I’ve been having a play around with the template of the blog and now have pictures to link to my finished projects! Its so much fun!

It got me to thinking about photographing some of my older knitting too so I thought I would start with my big knit from last year, my wedding dress:

Paul and Heather

In case you hadn’t guessed I am the one on the right 🙂 The other one is the long suffering husband. We got married on May 15th at Leatherhead Register Office.

I designed the dress myself, it is knitted top down on circular needles and turned me into a total convert to that method of knitting, it really helps when attempting to get a good fit to be able to try on the knitting as you go. It is knitted using Jaeger Cadiz, 50% silk and 50% viscose, and the colour is Malachite. According to the ball band this is an aran weight yarn but after I knitted a few sample pieces I decided I liked the fabric best when knitted using 3.5mm needles. It is mostly stocking stitch, with 2×2 cables. I got so paranoid when buying yarn for this, since in typical Heather fashion I only discovered it after it had become discontinued! (although it did mean most of the yarn was on sale), that I bought so much yarn that I have enough left over for a matching cardigan, which I will get round to some time. The dress is really heavy but it doesn’t seem to have stretched and is very comfy to wear. I wore it again this February with a black cardigan to go to another friend’s wedding.

In other knitting I haven’t done much on the purple felted bag, hopefully I’ll get back to it soon. The latest hat for Nanny is coming along though, I have just started the shaping for the crown. Its a lovely day here today so I will get the camera out later and take a picture of it.

I heard back from Kangaroo and unfortunately they don’t have all the colourways for the Mermaid, and they wont do yarn snippets of the colours they do have. They referred me to Hanne Falkenberg’s website but that unfortunately doesn’t solve the problem of my monitor possibly not displaying the colours properly. It seems quite a lot of money for a kit which I am not quite sure that the colours will be what I expect. This bugs me a little about Hanne’s designs, that you can’t buy the pattern separately and then select your own colours from a source where you can actually go and see them and make sure they are all colours you like.

OK, you can take your hands off your ears now, I’ve finished ranting 🙂 I think I shall go and knit some more hat now.

I’ve finished the second hat for Nanny’s birthday, same pattern as before (the Braid-edged Cap by Judy Gibson), and also same yarn (Schachenmayr Princess, 72% acrylic, 28% viscose) but in a different colour.

2nd hat for Nanny

It actually used less yarn than I had thought so I have embarked on a stripy hat with the yarn I have left over. I have done three stripes so far and will hopefully take a picture of it in progress soon.

The purple felted bag is coming along, I am onto the strap now so the end is in sight. The black and red bag has had a couple of outings already and has proved to be a good size. Thanks for the comment Jocelyn, I am hoping to carry the idea of shading colours a bit further with the next bag which is purple and black, and entirely in my head at the moment!

The new edition of Knitting arrived a couple of days ago and I am part way through it. Seeing the ads from the various UK online knitting shops always inspires me to go and see what they have got in at the moment, never a good plan for the poor beleaguered credit-card. Anyway, to cut a long story short (too late!) I see that Get Knitted has got a whole load of lovely looking sock yarns in colours I don’t have yet, even though I need new sock yarn like I need a hole in the head. Also to add insult to injury I have fallen in love with the new Hanne Falkenberg kit, Mermaid. The only dilemma is the colour, I am in an agony of indecision over colour 4, blue, turquoise, and green, or colour 5, black, dark green, and kingfisher. I am worried that my monitor doesn’t always display colours very accurately and that colour 4 might be paler than I think, or that the colour is accurate and colour 5 is rather dingy. I might email them and see if they could send me a little snippet of the appropriate colours. Unfortunately I think I see a rather large credit card bill in my future …