Friday 30 September 2011

On the needles.....



....a piece of lace knitting!

Last Autumn, my daughter and I visited family in New England. On a trip to Portland, Maine, we called in to an amazing shop - Tess's Designer Yarns and purchased a fair few items ! (amidst the gasps of 'oooh!' and 'aaaahhh!')

My cousin's wife fell in love with a pattern for a lacy shawl and my daughter agreed to make it up for her but it proved a challenge too far, (not least because my daughter has recently had emergency eye surgery so 'fancy' knitting is out of the question for a while!) so I have taken up the needles and am attempting to 'save face' and produce the shawl in time for Christmas.

Learning to read charts (and American patterns!) has been a massive learning curve - but I'm getting there.

Meanwhile, I have a completed (but not 'made up') short sleeved cardigan sitting in a bag (how I hate the 'making up' part of knitting):


Some random-dyed yarn I was knitting up with a vague idea of a cushion cover in mind, just something easy to do while watching T:


- and yesterday I finished unravelling a jacket that just never did 'feel' right, but the yarn is gorgeous:


Meanwhile, I'm still on the hunt for the 'right' pattern to use some gorgeous random-dyed wool I bought a while back. Still looking......