Now you see it, now you don't

The magical disappearing act of Carie, the blog posting and rather a lot of repetitive knitting!

Where do we start? Well how about with the discovery that two 24 hour periods of nursing a sick husband (I'd call them days, but days don't tend to involve trips to the 24 hour Tescos at the kind of hours in the morning where you're the only customer) is not the best preparation for falling foul of the tail end of the same bug on a day when you really needed to go to work, went to work, failed to complete the work that you really needed to do, and travelled home lying on the floor of the train because being upright was more than you could handle - fun times!

I have a feeling that both my mother and Beth may be telephoning me as they read this to tell me off for being an idiot - I always come unstuck when H is too unwell to countermand my over-active protestant work ethic. I think I'm back to normal (ish) now, so lets just hope it holds out. One thing I know is that I'm desperately tired and so is the boy - he even let me drive today which is a thing that never ever happens unless he has a broken hand or is on some sort of medication that forbid the use of heavy machinery - it's going to be early nights all round for a few days yet.

So, the knitting. Now you see it:



and then I ripped it all out again. It is/was the start of Ysolda Teague's Hap Blanket from Whimsical Little Knits 1 (NB there's a book 2 coming out and it's awesome!) but my main yarn was too light an aran weight so I wasn't getting gauge even with 8mm needles and the fabric was too small and too loose. So, it all came out, I'm using 7mm needles and I added a few stitches to the cast on - I'll fudge the edging somehow and end up with a blanket that tucks round me which is what really matters in the long run.

In the meantime, I've been putting some hours in at the sewing machine; can you tell the leaves are turning by the fact that I've been temporarily distracted from socks by the need to make more blankets and quilts.


This is a Hoffman batik Bali Pop in Mint Choc Chip which, together with a metre and a half of my favourite orange came home from the NEC quilt show. It doesn't match the colour scheme of any of the rooms in my house and I love it unreservedly.




With the orange mixed in it's very autumnal - everything tinged at the edges with bronze.

I'm using a pattern from the book Jelly Roll Quilts, called Sparkling Gemstones; this might just be Sparkling Leaves - welcome to September.