One Year Old Today!!

And boy has that year flown by quickly!

I did start a few months earlier on e-tribes (link in the side bar) but it is officially a year today that I started with blogger! I've not got the energy or brain power to recap all the projects that have been started and completed (and still waiting to be finished - which would be interesting - the more I think about it the more that come to mind!) over the year as Emily woke me up before 6am this morning and has been running round like a hoolie all day, and watching her makes me feel all the more tired!

Anyway back to the knitting. I suppose I ought to tell you now that I plan to have a little draw to celebrate my 1st blogiversary - nothing big - just a silly little thing as a thank you for all the comments and support over the last 12 months. And a big thank you to knit-tigger for being the first person other than my Mum to post a comment! If you fancy trying your hand at the draw simply leave a comment and I'll pick a name at random from a hat next week!
And that includes all of you who don't comment - tut, tut - what's stopping you?!


Right - lets' get down to business. I still have a bad case of Cast-on Fever and have started a new project but first of all I should introduce some new additions to the stash:

Notice how I've moved away from my green phase - I stopped myself just before I bought the loveliest green cotton DK which of course I now wish I had anyway. There's 300g of Sirdar Nova Chunky for a project (definitely a cold weather one so look out later in the year!); 350g of Rowan Linen Drape for a summery top and 350g of Patons Laguna 100% cotton to become Green Gable which brings us back to the new project, again more on that later.

And with the designs in 'Sensational Knitted Socks' still whizzing through my mind I got some plain sock and 4ply yarns to be played with at some point soon in time for Autumn.

And then I found some old Rowan pattern books (numbers 30 and 33) and decided I should rehouse them and conveniently found a pattern there using Linen Drape and I had the right number of balls for it - I can't quite remember the name of it right now but it's from Rowan 33 and involves casting on far too many stitches for first glance! Oh and if you think I must have won the lottery to have bought all this little lot, think again. All these items were priced 50p each which is fantastic but it does come at a price with the closure of one of our LYS - a real little treasure trove of a shop with shelves full of long forgotten favorites.

Now there is a reason why I've started a new project and it's simply because I think I ought to knit something a little more light weight for summer time and I've put aside my dislike for cotton yarns as well as this Patons Laguna feels so lovely and soft and is not at all splitty which has always been my problem with cotton. So far so good - it's a really quick knit. The lace panel has a mistake in it - I can see it now in this photo but I can't really be bothered to rip it back as I've done a load more since this photo was taken and it's not too bad a mistake if you try not to see it. I've not been entirely bad - I did complete the back of the 'Lacey Waves' jumper before I started this one so at least when I come back to the jumper it won't be a case of trying to remember where I was up to!!

Of course you realise we won't have a nice summer now that I'm making the effort to knit for warm weather (and when I typed effort initially I mistyped it as 'error' - which is right?!).

I will leave you for now with a quote from Mary Thomas's Book of Knitting Patterns:

"There is no work in the world more ingenious than Knitting, and this is why it's appeal has lasted over so many centuries"

See we're all really ingenious!! And if you haven't seen it already I suggest you take a look at this little gem of a book from 1943 and her Knitting Book - so many ideas there we think of as 'modern' which have been around for generations.