We went for lunch with the in-laws today which was lovely. A nice bit of board game playing in the afternoon too, I lost moderately horribly but I enjoy the playing so that’s what counts!

I got some more of the sock done. I am just about to start the heel so it shouldn’t be too long to go now. I’ll post a picture when they are finished.

Anyway, time for bed I think. I’ll try to get more done tomorrow, in among ringing the plumber about the leaky pipe in the bathroom, doing my french homework for the evening class I go to, and reading up about the history of the Mathematics Association!

My next project is going to be a mitred t-shirt for the summer, made out of some 4ply cotton I happen to have lying around in a bin bag in the computer room 🙂

While waiting for the poncho sweater to dry sufficiently that I can photograph myself in it I thought I would knit up a tension swatch and see what it came out like. So here it is:

It is knitted in garter stitch on 3mm needles. I wasn’t sure about the ratio of depth of the stripes so I started off at the bottom with 4 rows navy, then 2 rows green, then changed to 6 rows navy and 2 rows green. I’m still not sure whether the stripiness will make me look like a deck-chair, hmm. I do have lots of different shades of blue and green so hopefully that will make it look more of a subtle gradation and less stripy. The green I used was slightly thicker than the blue but I must check the bag and see whether this was just this ball. They are each made up of several thinner strands wound together, so while the navy is a flat colour the green I used is actually made up of 4 strands of mid-green and one of a medium blue.

So anyway, the swatch is now waiting to be washed and dried to see if I like the fabric while I contemplate the general stripiness problem. In the meantime I am knitting a bit on a pair of socks I seem to have been making forever. I need to free up my needles for when my 4ply alpaca from Texere (http://www.texere.co.uk/) turns up, hopefully any day now!

In other news I had a jolly trip to the Fantasia today (http://www.jwaad.ndirect.co.uk/fan.html) but was remarkably restrained and bought only a lovely red/yellow/orange scarf thing and a malachite and silver pendant. I might get round to photographing them hopefully soon. I need to find a necklace for the pendant but I think I have one lurking somewhere. I haven’t quite worked out how to wear the scarf, as I’m more of a wooly scarf rather than a drapy scarf kind of a person, but it was so beautiful I will work something out 🙂

Well having joined the world of the bloggers I should start somewhere, so on with the ramblings.

Last night I finished knitting my poncho sweater as designed by Heather Madrone on the Ample Knitters list http://www.ample-knitters.com/ . This morning I washed it and blocked it on the spare room floor (as that is the only large enough flat space in the house where it isn’t likely to get sat on or trodden on). So here is a picture of it drying. In a couple of days when it has dried properly, and hopefully when the weather has cheered up a bit I’ll bully Paul into taking a picture of me in it.

Poncho Sweater