I have a tangle of snake-like border sat in my lap. Yes that means I've finally finished knitting, I knit the last row at work today! I now have the arduous task of sewing the damn thing together but first I think I'm going to iron it to try and get some of the curliness out - I think it could be a little unruly otherwise! More to come on this late next week as I'm off on holliday on Friday!


I'm a little irate with angel yarns regarding my purchase I told you all about.I ordered some yarn from them and the payment was finalised and I thought that was that, but no! I had an email about two days later saying that it wasn't in stock and wouldn't be delivered for up to a month, which was really awkward since it was intended for a holiday project.I knew I was cutting it a tad fine by ordering about 12 days before I was due to go, but I don't think I could have prepared for a whole month's shipping time! On their website they state that they don't accept cancelations by phone, only by post or email, so I sent them an email on Friday morning to cancel the order (I received their email late on the Thursday night) and I've still not heard back yet, or had the money refunded to me. Quite cross about that!I'm going to give them another week and if I still havent heard anything I'll have to call them (eek! i hate calling people!) But on the plus side I then went on the kemps wool shop website (links on the left) and bought two balls of Wendy's "Serenity Aran" in "Purple Haze" which arrived two days after I ordered it and only cost me £6.54, a saving of about £8 compared to what I'd bought from angelyarns, but then kemps wool shop is known for being super-cheap! Will definitely order from them again!


I'm going to go and mull over what needles I'm using for my new scarf, i think i may have to frog something else that I've been avoiding to steal those needles for it, and I have SO much sewing and ironing to do!

Late Post

Crikey, talk about late posting! I skipped one week because I just KNEW I'd be done with the centre part of the shawl and have it all sewn together and photographed by the next week. Well I have it all knitted and sewn together, but the only photographs are on my phone and it turns out not to like my pc very much! Guess you could say I'm not very good at this photography stuff!
I was really looking forward to finishing the centre part and starting the border of this shawl (it counts for only 20% of the finished piece) and I thought it'd take me five minutes and be an absolute breeze compared with the rest of it, but oh how wrong I was and in some completely unexpected ways! I'm getting used to the pattern now, but in the beginning it was hard to remember and I kept having to refer to the pattern a LOT, but now I'm finding it's so repetitive and completely boring that it's hard to just get down and do loads in one go, unlike with the centre panels which were quite varied. So it's taken me since the weekend (about 5 daysish) to do a sum total of 4,232 stitches (not including cast-on). Which in all honesty, is completely crap and means that all I have to show for my dedication (hah!) is a long, thin, curly (damn stockinette stitch!) snake thing, with funny coloured markers!
In my boredom I have been planning my next project (whilst looking at UFO's rather guiltily!). I've just ordered some Wendy Aran in Blackberry (like a darkish purpley pink in normal language) from the Angel Yarns website and like the name suggests, it's Aran weight so will be used for the Palindrome scarf in my Ravelry queue (it's a free pattern for cables that look the same on both sides!). In my error I thought that Aran was just the British version of Worsted (the pattern is for worsted weight yarn) so I'm a little concerned that my gauge won't exactly match that of the pattern, but I've been assured that I'm worrying too much and being silly, so full steam ahead (and if it goes horribly wrong , I have the names of who to blame!). Lets hope the yarn arrives before the end of next week though because I'm off on my hols next Friday and the idea is that I can start it and get a lot done whilst I'm there.
I've also discovered the clearance section on the kemps wool shop website and oh my god it's so cheap! I think coming across this site might have been a mistake, the trouble with cheap yarn is that you buy more of it, start (but not finish) more projects and then before you know it your stash has taken on a life of it's own and is suddenly demanding remote control rights and slamming doors and borrowing your car...
In other news, I've been knitting so much I broke my row counter, and had to buy another one. The new one is all clean and bright, but somehow it's just not the same since the old one was passed down from my mum from her mum!

Christmas already?

It's my Nan's birthday today and I haven't knitted her a present. I know that's really awful, but she's in a care home and I couldn't think of anything to knit (hats scarfs and gloves are all out of the window since she doesn't go outside, and a lot of things tend to be stolen as well!) and now I have no time left. I feel like such a bad person :(

I've had migraine after migraine this week so I've stuck to knitting the christening shawl - mum's scarf has taken a back seat for now until my eyes can focus on the yarn without feeling like they're about to fall out. Don't get me wrong, the yarn is gorgeous and a dream to knit with, but it's so fine that I'm going cross-eyed just to differentiate between it and the needles!

Actually, that's not the only reason I've been trying to crack on with the shawl, I've been getting a few emails enquiring about knitting services, and there's one in particular I'm really intrigued about, it'd mean regular(ish) orders which would be ideal for some extra saving money. Trouble is that where I'm a fairly competent knitter, my negotiating skills are inversely proportionate! I know I knit to a good standard, but putting a price on my skills just seems to blow my brain out of the water for some reason, which is bad when I'm trying to pimp out my services!

The shawl seems to be doing a tour with me at the moment, everywhere I go, people seem to want to see it. There's a lady where I keep my horse who wants me to bring it down and show it off, then I'm taking it to my counselling session tomorrow too. I'm actually part way through the 11th triangle, after this another 5 to go and then the border! I feel like I've been knitting this for ages and although I feel the achievement of casting off each triangle, it seems I aught to be a lot further through it than I am! Still, can't wait til it's finished, but I'm worrying now that I may have to post it instead of giving it to her in person. I'm already planning the box I'm going to put it in, which is going to get bigger and bigger in my head as this things continues to grow - I sewed together two squares last week (really proud of my seeming, it looks so neat!) and without any sort of blocking was nearly as tall as me when I held it up! This is going to be one warm baby...

As knitting time until D-Day (Christmas) diminishes, I keep thinking what I should knit for family and friends. Mum's already had her early Christmas present this year - I bought her a Wii Fit for her to play with and hopefully lose some weight. Bought dad some books for his birthday so I was thinking of knitting him a bookmark to go with it, but the only patterns I've seen are for sock wool at the heaviest, so I might have to make it up as I go along - I've some left over DK acrylic in red green and white (lovely christmas colours!) so am tempted to do something colourful, maybe with cables. No idea what I want to knit for friends yet, I've a special friend who is hopefully reading this right now and will soon be moving into his new house, so I'd like to knit something cool that he can use, but will look cool AND be thoughtful at the same time, Thinking hats on please!

I hope I'm not the only person who is thinking of what they may be receiving on that day either. I've been hearing all the chatter about circular needles with interchangeable tips, and the more I hear about them the more I want a set! The other thing on my list is a ball winder, not because I have no patience whatsoever to constantly wind a bit of yarn around my hand a million times and in the process giving myself RSI, but because when I manually wind a ball it's so untidy, and that's if it doesn't fall apart! I want some pretty stitch markers too, the more horsey themed the better! I'm sick of my plastic ones, they're ugly!

As I'm re-reading this post, I'm realising that not only is there no pictures, but there's also nothing I've spoken about that needs illustrating with any. Which is boring. So I'm going to finish this off with a pretty picture of my pony, who is gorgeous and my reason for being :-)