Well, the first surprise is that I'm actually blogging again. Good grief; not sure how I managed to go almost a month without doing that, sorry!

There are also knitting surprises to talk about. First of all, I've been working on something for DD1's upcoming birthday. She wanted me to use the "Errol" pattern from the Harry Potter-themed "Charmed Knits" book (which I have made before with much difficulty but now have my notes from that project to make it vastly easier now) to make a "Hedwig" owl. And so, I have:

(about a month ago)

(what it looks like now, minus the beak, which is done but I forgot to photograph it)

I bet she'll love it.

I also made a cardigan for Sylvie, owner of Lettuce Knit, who had a birthday recently. Earlier in the year she had given me a gift of yarn out of the blue, so I thought it was only fitting that I use it to make something for her. :) I had some of the same yarn in a few other colours, left over from a gorgeous shawl I did a few years ago, and the combination of all that yarn was just enough (seriously, I had nothing left of one of the colours when all was said and done) to do the Hap Cardigan, which I wanted an excuse to make. :) It comes from the same issue of Knit Now as my Stippling blanket, and I think it's really beautiful. Especially in these colours, which suit Sylvie bee-yew-tifully:

back

front

I guessed at the size, but apparently I'm a good guesser because it fit her perfectly. I was ever so pleased.:)

I also finished my husband's birthday socks:

This was a challenge, because about two thirds through the second sock, the colourway pattern changed. Not a huge amount, but definitely enough that I had to start doing some strategic chopping-and-reattaching of yarn in order to end up with vaguely identical socks. I hate that.

And also, I've been working on my mom's Christmas present, the Maja shawl. Here it was a month ago:

Finally, I started something for DD3's birthday, which is coming up in August:

I'm not sure at this point whether I like the lack of good contrast between the two colours, so I may yet frog it. But I adore the pattern - it's Lady Emmeline, by Holly Yeoh (I love her stuff), and it's from the same issue of Petite Purls as my Flutterby Tam pattern.

More coming; hopefully way sooner than this post took!

Labels: dhsocksthickstripes, hap, hedwig, ladyemmeline, maja

So, in other project news, I finished off my first 'Starry Night' sock:

But then I realised DH's birthday was coming in two months, so I thought I'd get a jump on his present:

(sock #2 has been started since this shot was taken)

I just love the way this stuff stripes up. It's the unfortunately-discontinued Regia "Twin Color" yarn, in the colourway "Paul Color" (#07317). Solid, thick colour striping. The transition between the stripes is intentionally fuzzy, which I'm not a huge fan of (in this colourway, I think it would look better with crisp, clean demarcations), but I still like it a lot a lot.

Currently I'm storing the sock project for DH underneath my Starry Nights sock project in the same project bag, in the hopes that DH won't notice it at all.

Labels: dhsocksthickstripes, starrynight

So a few Wednesdays ago, Sylvie of Lettuce Knit floated the idea of me knitting her some store samples of my patterns. I thought this was a great idea and floated my Bukhara cowl pattern by her.

This is actually a lot easier than it looks. The colourwork technique here is slipstitching, also known as mosaic knitting. You're only ever working with a single colour at a time (two rows/rounds in one colour, the next two rows/rounds in a second colour, two more rows/rounds in the first colour again, and so-on), but through the devilishly clever and strategic use of slipped stitches, you actually end up making a colourwork pattern. It's excessively cool.

So I took home two skeins (60g each) of The Yarns of Rhichard Devrieze Peppino. And in fairly short order, I had two cowls:

I should point out, though, that I had to reduce the second cowl by four chart rows (eight rounds) in order to have enough yarn to finish it, so unfortunately I can't say that two skeins of the Peppino will give you two full Bukhara cowls. You will, however, be able to get one cowl and most of a second cowl, which is certainly a fine thing to be able to say. Certainly I ended up with two use-able cowls.

The two colours I used were "Egalité" and "Overly". Overly is the vibrant variegated colour...

And Egalité is the aqua...

I like 'em. What do you think?

Labels: lkbukhara, lkbukharareverse