Yelena cardigan, etc.

It hasn't been a good week for trying to finish the hood on the BdF jacket. I find I can't knit very well with the yarn if I'm tired, so I've left it alone! It is very prone to catching loops on the needles, in much the same way as Lasso.

I started the Yelena cardigan a couple of days ago. This is from Colinette's Femme Fatale book, another collection of designs using Giotto. I'm using shade "Marble" that I bought well over a year ago, originally intended for Maeve from Akashya. This cardigan is in 1x1 rib, might sound slow but actually I'm finding it reasonably quick to knit. Big needles and big yarn is a good combination. I also think this type of fabric is excellent for Giotto.



I'm only using one skein and so far it's looking good, no pooling or striping.

I wanted to show you the wonderful "Sheepish" needles that I received today from Knitz&Glitz, but have had a contretemps with the camera's memory card and the pictures were trashed. Take a look at them on the website! I also can't show the gorgeous skein of Fleece Artist Merino 2/6 yarn (shade Mermaid) that also arrived today from Get Knitted (along with various knitting notions and a pair of Brittany needles). This is my end-of-the-month yarn buy and is for the Ilga Leja Diamonds on the Diagonal scarf. Jannette is selling these patterns on eBay now, and Woolly Workshop also stock some of them.

I'm pleased with how my Octber "yarn diet" went. I did not purchase any yarn on a whim, my only purchase has been the yarn mentioned above (which I was going to do early next week but figured it made little difference overall!). I'll try to continue with being more "restrained" in my yarn-buying for November, to be honest I didn't find it difficult at all for one month.

Another reason to use some lovely stash, at work we have decided to take part in "Operation Christmas Child", and fill two shoeboxes with items for children who otherwise wouldn't get anything, in Europe and elsewhere. At minimum I'm making two hats, one for a 2-4 year old girl, and one for a 5-9 year old boy. These will have to be done this week really so hopefully I'll have them to show when I next blog.

Today we went on a Global Volunteer Day event at the local zoo. We were clearing up some of the animal enclosures, mainly for fallen leaves. We ended up cleaning the capybara and spider monkey area, and later on the enclosure and surrounds of the miniature donkeys. It was a great way to spend part of the day and it was wonderful to see the animals. It's years and years snce we visited this place and they have made huge improvements, some really excellent, large areas for the animals and plenty of environment enrichment.