Mwaaah, I wanna play

In my travels through blogland last weekend, I came across these and these gorgeous tea-light holders on Knits and Pieces. This week, Jenna, the creator, added another. Go take a look. I imagine knitting with wire must be pretty hard on the fingers, but the results are so, so pretty and make great presents.

So what was in the pretty Laughing Hens package? Well, lookee here, only six lovely balls of Cashsoft Aran in aubergine.

I am so, so pleased with the shade; it's even nicer than I thought it would be. The yarn is for a simple vest I'm making as a Christmas present for my father. He's not got the best eye when it comes to clothes, and I wanted a colour that had a bit of life, but would work well with mostly everything. Neither does he look after his clothes particularly carefully, so of course the yarn had to be practical, but still nice to wear. What better than a machine-washable merino/cashmere mix? Ok, so the cashmere is the smallest element, but IT'S STILL THERE.

I was so impatient to cast on, but I swatched first using 5.5mm Addi circulars (heh, I swatched, you have NO idea how funny that sounds). I obviously chose well, because my stitch count was fine for the pattern's requirements, although row count a little under. (I'll never understand why that should be.)

There have been a lot of comments about the durability of this yarn, like this one in the Knitters Review, but so far I am really feeling the love. It is so soft and buttery to knit with, just feels heavenly to the touch. The swatch looks very neat, although if I weren't knitting to the pattern's gauge, I would probably drop a needle size, especially for a rib pattern.

After swatching, I cast on and knit this pretty quickly. It probably looks like ribbing all the way, but in fact that's 1.75 inches of K1 P1 rib and the same amount in a beaded rib. Easy telly knitting. The vest is designed to be knit in the round, and from what I can make out, there are no seams to sew, and while this simplicity of construction is perfect for a gift for my father, this is my first time knitting in the round other than socks, and I'm finding it quite hard to get a feel for the size of piece without having to take half the stitches off the needle. On the plus side, whenever I look at my work and ask myself how can I only have just knitted an inch, I remember that I've knitted an inch of the back AND front, yay.

Interestingly, the beaded rib produces a completely different and useable pattern on the other side. I actually prefer this reverse side and remember a cotton summer vest I made for myself using this very pattern over 20 years ago. Think it's a bit too fussy for my D though, so will keep the rib the "right" side.

After the alcoholic excesses of this week, it's been a happily quiet weekend spent watching telly, knitting and catching up on blogs and emails. I can't believe it's Sunday evening already and back to work tomorrow.

Knitting hiatus

Having worked on Cozy for so long, I've been at a bit of a loss for another big project for sitting in front of the telly. It isn't that that I don't have other projects on the needles or in the queue, but for one reason or another, none of them has appealed recently. I did start on a gift for my SP, but wasn't completely happy with the first two inches, so ripped it. Obviously, I can't go into any more detail here, since it's supposed to be a surprise!

Luckily, my on-the-go sock-knitting keeps me sane. Besides KIPing on the bus and in the pub a couple of times, I've stood in a taxi queue for half-an-hour twice this week, and each time, the absurdly slow wait was made bearable only by Shepherd Sock and DPNs.

On Wednesday I went to another great I Knit London knitting group meet, which you can read about on IKL's blog. I hadn't seen Gerard since Ally Pally, so it was nice to catch up with him and Craig. Which also entailed drinking far, far too much wine that night.

I received two packages this week. First, the blocking wires for Cozy. BTW, marvellous service from Heirloom Knitting; the wires were ordered on Friday and delivered on Tuesday, with email updates throughout.

Then, on Thursday, another prettily wrapped package from Laughing Hens, the contents of which I'll show you tomorrow.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done

Cozy is finished! Yeah, baby.

Just cast off. I will take pictures of the blocking process; yesterday, I ordered some blocking wires from heirloom knitting, but I'm not sure when they're going to arrive. Until then Cozy is sitting folded by my side, measuring 67.5 inches long and 15 inches wide. I'm just so pleased to be done with the knitting, so I can concentrate on other projects, what with Christmas and a couple of other knitworthy events coming up.

Not much other knitting to report this week. For a portable project, I cast on My Oh So Beautiful Socks again, this time with 72 stitches, but with such little progress, it's hardly worth noting here.

In blogging news, sometime during the week, I lost half my blog template. Don't know how or when, or indeed why, but I hope I've sorted it now.

With no knitting or yarny pictures, I'll leave you with a gratuitous picture of The Orange Cat Who Does Not Live With Me.

I'm on the home stretch. Cozy measures 48 inches, and I've just started the fourth skein of malabrigo. Trouble is, I'm getting more and more worried about the width; it's currently 17 inches stretched, but merino has so much memory, it keeps bouncing back to 15 inches. I am not convinced blocking is going to give me the additional five or so inches that I want. This is a present for someone, so ripping it is not an option. I thought about creating same-patterned panels to run either side, but even if the seaming was invisible, they would completely ruin the drape of the shawl, so I'll just have to add a border and hope block for the best. If anyone has any ideas or tips for blocking worsted merino, please, please let me know.