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.

A little bit of whimsy

One of my birthday presents this year was Ysolda Teague's book, Whimsical Little Knits, and as is only appropriate with all good birthday presents, I dived right in and cast on.

These are the Grown Up Booties, or Fluffy Feet as they have been christened locally.

Pure play knitting - they took no time at all being chunky yarn on 5mm needles. The yarn is Rowan's Colourscape in Carnival and these are the snuggliest slippers that I've had in a while.

I knit the first slipper far too big for my feet and had to unpick and rip back 12 rows of the body of the slipper to get them to a more user-friendly size so if you are knitting these I would err on the side of caution when calculating how far to knit before you shape the toe. It might also help to sew up the heel while the toe is still on the needles.

My second attempt looked like it would be far too short and far too tiny to fit my feet but it's actually perfect.

The only hitch that I have with these is that when I'm going down the stairs I catch the heel on the step above and the friction flips the slipper off - I'm thinking that a little strap with some statement buttons might be the answer - and a few people on Ravelry seem to have done something similar.

The slippers were a little frivol over the past couple of days - this was the glory:

Ishbel (the big size), knit from one and a bit skeins of Handmaiden Camelspin in Aegean.

It's currently blocking on the floor behind me and trying to dry despite the very best thunderclouds and humidity piling up behind the nearest hill. I also got to play with another birthday toy:

Blocking wires - the set from Loop. I've had bendy garden wire and tried the trick with thread and a couple of pins but this is the real deal and totally worth it.


I love that I could block out all of these points evenly at the same time and didn't have to spend hours fussing over the individual alignment - it's official, I'm a convert to blocking wires.

I'm off work on annual leave at the moment (hence the daylight blogging) and rapidly discovering that time off work does not translate into time to put into practice all the cunning ideas I have when I go swimming; it just means that there are even more ideas.

I'm working on it, so who knows what will appear here soon!