Current WIPs and other musings

Photos to start - firstly the Alien Illusion scarf. This is half way through the first pattern repeat, so you have half an alien's head :-) The first photo (excuse the flash effect, it's a dull day here) shows the "flat" version (no clickie), the second the shadow pattern when viewed from a different angle:





Now I have the hang of following the chart, and am not mixing up my left and right, I'm enjoying knitting this. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is for my hubby. I bought enough yarn to make two scarves, I'm considering making a skull and crossbones version for myself. Suspect I'm currently going through some kind of piratical phase, I'm also eyeing up the Skully sweater from Stich 'N' Bitch :-) And of course there's the wonderful "We Call Them Pirates" hat, as recently completed by Knit Knit Purl Purl. I also found the lovely Skull Scarf, knit in the round, by And She Knits Too! (this one could take a while, methinks).

Next up, the start of the Irish Hiking Scarf for my dad, using the Posh Yarn cashmere-silk yarn. This is fabulous stuff to knit with, very much a "buttery" yarn. My first attempt at cables, and with this yarn I have the kind of effect I wanted - not overly "3D", but a more subtle texturing effect.



I'm hoping my Dad likes this, but good news regarding my chosen colour - he was wearing a shirt of the same deep purple hue as the yarn the other day!

I'm almost done with the bag I'm making to send with Branching Out. It's the reason I chose that particular shade of blue, I'll say no more until I can post the finished item :-) Safe to say it isn't a "pretty" style of bag, it's more a slightly mad fannish item and I hope very much it will give my friend a big laugh when she sees it :-)

Books

This week I acquired what appears to be an truly excellent knitting reference book - the Knitters Handbook by Montse Stanley. So far I've only had a brief look though, but it has little gems like a diagram and text explaining which way round stitches should lie on your needles. Now I sometimes have cause to tink back a number of stitches, and I've never seen anything before that tells me exactly where each arm of the stitch should lie. It can be easy to accidentally twist stitches when unpicking them, especially in my case and spatial awareness isn't one of my strengths! Many thanks to Hazel for recommending this book, I know it will be very useful for the upcoming Sgt Pepper :-)

I also added another book to my wishlist - One Skein by Leigh Radford. There look to be some great projects in there, and it has received some very positive reviews from a number of knitbloggers.

I finished reading Neverwhere this week and thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you to nanatoo for recommending it! I've added two of Neil Gaiman's other books to my wishlist, Smoke and Mirrors and Stardust. Currently between books, I can't decide whether to pick up one of the "classics" and tackle something I've not read before, maybe Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Buttons

I'd take a photo of my current button stash, but it would look rather feeble :-) Most of the buttons we currently have are those spares that you get with items of clothing. I've recently bought a few pretty buttons, the local LYS has quite a nice selection. However I wondered if anyone knew of any good online shops for fancy buttons?

Daft quiz time

I saw this on 17 Percent Geek's blog and had to have a go, apparently I'm 30.4% geek (hence the "total geek" button on the right). That kind of figures.

Then I found the nerd test at Yarnivorous, so I figured that had to be done as well!



There seems to be a pattern emerging ...

Speaking of patterns ...

This week there has been much pattern temptation posted on blogs. I'm like some sort of pattern magpie, each new one I see that I like, goes on my to-do list. Never mind the list could last me years! For example, Kendra posted about the Matilda cardigan. Oh my, that has like ribbons lacing up the back, which hits my pattern buttons in a dramatic way :-) I love the fitted, laced, ribbony kind of thing. Vogue Knitting has already tempted me in that general directon with some of the current crop of patterns. I recently subscribed and am most impressed with my first issue.

At least I now have a to-do list spreadsheet. It needs updating again. I'm thinking I should do one to catalogue my stash too, before it takes over the house.

Some thanks are also due, to Cherry for answering my plea for advice on felting Colinette Point 5 yarn. When I've knitted my way out of quite so many WIPs I'm going to make a bag with the green Point 5 acquired recently :-)

On a different note, it seems there have been changes in the Harry Potter knitting world. Last time I visited HP_Knitting, the long-absent mod had reappeared after variou members contacted her. It now seems that after another couple of months she has decided to hand over the community to others, neither of whom actually wanted to be mods! Last thing I saw, she hadn't actually transferred anything so the poor comm is in limbo. Some of the regulars have moved over to Weasley Sweaters, which seems an excellent idea. I've not made any HP items for a while but future plans for scarves and sweaters are there!