Short Rows: the Sequel

I actually finished the Calorimetry ages ago, but as is the way with so many nearly completed projects, it had to hang around folornly waiting for buttons until I finally took pity on it at the beginning of this week. I'm taking it as a birthday present for a friend tomorrow and I hope she likes it - maybe I'll manage to get her to do some modelling. With the autumn light changing, our kitchen now gets very long shadows which you can see in all these photos. As a result, when looking back at the pictures of the Calorimetry I realised that I had somehow knitted a small, fierce monster!

My love affair with the Wendy Fusion continues: having picked up some balls at Ally Pally I decided to try a test patch for the Lizard Ridge throw and I'm so pleased with how it came out.

This is the Aniseed colourway, a great mix of pinky purple, green and bright blue. There are 16 different colours in all which I reckon should be perfect for the throw. The Fusion is about half the price of the Kureyon and so much softer. Unfortunately it took me a while to realise that I was doing the short row wraps all wrong. You can see in this picture that I was twisting them far too much on the purl side.

By the final couple of repeats I had consulted a back issue of the trusty Interweave Knits and all was well.

Given the fact that I'm still only about half way through the crochet blanket I suspect the finished throw may be a way off, but the pattern is very enjoyable, especially as the colour changes spur you on to see how the next ones will fit in. I'm no nearer getting the lovely blue rocking chair or mountain scenery suggested by the pattern picture, however!

Cat-isfaction

Our little friends Agnes and Pip came to stay with us for a whole seven days last week as my parents were away on holiday. We took them back home last night and I'm missing them already. It was wonderful to have them for so long as they really settled in - after a couple of days there wasn't even any hiding under the bed. There were some early problems with our feet (and other body parts) being attacked in the middle of the night but we worked out a good system which saw the cats spend the nights in the kitchen with access to their food, litter and no human toes.

I was excited to see that my lap quilt was a big hit with Pip - praise indeed for the handcrafts, I feel. Here he is snoozing with paws over his eyes on the living room floor...

...and here a little more alert on a dining chair.

I made them a little ball of cotton to play with which was so popular I made them another to take back to Mum and Dads'.

This was a super easy (and effective) toy - I hand-wound some cotton yarn and then with the final 20cm or so threaded on a yarn needle I fed the end up and down through the ball to secure as much of the yarn as I could. This way the cats can abuse it as much as they like but it's very hard to unravel! Actually the pink yarn was from Noel, and since she's a cat lover, I hope she won't mind the use I put it to!

I will leave you with this incredibly cute picture of Pip.

As the British sometimes say, 'pip, pip for now'.

Seasonal Snowflake Silliness

Check out Make-a-Flake: you can design your own paper snowflakes or download a template for a ready-made design (like the one with the elves above)! I feel this is definitely too good to just be for kids!

La Moda

After a long journey through the American and British postal systems (most notably the black-hole that is the Broad Lane sub-post office, N15), the beautiful piece that I won in the One in Ten auction arrived today.

It's a small collage by the incredibly talented Lisa Congdon. I've followed Lisa's blog for the last couple of years and I really enjoy her work, her philosophy and her cats (who sadly appear rather less in her new art-focused blog, oh well).

I particularly like the sewing ephemera in this piece and the vibrancy of the red goes very well with the blue in our living room. And I had a bit of a thing for stamps when I was little. (I still have a giant tin of old ones somewhere - maybe I should use Lisa as inspiration and do something creative with them...)

We just have to work out where to hang the picture now. The big question is, should it take the place of the signed photo from the cast of Scrubs, or is that sacreligious?!