Triumph & Disaster

Last weekend I went to an Aladdin’s cave of knitting goodness –otherwise known as the John Lewis Haberdashery department in Norwich. With the help of a lovely member of staff I purchased a darning needle (well a pack of 5, assorted sizes £1.70); threader and 1 set of circular needles. I obviously could have bought lots more…they have a fabulous selection of wool (a little out of my usual price range), knitting books etc. But whilst I was looking around my very patient boyfriend found himself a comfy sofa and very kindly ordered me the follow up to the knittygritty book I use, rather aptly named ‘knittygritty: the next steps’. It arrived Tuesday and I LOVE it. Adult booties are top of my list of things to make as I enjoyed making the baby booties so much. I’ll do a review of the new book in my next blog post.

 

Luckily a snow day following my purchases meant that I had plenty of time to darn my work! I followed the instructions as closely as I could for the various ways to make up my work. And I actually quite enjoyed it! It was lovely to see my handy work come together. The booties – absolute triumph! Looked really good, I am going to make a few more pairs of these as they are lovely and I know a couple of people with babies (or who are expecting). The hat – disaster! Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, the knitting and sewing up went well but it is absolutely massive. I mean ENORMOUS. I realise I may have used the wrong sized needles and the wrong wool so it has ended up looking more like a tea cosy. However I still really enjoyed making it and will try again very soon. Part of me wants to unravel it and use the fab wool for something else…I’ll have to think about that.

 

I am currently working on a pattern I found online for a very simple dog jumper. Hopefully this will be finished by my next post, so I’ll put some photos up. Also I’m going to start the adult booties this weekend as the dog jumper pattern is so easy (just rib & garter stitch) that it isn’t really testing my knitting skills and I enjoy learning new stitches.

 

In other news, I have signed up for the ‘Understanding Patterns’ and the ‘Easy Hat’ workshops at Wibbling Wools in Bury St Edmunds http://www.wibblingwools.co.uk/classes.html - really looking forward to both of these. They are a little way off yet, so plenty of time to save up and in the Easy hat workshop I’ll have an opportunity to knit in the round using my circular needles! I’m also hoping that after I have been to structured workshops I’ll have the confidence to attend a knitting group.

 

Really enjoying knitting at the moment, particularly as it is so cold and nice to get in my PJs and knit on the sofa. I am wondering whether my knitting will slow down as the weather warms up and the evenings are a bit brighter – we will have to see!

 

Until next time knitters,

 

 

Sam x

 

Lulu enjoying the snow