Keeping on keeping on

I still feel fogged with the cold, but there is perhaps a bit of an improvement. I simply hate having colds. I always feel like shit but can never decide if I am being a wuss - a flashback to childhood when any excuse to get out of school and stay home in the warm was grabbed with both hands. But, you know, I no longer care. If I feel like shit and also feel like coddling myself, I am going to do so, so there. but I have been knitting some today, so I am obviously going to decide to live at some point.

I got the cold at the weekend. Wisely or otherwise, when I found out there were places on the next knitting course with Fiona Morris at AH a mere three days after our return from Norway, I booked myself - and the DSM - on to it. this was the third one of them I have been on, and I have found them so incredibly beneficial. This one was no different, probably even more so.

Photographs - are rubbish, but will have to do.



The workshop was on working with colour in knitting. This is a slip stitch sample. I have done simple slip stitch before, this was following a chart, and the important thing that I learnt was I probably won't ever make the attempt again! (Now, that is a foolish thing to say if ever there was one....)



This - obviously - is nothing to do with the subject for the weekend. One of the great things about Fiona's workshops is that she is very generous with her time and skills and you pick up all sorts of stuff along the way. this was a different method of casting on for a toe-up sock, that is a doddle to do and nicer in all ways than a short row one. I will try at some point to do it with decent illustrations, but the essence is that you take two circs of the same appropriate size and hold them with the business ends together. Wrap the yarn around them both. Then move one circ so that you have the wire rather than the needle end on one of them adjacent, and knit the stitches. Reverse the position of the needles, making sure that you have the point of the next needle in the position relative to the yarn to continue knitting around. Keep on shifting the positions of the circ and knit on, increasing one stitch on each half of the toe cap as you do so.

Nifty, or what? I think it probably is a Cat Bordhi or someone similar technique, but haven't checked it out yet.



This next image shows my triumph for the weekend, that made going worth while all on its own. Yes, stranded knitting, or fairisle, whatever you want to call it, but...I'm going all goosebumpy....knitted with one yarn on the right hand, the second on the left.

For those who might feel somewhat underwhelmed by my achievement, let me tell you that I have tried on many, many occasions to do this and always failed miserably. I now know why this was so, but in the interests of not being mean to the DSM, am not going to say.



And finally. Not from the weekend at all, of course. This is the scarf I started on our trip. Lovely soft handspun cashmere and silk. And technically, this is a lace pattern (it has deliberate holes in it....) I really like the pattern - slipping the first of three stitches over the next two to make the decrease following the YO gives you almost a little "wheatsheaf". Of course, I do keep getting it wrong if I don't pay attention, but can "read" it now, and remember, I learnt to fudge.

Could I be turning in to an obsessive knitter?