Knitted skirt

I tried to come up with a better blog title. Honest.
It didn't happen.

The summer holidays rumble on like an inevitable freight train. I may (very slightly) be bored completely to death by them. However, knitting is my salvation.

I've been wanting to knit a skirt for a while, and since I also have recently been impulse buying wool in yarn shops I have nice pretty wool to play with.
Pattern is Lanesplitter skirt from Knitty. It demands a specific yarn (which I don't have) but after a fairly short inspection of the mathematics and construction of the skirt I worked out that actually it doesn't make a difference. Rather - it makes a difference to colourways and hang of the material. However, provided you like the colourway of the yarn you use, and that you use something with sufficient weight that it will hang vaguely properly, everything will in fact be fine and dandy.

I used Ultimate blend colours of Patons Colour Works Aran yarn. Which is not wool - mostly. 25% wool. Whatever. I never have cared much on that distinction.

A whole load of people on ravelry hate the side seam, but I quite like it. I'm not sure why, but that's fine with me.

This is also one of the very few projects I have actually blocked properly. Between that and paying close attention when inserting the elastic for the waistband it actually fits very well.

In the mean time, I have also decided that garments you can try on as you go are the right way to go. Accordingly I have begun a top down cardigan, which doubles as an interesting project, and research for a long cardigan that I sort of promised my mum I would create for her and haven't done a single thing about.

Chubby the Dragon

It has been a stupid year in the way of weather. Everyone in England knows this, but I just thought I would mention it.
After having snowfalls all the way to the Easter holidays, and frosts continuing beyond that we have had a heatwave that lasted over a month and now we seem to have just about finished with a fortnight of thunderstorms.
Its like the weather spins a wheel, picks a form of weather conditions to play with, and then goes hell for leather on it for insert-time-period-here.

In any case, it has meant that the beginning of my summer holidays were wool free, because it was hot enough to make my fingers sweat without adding wool to the equation. Now though, I have got back on the horse. Or dragon, as it were.

This guy is just so cute.





I've been calling him Chubby, more or less because I've been listening to Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms while crocheting him. As he is a present for Suzz's birthday, she will probably rename him, which is possibly good as Chubby's fate in the book was to be exploded by means of a mirror.

Which was quite mean really.

He's about 30 cm tall. I used a whole variety of purple double knit wools that I have various quantities of in my stash. I am seriously pleased with him, but I really wish he could hold his own head up. I spent some time and effort trying to arrange things so that this was so, but he refused.

The pattern for him is for sale on ravelry. I seem to have gotten over my objection to spending money on patterns. Maybe I've grown.