Well, I haven’t disappeared off the face of the planet but it has been a busy couple of weeks.

Since my last post, I have been to The Beadwork Fair at Lingfield Park, which was great fun. Oddly enough despite being a bead fair I managed to buy some knitting needles 🙂 I bought another set of 2.5mm rosewood dpns to replace the ones I have had a few years and which are all rather bent and one has snapped. I did buy a few beads too, I found a lovely selection of pretty coloured delica beads, which I am going to make into bracelets when I finally get round to it. I am not very fast at this beading lark, as can be witnessed by the fact that I am still only 2 inches into the bracelet I started just after the 2003 Beadwork Fair.

I also went to the International Arts and Crafts Exhibition at the V&A which was fantastic. A really interesting collection of exhibits, in a well thought out exhibition. I would encourage you all to go but unfortunately I see from their website that the Exhibition closed yesterday 🙁 The V&A generally is always worth an outing though, and I am definitely resolved to try and get there more often and have a closer look at all the amazing things they have.

Keeping on the theme of the V&A I also went back there for the Knitting and Crochet Guild AGM, when we had a talk on knitting at the V&A and conservation, all interesting stuff. The previous day a few of us also had a very interesting and illuminating tour of the textile conservation department also organised by the Knitting and Crochet Guild. A lovely chance to meet up with lots of knitters too, and wonderful to see all the things they were making or had brought along to show. I am definitely inspired by Mary Graham’s knitting with wire to have another go myself. The shapes she had knitted were quite different from what you can achieve in a more floppy material like most yarns, they rather reminded me of surfaces of constant negative curvature which you get in non-Euclidean geometry (worth clicking the link for the pretty pictures even if you aren’t a mathematician!).

As well as the outings my parents have been to stay twice in the last week! Both on their way to, and on their way back from a holiday in France, and it has been both my parents-in-law’s birthdays. Just to add to the general hecticness, the TV broke on Saturday and the car needs a service, it doesn’t rain but it pours!

In among all this domestic chaos I have managed to knit a bit more on the multicoloured cotton jumper, and here is the first sleeve, nearly finished.

Since photographing this I have now joined it to the body, unfortunately no photo since the camera batteries died and are currently recharging. Hopefully I’ll take a piccie tomorrow.

So, I am off to catch up on all the blog reading I have missed, cast on for the second sleeve and possibly read a bit of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (I am hopelessly slow and only on chapter 4 so far).

The new KnitCast is here! This one is an interview with Kate Gilbert, the designer of the Clapotis (I think I must be the only knitter ever who hasn’t knitted one and has no particular plans to! I think it is a lovely pattern but can’t really see myself wearing it).

I’ve given up on the weather cheering up enough to take a progress photo of the multi-coloured cotton jumper outside so here is one of it taken on the settee:

Its coming along. I think I am only a couple of stripes away from the start of the neckline – it is going to be a V-neck. Once I reach the underarm I shall put the body on stitch holders and work both sleeves, and then work out how I am going to do the shoulders.

Apart from the knitting I have been very domesticated recently (quite shocking I assure you). Today I defrosted both freezers and yesterday we actually got round to fitting a new light fitting in the bathroom (the old one broke weeks, maybe even months ago), and I only electrocuted myself once! We decided that was enough DIY for the time being so we haven’t put up the shelves in our bedroom yet. I am hoping to get round to that before my parents come to stay in a couple of weeks, since at the moment you can’t actually even sit on the spare bed let alone sleep on it.

Anyway, back to the cotton jumper, I think I am going to do a purple stripe next …

And happy Independence Day to any Americans out there.

I actually finished this bag a few days ago, but it languished waiting for some suitably old towels to accompany it in the washing machine, and then it languished again waiting for me to find it a nice button. After all the procrastination here it is finally:

Knitted felted bag

It is knitted on 8mm needles if I remember correctly, using 4 strands of 2ply lambswool from Uppingham Yarns. Then it went through the washing machine and the dryer twice with a nice selection of similar coloured towels which are old enough not to impart fluff on anything they are washed with. I am part way through the next bag which will be shaded black and purple, I haven’t got very far with it yet though as I have been waylaid by the multicoloured cotton jumper which always seems much more exciting when I sit down for a spot of knitting.

The weather has been a bit off and on the last couple of days so the tennis has been a bit stilted. I still caught a bit of both the women’s semi-finals yesterday which were good for watching while I knitted a couple of rounds on the cotton jumper. Cotton jumper is progressing, though rather slowly, I’m onto a stripe in a kind of tomato red, which actually looks a bit subtle compared to my other colour choices. Not to worry, I have a nice bright green to knit the next large stripe in. I’ll hopefully post another pic of the progress tomorrow if the weather is good enough for an outside picture.

Thanks for the comment Tari! I love bright colours, always have done, and am always on the look out for lovely coloured yarn. I think it is the first thing that draws me to a yarn, whether the colour jumps out at me, and then I have to stroke it to see if it feels nice!

I have been a good girl and have been weaving in the ends as I go along, the horror of having thousands of ends to weave in after the knitting has been motivating me in this task. I’ve been trying out the method recommended in this Knitty article, and it looks pretty good so far if I do say so myself. It is a bit noticeable on the wrong side because when I cut the ends I left a bit of a tail since cotton tends to work its way through to the right side otherwise, but the right side looks very smooth. The only thing is that I haven’t really conquered how to weave in ends in moss stitch (I think this is seed stitch in American).

In other news I ordered a new wedding ring today which is quite exciting. My fingers tend to swell up a lot in the hot and humid weather and I realised last week that the wedding ring I bought last year is really just too small. I think it depends on the shape of the ring because my engagement ring is exactly the same size and although tight in the hot weather I can still get it on and off, however the wedding ring had got to the point that I couldn’t get it on and off at all if the temperature went above about 25 degrees (C that is, I have no idea what that is in F). So I have ordered a new ring and it should arrive in about three weeks, it is going to be hopefully practically identical to the first one, just three sizes bigger, so I shall have a summer ring and a winter ring 🙂