After a week of house guests, house keeping, book keeping & web development I am finally catching up with the fun bits of my life (well the house guest was obviously fun but the book keeping was not). I have made a pattern for my baby blanket and cut and pinned most of the pieces. Tonight I will start sewing. I expect I will have something worth looking at by tomorrow, unfortunately I won’t be able to show you - it’s a secret.

In the mean time winter has arrived and I have been shopping. Last night I ordered the Debbie Bliss Cashmere Collection and today I ordered 21 balls of Jo Sharp Ultra in Seafoam to make the cabled jacket on the cover. Of course now that I have ordered it all I am panicing that I should have gone with the cover pattern from Jo Sharp Contemporary Knitting Two. It was such a toss up, I prefferred the collar and chunkier yarn of the Debbie Bliss but I think I prefer the cables to the semi bauble effect of the Debbie Bliss. Arrgghhh.

It’s going to take me at least a month to finish this sweater and that is being very optimistic - I have to wait of the pattern and the yarn, finish the velour baby blanket and a scarf that is now a very belated gift for someone special. And I am way too sick of my existing knits, too say nothing of way too cold, to cope without the big snuggly cardi I have been craving until the cabled jacket is done, so this week I also bought a new cardigan. Ready made.

Sorry about the picture, its the best of a bad (terrible?) lot, I haven’t quite mastered the art of self portraits in the mirror while using a digital camera that hates low light. It is amazing how differently I view sweater shopping now that I realise that almost everything I see on the racks is a knock off of something I saw on someone’s blog months ago, to say nothing of so wanting to go through the process of making it myself. I have always been picky, but now I am a shop assistant’s worst nightmare. I looked in 4 or 5 of my favourite shops at every knit on the racks and tried on about 8 in the one store I ended up buying something from (and I did this with a three year old in tow, sheer madness). I bought another one at the same time and spent days agonising over whether to keep either of them. Now that I have decided to keep this one and started wearing it I like it so much I may have to knit one myself next year. Well something like it, possibly in cotton, with cables and shorter sleeves - sounds just like the mohair blend sweater you see above, right? Well they would both be big rectangles with sleeves:

I looked in my ribbon stash and found purple and green ribbon. I was so disproportionately pleased with this discovery that I feel the need post another photo of the box containing the quilt, this time with lid and ribbon.

This was one of the distractions I used to entertain myself while trying to decide what to make next. Then I looked at Froggy’s last post and suddenly wondered if I should make Strike (from Rowan 27, see a pic here) instead of Alison’s Leftovers Vest. I really like Strike and managed to waste most of last night forcing Jesse to help me choose which pattern to knit. In the end we decided the Jo Sharp DK Tweed may make too firm a fabric for Strike and also I don’t really have the patience to wait for the book to arrive from the UK. In the process of choosing between the two patterns I discovered that all the information I needed to pick a Leftovers Vest size was right there in the pattern. Duh! All that procrastination for nothing. So at about 10pm last night I finally cast on the Leftovers Vest.

Along the way I had fun choosing just the right stitch markers for this project. How sad is that? Choosing this pattern meant I could cast on right away but then I found that I don’t actually have the right needles for the body so I placed an order for a bunch of new Addis last night. Of course they had all the needles I asked for except the ones I need right now. In fact no where in Australia seems to have 60cm or 80cm 4mm Addis. Arrghhh.

While I am complaining about everything else, am I the only one who has trouble finding the centre end of the yarn with Jo Sharp yarns? I am forever having to pull out half the ball and mess it up to find the end I want to knit from. ugh.

I finished Thomas’s quilt last night and it is oh so soft and snuggly. In the end it took two nights putting it together and two nights hand stitching the binding down… Which makes it doable to wait until babies are born and then make one before the first visit. The question is - will I (wait that is)? I am yet to decide whether to start another one of these blankets tonight or start making the Jo Sharp vest that is next in my knitting queue. I am planning to use Alison’s Leftovers Vest from the Winter ‘04 Knitty but I am having trouble settling on a size. While procrastinating over the vest last night I made some more stitch markers.

Taking photos of them reminded me that I had not shown you the markers I made over the Easter break. These may just be my favourites of all the markers I have made. It was such a shame I could only get three of these beads.

This is the baby quilt I am making for my neighbour’s due any second grandson Thomas. It’s made from super soft and suggly velour cord with flannel backing. It took me two nights work to get this far (I have done a little bit today). All that remains is to hand stitch the border/binding down at the back. I was going to bind it with purple satin ribbon binding. In fact I went so far as to spend $15 on the ribbon before discarding that idea. Apart from the money I wasted on the ribbon I was so happy with the result (even before actually finishing it) that today I went out and bought fabric for three more.

I have completely re-assessed my gift plans for all the upcoming babies in my life and EVERYONE is getting one of these, yes even the pregnant friend who reads this blog. You know how you are, just don’t expect to see photos here before you see it in the flesh. And just so you know, this is a much better plan that the last idea I had for you, the only thing better about my last idea would have been the surprise.

As well as all the new babies, Isabelle is getting one too. This is my second project in a row to make her cry - the poncho because I wanted her to wear it and this one because it wasn’t for her. How could I resist that? Isabelle’s will be pink and green with a gorgeous multi-coloured stripe flannel backing which matches beautifully. Let’s hope she still loves her first quilt when the new one is done, it’s not going to be bed sized so it will be a real pain if it’s all she wants to sleep with.

And the added bonus of making everyone one of these cuddly soft quilts? I get to keep the Stonington Shawl all for myself!