Wednesday, September 12, 2007

In the midnight hour....

I am awake, dammit. When I shouldn't be and don't really want to be. but I have learned not to fight it and to get up and do something rather than waste the time. It can't be too noisy, or it disturbs the snoring males of the household, so praise be for iPods and computers and such. Also, of course, knitting needles and spinning wheels.......

I have been knitting.

moreshawl

Being me and disorganised, I forgot to include a coin for reference, but it should be pretty apparent that the shawl has grown. It will also be apparent that the colours are doing slightly odd things, but do you know, I couldn't care less. It still looks pretty.

I have learnt the pattern! This may not seem such an achievement to some, but believe you me, it is huge! When I say I have learnt it, yes, I have, but I still make mistakes. My even greater achievement is that I have learnt to fudge as well!!!

I am going to simply carry on knitting until I run out of yarn, which won't be for a while. There is no fringe or other sort of edging on this shawl. When I am done - I have found another simple one to try, which does have a knitted on edging, so I will facing an additional challenge. Need to spin some yarn for that, though. Good grief.

I have also today cast on for another project, the Nomad hat/scarf from the current (Fall 2007) IK. This is in some camel and silk that I spun some time ago, and had been eyeing up for a hat. this goes one better, and needs to be completed for the Norway jaunt which, whilst not yet booked, is approaching that point.

camel hat

I've got a little bit further than shown, but not much. Very simple, once you have cast on, so shouldn't present any problems.

I spent some time this afternoon preparing for Friday's class, mainly mixing up dye stock solutions. I hadn't realised how low my supplies of Gaywool had got. Fortunately, Masham is not far off, and P&M will of course be there, so I can replenish. We are doing direct application (again), but I am aiming for more saturated colours and had always intended to encourage some mixing, now reinforced by only taking the limited range. I hadn't done anything with dyes for ages, and really enjoyed myself. I'll aim to do something of mine as a demo at least - probably no time to do much more as I think I have a couple of beginners. at least, unrecognised names, although those are not always such, of course.

I have three straight days out, I'm doing the class on ATCs on Thursday, which I am very much looking forward to. I'll post results - probably, ahem. Then AH, then Guild.

I was going to include a gratuitous cat picture in this post, but it appears to have vanished. Shame if I have deleted it, it was a nice one. Ah, well. Could be that I am actually getting sleepy, and therefore incompetent.

G'night.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

A Sure Fire Cure for Imsomnia
(Recommended by an old salt )
You need a full bottle of rum ( I suppose you could substitute your favourite tipple if so desired) and a candle
Stay in bed (this one is important ) and light the candle.Keep swigging at the bottle until you see three flames. Blow out the middle one and lie down. You should fall asleep quite quickly

Anonymous said...

PS
imsomnia-a personalised form of insomnia

beadlizard said...

I really like the "odd" things the colors are doing in the shawl, and that Nomad Hat is a great idea.

One of the best parts of knitting is creative fudging. Who really wants to rip?! --Syl, also a middle-of-the-night knitter