Still here and knitting

It's been longer than I thought since my last post - oops. I've been up to quite a lot over the last few months, some of it worth blogging about too!

The most important thing is that I'm knitting again and really enjoying it. I've had a bad cold for the last few weeks (will it ever end!) and knitting had been helping me through it :o)

I'm not doing as much Christmas knitting this year. Partly to give my poor relatives a break, and partly to avoid causing myself stress. I've finished one item (bar blocking) and I've got one more to go (to start actually...).

The first thing is a shawl for my Mam in bright purple angora. It feels gorgeous, like fluffy clouds. I'm very chuffed with myself as it's the first lace pattern I've ever finished. I really enjoyed knitting it and started to understand the pattern and memorise what I needed to do. I was also able to work out if I had made a mistake quite quickly. As it is quite an easy pattern, it wasn't too difficult to tink back to fix it - although having said that, there are one or two unique 'design features' in my version of the shawl ;o) It's smaller than I hoped, but hope blocking will help toward making it look better and bigger...



I'm also planning to knit a shawl for my boyfriends Mam, hopefully I've got time. And then I want to knit a lace scarf/stole for my auntie but that will be after Christmas perhaps for her birthday at the end of January.

I've also made a cardie for a friends little girl:



A little tree decoration for a Secret Santa swap on Ravelry:



In October we went on holiday for a week. We so needed a holiday. We went to Skye, and although it was a very long drive, it was so very worth it. I'd not been to Skye before and I loved it! We rented a lovely little cottage near the sea with fabulous views over the hillsides beyond. It was cold and quite wet, but we went out on days that we could, only two days were too stormy for us not to want to leave the house. On those days we curled up in front of the roaring fire, and I knit or read as I fancied. Wonderful!

I visited two yarn shops while I was there and spent far more than I should have on yarn. I went to the Handspinner Having Fun, as well as the famous Shilasdair. At the latter I bought a few odd skeins, one for my Secret Santa swap and two purple yarn for me - one was their 100% cashmere. I thought it would be good for some fingerless mitts, but decided to make a cowl instead. After looking for a pattern that I liked for while, I decided to make something up myself. So I did and I love it, it worked out very well. I might post the instructions at some point.



Well, I'm fairly sure I had more to write about but it'll keep. My head hurts. Between starting and finishing this post the shopping arrived - yes, I got ASDA to deliver and I'm very disappointed in myself (they use FAR too many bags and I always end up buying the wrong things, or not being able to find what I want and just giving up) but neither of us are feeling well so we gave in. We've got my boyfriends two boys this weekend and they were being very helpful carrying the bags to the kitchen and helping me unpack until one of them dropped a big jar of passatta and it smashed covering the kitchen floor in a thick layer of glass and sieved tomatoes. Joy. My other half had popped to the shops so I had to deal with it myself. Took a while but I did it, without any harm to bare footed boys too! My head is a different matter entirely...