A serious case of blog-block

Hi. I'm still here! It's been a while, hasn't it?

I've been really busy. Work has been really really hectic, and I've been getting home and collapsing. I've had a nasty chest cold for the last month or so, and while I got over the first few days of feeling so awful I couldn't sit up for more than 5 minutes straight, I haven't been able to get rid of the last vestiges of congested chest and nasty hacking cough. Lovely.

Those of you interested in the knitting content may be expecting lovely photos of a finished Eyelet Cardi. Well, .... sorry, but I've had a serious case of cardi-block to go along with the blog-block. I got as far as the bit where I have to pick up stitches to do the front and neck bands and I stopped. Actually, I started to do one of the front bands and it looked awful so I stopped. The poor cardi is still floundering and feeling unloved in the knitting drawer.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been knitting. Oh no. I needed something to take my mind off the fact that I would have to go back and finish the dreaded picking-up stitches at some point, so I've made two bags and a shawl.

Booga 1

Sophie


Start of Booga 2

The shawl/wrap


This was my first experience of knitting a shawl - indeed my first experience of knitting lace on anything bigger than a bootie. Of course,I completely cheated. I needed this in a hurry for a wedding this afternoon so it's probably the most basic shawl pattern in the universe: cast on 50 stitches, knit 1 row, purl 1 row, *k1, yo, k2tog to last stitch k1, p1row, k1row, p1row, repeat from *. I used the tubular cast on and a cast off I got from Grumperina's blog, here. (see under the first two photos of socks on feet). Oh - It's made out of nearly three skeins of Cleckheaton Studio Mohair, in black, and it was 180cm long when I cast off. It came out to shorter than that after I blocked it as I stretched it out sideways quite a bit. It started out narrower than I wanted it.

Unfortunately it's too warm now to wear a shawl, and probably will continue to be so for the rest of the evening. I'm going to take it with me anyway, The Man says that I'll be really annoyed if it does get cooler and I didn't take it, and he's probably completely right.

Okay - time to finish getting ready - first thing is to clean up my toenail polish. My standard way of polishing my toes goes like this:

1. Slop polish all over toenails, not caring too much about whether what you're getting polish on is toe or nail.
2. attempt rather inexpertly to clean up the dreadful mess you made in step one.

As you can see - I'm between steps one and two.


Happy easter everyone!