I have new toys

I would have had a finished project to share yesterday, had I been a bit more focused in the morning. As it is, I only had one out of two gloves done, despite having something close to six hours on Friday morning where I did nothing but wait for a workman to arrive at the house. I could have knit. I could have easily finished the second Rapunzel mitt in that time. But I didn't. I played computer games instead.

Eventually though, the workman arrived, my window was fixed (well, not fixed, as there was nothing wrong with it apart from the glass wasn't toughened, which is apparently a requirement in rented properties for windows that close to the floor) and I was free to leave the house and go about my day.

A day which included a trip to the sorting office to pick up a parcel of yarn!

10 brightly coloured skeins added to the stash.

The yarn is Rico Creative Cotton and I have bought it for the express purpose of maintaining a stash of dishcloth cotton; should the desire to knit another dishcloth arise, I will have the yarn to satisfy it! I particularly wanted the striking blue shade to do some Doctor Who Tardis themed cloths.

I then made a couple of very exciting purchases, made possible by an unexpected tax rebate.

My current read - The Count of Monte Cristo

First up, an Amazon Kindle for myself. Luckily, they sell them in Tesco, so rather than ordering one online and having to wait, I was able to pop to the supermarket and pick one up with my groceries!

The screensavers are so pretty!

I have transferred all of my knitting pattern PDFs onto it. All I need to do now is knit a cover. I have one queued, I just need to choose the right yarn.

Yes, Jamie was resting the iPad on the cat on his lap. No, the cat doesn't mind.

We finally replaced our tired old netbook with the iPad 2. We've been wanting one for a while now, and the tax rebate gave us an excuse to actually buy one! Technically it belongs to Jamie, but I expect I will use it almost as much as he does, at least until I get my own.

I'll be honest, the main attraction for me is this:

It's the best game in the world! You have to divide shapes into equally sized pieces using limited numbers of cuts. It's actually quite challenging. For the last six months or so, whenever we've been in a shop with iPads I have made a beeline for this application. Setting up the pad last night, it was one of the first apps Jamie downloaded, just for me.

I wonder how long the novelty value will last for our new gadgets.

For once, lots of progress to report...

I had a lot more time for my crafting this week. Not only have our Thursday night roleplay sessions resumed after the Christmas break, but we spent all day on Saturday playing in a different game, which effectively meant I had 12 hours of practically uninterrupted crafting time (interruptions mainly in the form of eating snacks and pizza, and occasionally having to roll some dice).

I'll start with the existing WIPs first. I am oh so close to finishing the crocheting part of the Cherry Wrap. No new photo since last week, but I have finished the first sleeve and started the second. Soon will come the trials of blocking each piece to the same measurements, and crocheting all the seams.

I cast on for my second leafy fingerless glove on Thursday. Progress was swift, far quicker than the first glove! I guess all that practice on DPNs is really paying off.

I promise this is actually glove two, not a rehashed
photo of glove one at a similar stage.

You can tell its the other glove, as the leaf pattern is the mirror of the glove I've already done.

I think gloves might be my new obsession. I really wanted to knit glove yesterday, but didn't want to deal with complicated patterns so didn't reach for the leafy gloves. Instead, I cast something else on.

Yes, I know, I said I would finish my outstanding YoP Projects before starting anything new, but these aren't on the list so they don't count. Plus, it's using up stash.

Version one, knocked up last night

The yarn is the Cashmerino Chunky I used for my free rapunzel hat. The pattern is a free Ravelry download - easy half mitt. The above photo shows my first attempt. I followed the instructions to the letter and wound up with a lovely glove that was too short for my hand. So it got frogged, and I got out my pencil and paper to work out how to adapt the pattern to fit.

Then I had a crazy idea, and stayed up later than I should have done scribbling.

The modified pattern, and the start of version two.

It occurred to me, that as I am using the same yarn, I could match these gloves to my hat by including the cabled braid pattern from the brim of the hat. So I raided the pattern for the cable chart, and worked out how to fit it onto the back of the plain mitt. I think I've got it right, I just need to knit it up and find out if it works. They're pretty quick to knit up, so even with these modifications I don't think they will take long.

Giveaway winner!

Well, it's been two weeks since I posted my fabulous blogiversary giveaway to win a skein of Candy Skein Yummy lace or fingering, and I have to say, I have been overwhelmed by the response. Thee were sixty entries in total, more than I ever imagined I would get. So thank you to everyone for entering!

Sadly, there can be only one winner. Using the ever popular random number generator at Random.org I have selected....

A Little Bit Sheepish!!!

Congratulations!!! Please drop me a PM with your postal address and I will get the yarn out to you as soon as it arrives from the US.

Candy Skein Yummy Fingering in Midnight Mousse

Now all I have to do is decide which colours I want to buy, so I can place the order!

Keeping ahead of myself

There is a theme developing among my fellow bloggers, in their goals for the new year. Everyone is talking about taking control of their yarn stash, making wild promises to only knit from stash, or to ensure that even with yarn purchases, total stash decreases in a frenzy of knitting.

Up until now, I've always been very careful when it comes to yarn buying. I haven't bought yarn without a specific project in mind, so even though I now have 15km of yarn sitting on the shelves (thanks, Ravelry, and your fabulous export to excel feature on the stash page), only 2km of that isn't assigned to a specific project. Which makes me feel a little better about having it, when I see others with twice as much yarn as my total, and nothing assigned to any project at all!

The danger now, though, is that I am starting to receive yarn as presents. Christmas came, and with it three separate yarny gifts.

King Cole Bamboo Cotton in purple

First came the UK Swap Group Falling into Winter swap parcel, and the ball of King Cole Bamboo Cotton that was included in that. I still have 70 yards of black left over from my Sweet Pea Shawl, so I'm thinking I will make something that uses both. Gloves, perhaps with a black cuff? Or a small shawlette?

Then came Christmas itself, and on the day there were two yarny surprises waiting for me. I've mentioned the first before; the UK RAK Secret Santa swap parcel I received contained four balls of Artesano 100% Alpaca DK.

It is not as pink as this photo makes it look.

I think I may end up doing some sort of matching set with this. Hat, cowl, gloves, not sure what patterns to use. In total I have 430 yards.

My final yarny gift is going to be the hardest to choose a pattern for, because the colour I've been given is insane! Beautiful, but insane.

Skein Queen Squash in "Baubles"

It's Skein Queen Squash, 100% Merino fingering weight. 430 yards in the skein. Will this be my first pair of socks? Or can I find something else where the bright colours won't look out of place.

Outside of these gifts, I only have two yarns I've bought with no pattern in mind.

Wollmeise Sockenwolle 80/20 Twin in Sonne

5 balls of Rowan Calmer in black

But Wollmeise doesn't count, you're allowed to buy that on a whim. It will become a gorgeous shawl one day!

If you have any suggestions at all for what I can use these yarns for, I would appreciate it!

Friday quickie

Friday means showing off finished projects, and this week I have some dishcloths I knit earlier on in the week.

Forgive my not so great instagram photo, but it was late

I had about 40g of Lily Sugar'n'Cream left over from my earlier attempts at dishcloths, so decided to use it up making two more basic cloths. These are the same size as the first one I knit, but more pink. I still need to weave the ends in, though, before I start using them!

I am surprised at how much use I've been getting out of my knit dishcloths. I will definitely be ordering more cotton soon! Although I think a cheaper option than this American cotton is to get Rico Creative Cotton in bulk from eBay - plain colours, but then I can experiment more with dishcloth patterns. I've got my eye on a few Doctor Who themed ones!

Last reminder - my blogiversary giveaway entry closes at midnight this Sunday, winner to be announced on Monday! I can't believe how popular it has been - over 60 entries - and I can't wait to find out who has won.

Wednesday sure comes around quickly!

I think I'm still struggling to get my head around a normal five day working week, after all the disruption of Christmas bank holidays! It seems like it's been less than a week since it was Wednesday...

You'd think my WIP progress this week would be all excitement over my second glove. It's not. I haven't even cast on yet! What I have done is knit some more dishcloths (come back on Friday, I might have woven my ends in by then) and get out my crochet hook again.

Sticking to my plan to finish my Year of Projects WIPs, I dug out the Cherry Wrap from its semi-hibernation and got hooking.

Not the greatest photo, but it's late and I'm tired, so it's the best I've got!

I've finished the three main panels (back, left front and right front) and all I have left are two sleeves. I've started the first already. All I need to do now is not run out of yarn before I'm finished! Each panel took about two and a half skeins, and I've got 4 left after I finish the part skein I'm working with now. So I should have enough, with enough spare to do all the seaming.

Oddly enough, it's not the seaming that's got me worried, it's the blocking. I'm going to have to block all the pieces before I seam them together, and I've never blocked anything this big in one go before.

Cook from a Cookbook(ish) - Bread

So, it's been a while since I did a Cookbook challenge. Christmas kind of got in the way! There was nothing particularly new or exciting about our Christmas cooking (lets face it, the traditional dinner is just Sunday roast with extras), although I could claim the boiled and baked ham as a new recipe. We combined two different recipes found online (the boiling instructions from here and the glaze from here) to create an incredibly tasty joint of meat. It was so successful, we did it twice.

Gratuitous shot of the Christmas buffet preparations - 80 pigs in blankets
and a boiled but not yet glazed 3lb ham joint

But I am not here to talk about roasted pig product. No, I have a more exciting cooking experiment to regale you with. You see, every year we buy those part baked bread rolls to have in the house over Christmas (you know, because the shops are shut for *gasp* an entire day, so you have to stock up, in case you run out of something absolutely vital). This year, we were wandering round Tesco and somehow ended up in the home baking aisle. I stopped in front of the packets of bread mix on the shelf, and we both had a mini eureka moment. We picked up one plain white mix, and one fancy cheese and onion flavour.

We baked the white loaf on Boxing Day. I followed the instructions to the letter (pretty much add water, mix into dough, knead, leave to rise, bake) and ended up with a rather tasty, if overly large loaf of bread.

When it rose, it rose somewhat more on one side than the other.

We ate it with the left over ham, and it was delicious.

Just this weekend past, we re-discovered the other bread mix and gave that a go.

It smelled really cheese and oniony, right from the start

This one rose in a far more sensible fashion than the other loaf.

Look! Proper bread!

Arty farty shot of the slices, before I slathered them in Clover and pate.

So, not technically a cook book recipe, but our success has paved the way for some more experimentation using the recipes in my Good Housekeeping Baking Book!