Isabelle and I, we both love post. Look what came for me today:
One ball of Rowan Calmer in khaki. The only (regular) winter hat wearer in my life will be getting their very own Shedir from the Knitty Fall ‘04 surprise issue, hopefully before the end of winter. And can I just tell you how impressed I was that Up Country wrapped the book I ordered in bubble wrap? It arrived in pristine condition.
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:
