Catching up!

Thanks so much to all who left comments on my last post. I thought, in this one, I'd better catch up with what I've been doing. Knitting has taken place! First, the 'Counting Sheep' Baby Blanket knitted in Jaeger Matchmaker DK from the Vogue Baby Blankets book. Can you see the blackberry stitch sheep with 3D ears?




I decided to line the blanket with some cotton fabric and was delighted to find this gorgeous, high quality landscape fabric on eBay featuring a field of wild flowers with sheep, a sheep dog and farmer.


I washed the fabric to preshrink it before stitching it to the back of the blanket and also added some hidden stitches here and there to stop the middle from bagging.




Baba's mum has given it her approval and I hope baba will like it, too!

I also made a start on Odette from the Rowan Kidsilk Aura book . . .


. . . and used two skeins of Noro Aurora from stash to make a scarf for a friend's birthday.


The scarf was knitted in two halves which were then grafted together so that the ends would match and I used the Celtic Waves ripple stitch pattern from Jan Eaton's '200 Ripple Stitch Patterns' book.


And I have some buttons and beads to show! A friend who is familiar with my penchant for interesting buttons acquired these little beauties for me a couple of months ago which she found in an antique shop. What a great find!


She also gave me some lovely fibres and yarn she had spun but my camera has been unable to do justice to them due to the dismal weather.

As for beads, these were my two most treasured buys at the Bead Show at Sandown Park back in November.


Botswana Agate and highly polished Lapis Lazuli.

At present, I'm working on designing a christening shawl (as much as one can design such a thing when using traditional stitch patterns such as Shetland or, in this case, Estonian stitch patterns). To get an idea of how the stitch patterns will look together and to familiarise myself with the construction and the charting, I'm initially knitting a swatch shawl, i.e. a small version of the real thing! I got this idea from the Gossamer Webs Design Collection Book which gives directions for several sample Orenberg shawls to knit so that one gets used to the techniques. Hopefully, the shawl I'm making will become an heirloom in our family and I think it will be really nice to have the teeny version to go along with it to show the design and swatching process. It makes it more individual and special, don't you think. I just hope that my descendants in years to come will appreciate lace knitting otherwise both normal and teeny sized shawls might one day end up in a charity shop or, worse, the bin! Well, one can only hope . . . I should have some pics of the swatch/sample shawl to show in a day or two providing it doesn't all go terribly wrong! LOL