Fits of fickleness

Gosh! It would seem time has flown by recently; its passing has been concealed by a flurry of activity - festive preparations, visits from friends and to the Christmas market, concerted efforts to work on my thesis (still not quite there yet) and even (shock! horror!) some knitting.

In actual fact there has been really quite a lot of knitting, but there is little to show for it and this is because I have been so very fickle when it comes to project loyalty/decisiveness recently. I was working away on Muir quite happily and in a very dedicated way - but perhaps I overdid it a bit and worked too much on only the one project because I had to put it aside for a break when I was just over 50% done (and that was a good while ago now). Elfine's socks are still on the needles too but I didn't really feel like going back to them at the moment. But I needed to knit. What to do?

First of all I allowed myself to be tempted by some pretty yarn - Cascade 220 Hand-dyed which I bought from Get Knitted:



I decided I wanted to make a nice warm scarf and either a hat or mittens and, having made my first forays into making and using a makeshift nostepinne, started playing around with patterns, unsure what look I was really going for. Eventually I settled on My So Called Scarf and even found a pattern suggestion for a coordinating hat on Ravelry and so I began my scarf:



And the above picture demonstrates precisely how much I have knit so far, for I have stalled on this project too. I have gone for all out monogamy with a different project instead and I seem to be getting results. I cast on for the Rayne Wrap Cardigan designed by cosmicpluto on 4th December and am already past the placement for the first armhole. At this rate I could be finished by the end of the week! Here is a picture which is now very much rendered obsolete by how far I have come in the interim:



The photo does show the colours of my yarn fairly well (considering it was taken in artificial light). I liked the idea of this cardi when I first saw it on cosmicpluto's blog but I knew I certainly wouldn't be able to make it using Noro (for financial reasons!). As it is such a simple pattern though I think it needs a yarn with some interest in terms of colour and after some searching I came up with an affordable option which I think looks good - the yarn is James C Brett Marble in a DK weight (meaning I did have to recalculate the pattern for my different gauge, but given that the cardigan is essentially a rectangle this wasn't too tricky). I managed to pick up 10 balls of this yarn from Dianne's Knitting Yarns for £14.50 (postage on top) which is what made this design an affordable and feasible possibility for me. Fair enough the yarn is 100% acrylic but it feels quite pleasantly soft and I'm sure I will have quite a bit left over which could possibly result in some more scarf/hat/mitten-knitting.

Anyhow, that's about the size of things round here at the moment. Stay tuned - there should be an FO very soon!