20 December: Cold

Round here the temperature has barely crept above zero for days. This morning the thermometer in the conservatory (unheated since last winter) showed just above zero, when it has been hovering at 4 or 5 degrees. The windows were pretty, though -


Fortunately I have just finished a lap blanket which has been in progress for a couple of months.


The grey Shetland is handspun from a fleece bought at Woolfest, and the coloured squares (because there wasn't quite enough grey) are knitted from handspun Shetland yarn, home-dyed, from the stash.

Another cold-beating item is this cowl or neckwarmer knitted from some handspun merino. The drop-stitch pattern makes it stretchy and extra warm.

11 December: Recent knitting and a small success

The snow has meant we haven't been getting out much. So a fair amount of knitting has been done. A couple of larger projects are still in progress, but here are some small finished items -


This is a scarflet (short scarf), knitted as a tube, in one-row helical stripes, with the ends closed to make it double thickness. Handspun BFL - super soft and silky.

And 2 sideways short-row hats knitted from the recent batches of spinning and dyeing -


Nice texture, soft yarn, and lovely mixed colours. The plainer green one was done first, but if one colour's good, then 2 are better, so a quarter of the second hat is done in a yarn with colour in common with the larger yellow section.

And, finally - last Sunday's 18M FITA archery competition gave me a winning gold medal -


Not exactly a huge victory, though; I was the only archer shooting bare-bow. And that's the bow that's bare, NOT the archer!

22 October: TV knitting

That is, knitting which is simple and straightforward, and requires no thinking or working out the pattern while it's being done.

First are these simple mitts -


Handspun Shetland yarn, helical stripes, easy thumb shaping; they're a bit big for me, but a gorilla might like them.

Then there's that good old stand-by for simple knitting - a scarf -


Handspun merino/silk in Old Shale pattern, sometimes called Feather and Fan (I don't know if there's a difference). It worked out eventually about 6 inches wide and 57 inches long, but isn't as soft as I would have expected. Perhaps it's the garter rows.

The mitts weigh 42 gms and the scarf 100 gms - so not even a small dent in the stash.

And there wasn't much TV involved either, as few of the the programmes recently have appealed.

17 May: More knitting and weaving

This neckwarmer is knitted in a stitch shown to me by a fellow Guild member - but her instructions were in French, and it took a while to identify the same stitch with English instructions.


The yarn is handspun and home-dyed BFL, and both stitch and yarn are very good for a thick soft yummy scarf.

Back to the inkles. These two are plain weave, but with varied yarns. The broad one is some multi-colour scraps of merino, and the narrow one is Suffolk and BFL.


Two more pick-up patterns. It's a bit annoying to find a small mistake in the weaving on practically every band, but I suppose few of us are actually perfect....

14 November: Down but not out

We have both been laid low with the lurgy, a virus we brought home with the shopping a couple of weeks ago.

But coughing does not involve the fingers (well, not all the time), so I've been able to do a little light knitting. Another Baktus scarf in sock yarn -


and another sort of stranded hat, starting with one colour and gradually changing to a second. The first A to B Hat turned out a bit subtle -


so the second one was done with more contrast in the yarns.


A slight dent in the mountain of stashed yarn.