Playing Catch-Up

You know, I really got to work on the post titles more. Other people manage to come up with witty, thought-provoking things, I seem to have lost that just lately. Maybe there's a New Year's resolution in there somewhere.

Anyway, what's been happening here on the Western Front?

Well, it snowed. A bit. I was hoping for rather more, but unless I move to Aberdeen I don't think that's going to happen.

Here's the evidence:



It was Yule Night in West Kilbride, and I bought yarn (ssshhhh)One of the new benefits of living near the Craft Town of Scotland is that Old Maiden Aunt has taken a shop - so hand-dyed and handspun yarns are now just a short trip away. My credit card has gone into hiding.

Ah. Blogger has had a brainfart and is refusing to load images. Sorry. Well, you'll just have to trust me when I say three skeins of merino/silk laceweight and one of baby alpaca, silk and cashmere laceweight (sigh...like the hair of a particularly well-behaved purply-locked angel) are now happily settling into the stash, making friends with the Handmaiden and trying to understand the Manos' strange Uruguayan accent. I don't yet know what these will be, but something from Victorian Lace Today I'm sure will be in the future of at least one of them.

I have managed to build up a reasonable stock of the Rowan Pure Sheep Breeds yarns - I knitted the Uncle's Xmas hat in Steel Grey Suffolk and it was a sheepily lovely experience. I think one or two people on the train may have been slightly put-off by the lanolin aroma :-) I'm thinking a nice naturally-stripy sweater would be rather good in this. I have Black Welsh, Mid-Brown Jacob and the aforementioned Suffolk. Yummy. This is of course going to be knitted alongside the Noro, which is also going to be a sweater for me. Oh, and BrooklynTweed has just published the most gorgeous blanket / shawl pattern, Girasole, which fell into my Ravelry library, so that's on the list, and Hemlock...oh and Sivia Harding's "Waves in the Square" shawl...

I was thinking over the weekend of the Knit challenges I set myself this year. Without looking back, I seem to remember spinning, cables and Fair Isle being on it. Well, tick all of those off :-) so I've been thinking about next year's challenges. So far I've come up with:
Lace
Socks
Steeks

Lace I have tried, but I moved house in the middle, lost track of the pattern and fell out with it. Another attempt is overdue. I'm already preparing the yarn for the Waves in the Square - I have a load of vintage 4-ply (fingering) weight in a horribly bright red. It's a nice 100% wool, so I'm going to overdye it. I skeined one of the balls onto the niddy-noddy last night, and counted threads, and as expected I'm getting about 90 yards to an ounce. So 13 balls need to be skeined up ready for dyeing. Ouch. My elbows.

I've avoided socks up to now, not down to fear of heels but fear of addiction. So many people seem to have a SERIOUS sock thing going on, and I do rather like doing other stuff too :-) but I can totally see the portability benefits. Also, my feet are cold.

Steeks. Well, you gotta do it sooner or later, and I have a hankering for a Norwegian-style sweater, so steeks are going to have to be a feature. I think I'll practice a bit first mind, but I reckon it's like most of these things, it's hard until you try it. If it was that awkward the Norwegians would have dropped it years ago.

Right onwards. Gotta finish off the Xmas knitting...

~*~