. Somehow I'd managed to screw up an entire row and knit on without even realising it! It's quite clearly the direct consequence of knitting in the dark in the car (as the passenger, of course. God only knows how my knitting would turn out if I dared to knit and drive...). Le sigh.

For a couple of minutes I debated between ripping the whole thing back to the offending row, but I hate frogging, especially since one side had absolutely nothing wrong with it, so the only thing left was to drop each stitch down and pick it back up with a crochet needle. After about 45 mins of wrestling with a crochet needle everything is (almost) fixed. I say almost because I've fixed all of the all-knit and all-purl columns, but I'm far too lazy to attempt to fix the columns which alternate knit and purl, my argument being that they're not entirely noticeable anyway! Also, the fixed columns are a little bit wonky, but I'm hoping that that's nothing that blocking won't solve.

My mission for tonight? To finally get the heel shaping of course! I feel that the Devil's Whore will be an excellent backdrop to sock progression, providing I don't get too distracted by Dominic West :)

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Advent

Today is a dreary first day of advent, so I'm staying indoors snuggled up under blankets. I've finished the flowers, which are awaiting shirring elastic to finish them off. I'm determined to progress the wedding afghan to lap warmer status, fuelled by many cups of lightly sweetened chocolate chai spice tea and my white chocolate coconut treat found behind my first advent window.Yum.

    

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