Long-awaited...

Or maybe not long awaited - you tell me! It has been more than a month since my last post. WTF?! There are two items on the agenda for today's post and I shall start with the most important:

THANK YOU! To Knit-Nurse and to Kath of Krafty Kreations fame for honouring, yes honouring, me with the You Make My Day Award (have a look at Knit Nurse's post here for a bit of background). Far more than I deserve I am sure especially since I have been so useless on the blogging/knitting fronts recently. You certainly both made my day by thinking of me in this way. Now I have to think of my 10 people to pay it forward to.... Hmmm, an update on that will appear soon I hope - when I've got over my indecisiveness!

The second item on the agenda is the really long-awaited bit: FO pictures of Rayne. Without further ado here they are:





So now you can see that I really have finished this project! However, I don't think it is going to stay in its finished state like this for very long - the fronts are just too big in my opinion they add a lot of bulk and get in the way (although I am very intolerant of irritating clothing - other more mellow types may not find it a problem at all) so I am going to try shortening them a bit - so the project will have to be finished a second time - d'oh!

There are lot of knitting projects that need finishing off properly around here at the moment - in addition to Rayne Mark 2 there is Muir, my Elfine's socks, the mitts and hat to go with my Multidirectional Scarf and the My So-called Scarf that I started. My goal is to have all of these things sorted out fairly soon - maybe by mid-April, thus clearing the way for a potential project that I have fallen head-over-heels in love with - details to follow on that front!

To finish off the post I'll leave you with some pictures of my recent visit to the Henry Moore at Kew exhibit - I'm so glad that, despite being so busy recently, I made it there before the exhibit closes (at the end of March) as it was really a lovely day out and we were very lucky with the weather (on 1st March).

So, I shall return soon - at least, hopefully sooner than in a month's time this time! Bye for now, Nicola

Happy New Year!

Happy 2008 indeed! January certainly came round sooner than expected for me. Since my last post I have been lazeeeee! But I make no apologies... I think a bit of lazy was just what I needed. It is only this week that I really feel up to getting up to full speed again on projects other than my 'day job'. I plan to attack my thesis and my knitting projects with renewed gusto :o)

I received a few crafty-ish gifts this Christmas and their presence has been inspiring and got the cogs of my brain turning and thinking about potential projects for the coming year - no really concrete plans though as yet - I shall see where the mood takes me.

Gift number 1 was from a good friend of mine - it was this book:



It's not a book I had heard of before but I am taken with a few projects and the idea of combining knits with graphics is an appealing one, as colour work is something I would like to branch out into soon. I rather like the scarf project featured on the front cover - it is knitted from Kidsilk Haze which I understand to be rather good - but which I have never used myself. Another project I like the idea of is this one:



Not sure how this cardi would look on me though... I shall give it some consideration though, that is for sure. I suppose if I am feeling nice it could even be made as a gift for someone, we shall see.

I also received this book:



I've been wanting this one for a while - I would like to be able to begin using the sewing machine I received last Christmas for projects more involved than turning up trousers! If all goes well I can get me thesis out of the way sooner rather than later and have time enough to begin sewing on a regular basis as well as knitting. I'm keeping my fingers crossed! (But not holding my breath - that could prove dangerous!)

The last 'crafty' gift is these earrings:



The fella got these for me from the German Christmas Market in Birmingham after having been on the receiving end of some fairly hefty hints ;o)

I think they look a little bit yarny (although this photo doesn't really show them to their best advantage) and they remind a little bit of these earrings which got me into a covetous mood when I first saw them on And She Knits Too.

So, there you go, my Christmas haul.

At the moment I am still working on Rayne - it has grown rather large - the body is nearly finished and then I just have the sleeves to work, which I think should go quickly. I may have failed to meet my previous self-imposed deadline but the enthusiasm is there again (helped along by my recent purchase of a skirt that I think will look very good with this wrap/sweater) and there should be results soon.

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!