Nearly finished the GAAA

The end of the aran afghan is finally in sight, all 24 blocks from the book have been knitted, I've even designed my own block too so I have a 5'x5' square , I'm now in the middle of sewing all the blocks together then its just the border left to do.
Its very snuggly, DS2 has already decided its his.


I'm determined to get this finished by next monday to show off to the knitting group at the library.

Spring stash dash update

Well, this is whats left of the Spring stashdash basket, I still have 2 1\2 x 400g balls of aran destined to be knitted into a Great Aran American afghan, 3 balls of wendy happy which will become mythos and a skein (now balled) of moondance which will be the mystery shawl from Wendyknits. The orange fluff is a fibre with mohair in, I'm aiming to spin a spindle full of fine yarn which will be plied on itself to hopefully produce a laceweight yarn.

This is what I've achieved from the basket so far since mid April

A cardigan in king cole mirage for Mums birthday, she says it fits perfectly 4 and a bit more squares for the Great Aran american afghan

I finished Kvothe, kitted in zauberball

And spun 5og of oatmeal BFL (front) and 20g of browngrey BFL (back)

Hopefully I dont get too distracted and manage to work my way through more of the basket.

Spring Stashdash

I decided to join in the Spring Stashdash taking part over at the Stash Knitdown group on Ravelry. The idea is you fill a basket with stash\ current projects and only work on those until the end of June.

Heres my basket with the planned knitting in it.

And it all spread out on the bed, theres a bit of fibre there too to spin with

So far I have finished the shawl at the left front (the orang and purple yarn) and knitted up 2 balls of the blue striped yarn,
I think I might swap the grey skein for another as I am going to knit my neice some socks for her birthday at the end of June.
Wonder how long it will take for me to get fed up with these projects, or whether I will see the bottom of the bin by the end of June.

Its been 6 months .. what have I been up to

Hi, since last blogging I completed the naknitmo challenge. I originally thought I could knit 30000 stitches in a month, I managed 68992.

Knowing I knit that much means theres no reason why my stash is as big as it it. I took pics for 'flash your stash' day on Rav at the start of April, I can just get it all squeezed onto a double bed

I decided at the start of the year to only buy more yarn if I could buy it in person, so made sure that I stocked up when away at Skipnorth in March. Some of this has now been knitted up

Naknitmo

Havent blogged for ages, but still been busy knitting. For the month of November I've signed up to Naknitmo, the idea is you set yourself a target number of stitches to knit during the month. you can up your target during the month but cannot decrease it.
I've set my target at 30,000 stitches to start, no idea if this will be easy to achieve or a struggle, time will tell.

The first project I'm working on this month is the lacy sweater from Adorable knits for Tiny Tots by Zoe Mellor, I knitted this 2 years ago for a friends wee girl but she has now outgrown it and her mum had requesed another in a bigger size. I'm using James C Brett Kool Cotton, purchased at Texere in March 2009 on the way to Skipnorth.

Will post progress pics and stitch totals later in the week.

Yes, I'm still here

Crocheted this christmas tree for the local library where I work as a relief library assistant, we have no spare plug sockets for a tree with lights. Its 7" high, and the lights are hama beads I also made some cranfords from the leftovers from my crochet jacket, these are too small for me but are now keeping a friends hands warm

These are 2 more strips I made for 'stitches on the bridge'

The scarf above is stolen moments

and I'm sure you all recognise clapotis.

I dont think I will manage to finish 12 sweaters this year, I've finished 4 more (photos soon) and have the sleeves to do on no 11 but been sidetracked by other knitting. I still have 10 more sweaters than I did this time last year (and my mum got one too). I still have plans to knit more sweaters next year but found being tied to one type of project too stifling.

Halfway through Nakniswemodo

Dont know if you remember back to the start of the year, but I set myself the challenge of making 12 sweaters this year, as part of the nakniswemodo (knit a sweater a month dodecathon) group on ravelry, the only rule being they had to be adult sized.I've now passed the halfway mark, this is a crochet cardi for me crocheted in Yarnyarn lochan, I got the main colour at woolfest last year and the purple contrast this year, the pattern is an old one from Me magazine (late 80's or early 90's) which was a jumper, I've adapted it to a cardi.

Sweater no 7, 8 and 9 are all on the needles and now the baby stuff is all finished (for now) I might manage to actually finish all 12 by the end of December