Better get my skates on!

Finally got around to ordering what will hopefully the last skein of yarn needed in order to finish the baby blanket I started months ago for Ian and Emily. There has been talk of us having Christmas drinks after kung fu one week and it's likely it will be the last time Em will go to fu until after the baby has arrived and I'd like to gift the stuff to them both together and before 12th February (which is the due date), but it does mean I'll have to get my backside into gear and get knitting and finishing! I'll porbably have about two weeks to get it all done. Gah!

Growing as a knitter

This week has been horrible in general and right now I'm kicking back with a glass of wine and hoping to catch up on some serious sleeping.

I've been so tired all week that I haven't done much knitting at all. I did do a couple more rows on my Muir stole last weekend, but in the evenings during the week I haven't done more than a few rows of stockinette on the Colour Swap handmades.

But I wanted to post in order to celebrate the creation of my first item done from my head and not from a pattern.

Wooties.

I shall definitely be taking pictures of this one to post once the parcel has been received (it's a secret swap) as I'm quite proud of this. I still have the finishing and a pair to make, but I'm just so pleased that it worked the first time.

In other ways, I got my other swap parcel this week and it was quite fantastic:

Lace

I am spending this weekend mostly in London. I drove down last night - first time I've ever driven on the motorway in the dark. It wasn't too bad, apart from when it was raining so hard I couldn't see anything - that was very scary. I am down here because I will be going to see Bill Bailey tonight. Yeay.

I decided that I would only bring my Muir stole with me, so that I could concentrate on getting back into lace knitting. However, this seems to mean that I'm not going to knit anything while I'm here. I don't know why this is proving so hard to pick back up. I love the pattern, adore the yarn and am thrilled with the results so far. But I also keep telling myself I'm not sure where I stopped (this may not be true - I'm 98% sure I finished a pattern repeat and didn't start the next and am pretty sure thst actually looking at it would tell me) and that I'm very tired and will probably make mistakes (this is possibly true, but mistakes can be fixed.

I should just suck it up and get on with it, right?

The little things

So I haven't updated for a while, for two reasons. Firstly I finally accepted that I needed to take a break to get better. And a part of that was not really wanting to use the computer in general (I didn't log into WoW for two weeks and basically missed the whole Hallow's End event). I am starting to recover (it's been three weeks so far) but I currently have the lung capacity of a 90 year old chain smoker. The second thing was that I've managed to stay busy in a quiet, relax-y way.

I've been trying to learn how to use my camera better in order to take good pictures of my knitting. This was inspired by a new project. While my head was a bit all over the place for the last few weeks, I realised that I needed to have small, easy projects to get done for a sense of accomplishment insted of lounging and complaining about not being able to knit complicated lace in teeny tiny weight yarn.

This was one of the results:



It's a teeny tiny baby bootie! It's so cute and a really quick mini project. I did make the pair for it as well, but I haven't sewn it up yet (this one is still missing buttons too). Then I felt the need to cast on for some more, of which I have only completed one. I've also managed to make up an aviator style baby hat (it's kinda steampunk-y and awesome) with the left over February Lady Sweater yarn (I ended up tinking back
and reknitting the odd stockinette section - even after un-knitting it, I'm not sure how it actually happened...) and made one and a half of the handmades for the next colour swap (I'm hoping to have a set of three done and hoping even more that one will successfully be the first thing I've made without a pattern!).

I've also had the central heating all installed. Granted this didn't involve me doing much aside from getting grumpy with not having the house to myself when I just wanted to lie on the sofa and trying to stay out of the way. But it does mean I now have a wonderfully warm house. Every day I've been luxuriating when I get up or when I come in from the cold.

Tonight I'm going to attempt to go to kung fu. This will be the first exercise I've done in three weeks and I'm not sure how it will go with the lung capacity and all. Wish me luck.