Believe it or not...

... some knitting has actually been going on around here (apart from the Lady Sweater which now has one arm which is long enough!); finally got round to taking some photos.

But first, the Eye all redded up for Valentines...

They had the Now Voyager quote "Don't let's ask for the moon, we have the stars" across one set of wall panels, which you can just about seen in the photo above; and another quote "You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how" across the other set. I was pleased when I got home and looked it up that I'd correctly identified it. Anyone want to hazard a guess? (Answer at the end of this post...)

OK: the knitting. Two Helter-Skelter Scarves (my own pattern, which I'm looking at putting up on Ravelry after Textiles in Focus is over...)

Although if you know about short-rowing, the photos above and below will tell you exactly what I did without need for a pattern...

And one which looks even better photographed against my kitchen floor...

The yarn for both of these is Lang's Mille Colori - lovely stuff for decent lengths of colour. The only stockist I've used for this is RKM - colours 0057 and 0068 respectively (although my colour balance and RKM's are very different - there is some burgundy in the balance, which doesn't come out in my photo, but perhaps not quite as much as in RKM's sample...

I also made a little blue cowl. The variegated stuff in this one is Araucaria's Quellon; the solid is Regia silk sock yarn (4-ply weight). It's lovely and soft and for the first attempt at a cowl, I think it's come out very nicely. It's just feather-and-fan, 6 18-stitch repeats, random number of rows, random rows of knit and purl...

Some dyeing also happened last weekend; a kilo or so of aranweight wool, now reskeined... I need to price this up for Textiles in Focus; but I think I'm reasonably well set-up for this year's show. Next, finalising the instructions and samples for the classes I'm teaching on Friday and Saturday (there are places left, particularly on the Friday!)

And the answer to the mystery, or not-so-mystery, quote? Rhett Butler, in Gone with the Wind. The full quote goes "No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how." (Although possibly not by someone with that moustache...)

Outside...

Handmade presents on Christ's Pieces, yesterday...

Jan has taken much better photos than this of this present, but this is the scarf against the really pretty silver birch tree near the Wesley sheltered housing in the centre of Cambridge...

and a closer photo...

And the pretty, pretty crocheted gloves from E-J; here doing jazz-hands on the gateway which, oddly enough, leads to the Sew Creative yarn shop....

Thanks! It's so lovely to receive presents as well as to make them.

There was also this: Tiny has a friend in crochet - I had a card for the maker but am hoping Wibbo will be able to help me with the details... Edited to add, the maker is NiftyKnits and she has a shop over on Folksy...

Tomorrow - the South Bank and another gift. I have been very lucky this year.

Blocking, and... not.

I clocked up two FOs on Ravelry today - go me. Neither is an Olympic project, but both have been "95%" projects for a while, which in my personal lexicon means "it's all over bar the shouting". In effect, the things need blocking, or buttons need to be found and sewn on, or labels need to be attached with washing instructions, that sort of stuff... And for some reason, keeping them at 95% on Ravelry motivates me more than having to move them every time I want to sit down and eat... I know, that worries me, too.

Today's projects, however.

First I present you Flutter: this is a MimKnits pattern by Miriam Felton, utterly beautiful and I thought it would go very well with businesswear. The original is a soysilk blend which lends weight; I was using a remnant of denim-blue Colourmart cashmere which I'd dyed into a semisolid purple, and I added the weight by using beads (#8 blue-plum raku beads from Beads Direct, to be precise; 2 tubes needed...)

It's gorgeous. I love the way she does the increases and I've loved wearing it today... Blocking -erm; nope. I gave it a good hot steamy iron instead...

Second up : my second Hemlock Ring Blanket. Just realised I've got in there 2 days before the anniversary of Brooklyn Tweed blogging it in the first place. Because this was for me, it's been lying around for ages while babies were born, Christmases and fairs came and went... so here we are. I used Classic Elite's Mackenzie Tweed. No links to the yarn because Texere had it on sale for a couple of months last year but it's discontinued. It's a wool and silk mix which looks like oatmeal; but as I'm a horribly lazy blocker, and had actually washed this whole thing in shampoo and put it through the spin-cycle three times before finally pinning it out, it's got softer and softer each time...

Blocking: yes, severely. The silk seems to have made sure I don't have the sort of rucheing I had with the last one... I just wish you could get Clover blocking pins easily here, the 2-pronged sort; they're amazing.

Having brought the blanket down in triumph this evening and laid it on the sofa... I've decided I don't like it there after all. Instead, I've moved it over to the chair by one of the bookcases, which has a strange bow-legged charm...

And because I've kept the downstairs tidy(ish) for a whole week, and I do like it like that, a gratuitous calm-and-tranquil house photo with some beautiful statice and everlasting flowers I bought today... I've actually printed this picture out and am going to put it on the boiler in the kitchen to remind me of how nice the place looks tidied up...

Finally, some knitting... Christmas, part I!

I've done quite a lot since Christmas, but it's been really busy; a lot of it in a good way, but the last two Wednesday nights' commutes have been nightmarish (last night it took 4h 35mins to get home, the week before just under 4 hours...) and the last couple of weekends have been nice and busy too. This weekend seems to be shaping up to be pretty well-occupied, but I've been editing pictures by dribs and drabs and there's something to show now...

This year's Christmas knitting was neither as time-consuming nor as intricate as previous years - the two baby shawls this year, particularly the cobweb-weight one, nearly killed me! Most people got something, though. On the basis that it's more blessed to give than receive, I'll start with the gifts given. And I think I'll go by approximate order of age, so babies first...

Baby A got the ubiquitous Baby Surprise Jacket - but I loved the way that the self-striping Regia DK/6-fädig (present from Jan before she moved!) behaved when knitted with the "wrong" number of stitches. It's quite a lightweight DK, so even if he's not big enough for it until the summer, there will probably still be chilly evenings when he can wear it... I think it's Joseph's-coat-ish!

Baby O had a sweater - from a lovely book I got at John Lewis just after they re-opened. The variegated yarn is one of mine; the dark blue some Emu Superwash from Sew Creative's bargain bin a year or three ago... The buttons "go" better than they appear to in this photo...

Fiona (L), and Lorna (R) now. F's sweater was my first attempt at a top-down raglan (she's tall and slim so being able to rip back the cuffs and knit them a bit longer is a distinct advantage); and I used mainly Stylecraft Apache (now discontinuted and another Sew Creative bargain) with stripes of anything-washable-I-had-handy-in-about-the-same-colours. Some of the stripes are furry, some just bright!

L got a bag - she usually gets a sweater, but her mum very sensibly reminded me she'd had one for her birthday and usually got the hand-me-downs, so why didn't I make something smaller? This is felted (some Rowan Magpie from the stash), and then embroidered with chain-stitch and buttons. It reminded me a little bit of a Kandinsky when it was finished.

On to adults. First, a Halfdome variant for a friend. I'm saying "variant" only because I didn't follow the colour-scheme - there are random numbers of rows of each colour - otherwise it's the small size from the pattern stitches-wise, and the middle size length-wise. I was convinced it was going to be too big, then too small, and in the end it turned out to be just right. This is half Rowan Felted Tweed and half Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sport (colour "Motherlode").

Some of the Christmas projects have already been blogged - Sue got a pair of the Serpentine Mitts, and my aunt Barb got the well-documented Monkeys.

Friend Chai in Canada got some Socks of Doom - and these were victims of the camera loss just before Christmas. They were knitted in a fantastic hurry before last-posting-date came along, and photographed the same week - and two days later there was the camera débâcle... At one stage I thought I didn't even have a photo of the hand-dyed yarn - but here it is...

Dad had a scarf - I made him a brown one in Felted Tweed a couple of years ago which he'd commented on several times; so I thought a grey one in the same yarn might go down well. This is a reversible cables pattern - I was slightly embarrassed to buy the pattern from here because I thought it was the sort of thing I could do for myself, and in the end I changed the number of stitches, repeats, etc.; but I'm really glad I did because it was a fun uncomplicated knit of a very nicely written pattern and I got it done well before Christmas... Unfortunately, I only seem to have a picture of it at its very beginnings - but imagine that you can see both sides and the cables are perfect both ways round; because they are...

Mam got a Nantasket Basket for holding her stocking-fillers - and I completely forgot to take a photo of that either. So here's one of a similar one I made for EJ's birthday in August.

Mam's was actually in this colour combination:

which is a swatch for the cushion I made for Jan, which she has documented elsewhere! (Another I forgot to photograph; thank God for friends with digital cameras!)

And I think that's it! Next time: beautiful yarny things received! After which normal service, whatever that is, will be resumed...