Winter Knitty has a lot to answer for!

Overall I didn't find the latest Knitty that exciting - there are only 2 patterns in there that really caught my eye. First off there is Amelia which I think is a lovely little cardi, which hopefully I will get a chance to knit one day. Secondly there is the front cover pattern Bijouterie which had an unexpected impact: it broke my resolve regarding not doing any Christmas knitting. I find Christmas quite stressful enough generally and this year has been my "year of stress" so far, so I certainly wasn't planning on adding to it by setting myself lots of deadlines I'd be unlikely to meet (I'd wanted to knit a shawl for a good friend who was very taken with my Adamas but steadfastly and with a heavy heart decided not to go for it). Then Bijouterie came along... well, knitting some earrings ought to be faster than a shawl and my friend will still get a knitted gift... it's not too bad. I ordered some materials and decided to start with a test run straight away. Here are the results of said test run:

I tried out all three of the patterns included in the collection - I couldn't quite seem to get the second style to look quite right so I discarded my scrappy efforts and moved on knowing I wouldn't have time to refine the results. I'll be keeping these trial versions of styles 1 (on the left) and 3 (on the right) for myself (although I'll probably undo the style 1 attempt and reuse the findings). I'm currently working on the second versions of each of these styles and these will be the ones that will actually go to my friend - I'm going to use coloured wooden beads in style 3 and clear seed beads on style 1, I also need to be more careful to make my stitches nice and even on that pair, the trial version is a little sloppy looking... these are very quick to make so expect to see the results soon!

The other thing that Winter Knitty has to answer for is the fact that it made me spend money not just on materials for the knitted earrings but on a little gift for myself as well. I've been looking for a nice needle storage case for a while so when I saw the listing for a circular needle holder in the cool stuff section I thought I'd check out the etsy store listed. You can do the same thing by looking here. It's a bit risky though, because, like me, you might be instantly smitten and find yourself clicking 'buy'. I bought myself this lovely needle case:

It's a lot more stylish than most of the mass-produced ones I've seen in the shops and has plenty of space for my (currently) relatively modest collection of needles:

A reasonable price for a lovely hand-made item as well, and it arrived really quickly, especially given that it came all the way from the States during the dreaded Christmas postal rush period.

So, there you go, Winter Knitty has a lot to answer for - but nothing that I'll hold a grudge about!!