crochet necklace

I’ve started a quick new project. Well, relatively quick. I imagine the actual finishing process will be a bit involved, but I digress.

I bought a chain, a regular curb chain, and am crocheting an edging round part of it. I think it will be rather interesting when it’s done, with the mix of hard metal and soft silk yarn.

I plan on making several designs, and am hoping to find chunkier chain to work with.

The yarn is ‘Andes’ by Debbie Bliss. For whatever reason, the yarn isn’t listed on her website. I bought mine from the local yarn store, so I’m not sure whether it’s discontinued or what. Thank heavens I don’t need much of it…

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retro listening

These are the headphones I want. I love the retro feel.

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Picture courtesy of thisnext.com.

Emma

There’s nothing quite like a stripey, purring, cuddly ball of fluff sniffing your face when you’re not feeling well.

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‘…excessive reading’

I happen to remember this quote from the new Pride and Prejudice movie – “…must improve her mind through excessive reading.” It quite adequately describes my impetus for engaging upon a course of ‘serious study’, another quote by another Austen character.

Here is my book list:

1. Diplomacy – Henry Kissinger

2. Russia’s Empires – Phillip Longworth

3. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – William L. Shirer

4. Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell

5. No Ordinary Time – Doris Goodwin

6. Historical Linguistics – Lyle Campbell

7. The Art of War (again) – Sun Tzu

 

I positively writhe in anticipation.

 

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Current Project…..Knit Cable Shawl

My current project; my own design.

My mother saw a picture of this shawl in a magazine and asked if I could make it. It’s fairly simple construction. Basically just a rectangle with the lower half split vertically to fall over the shoulders. Pockets too, down near the ends. The tricky part was the shawl in the picture was cabled completely, and I wanted to find a suitable pattern that I could manipulate to the dimensions I wanted. In the end I found this pattern from Lion Brand for a fisherman’s cowl, beautifully cabled.

I chose a merino wool yarn (GEDIFRA Extra Soft Merino), for softness mostly, but wool is also very durable, and should resist wear and tear.

The pattern was a little tricky to create. I had to take the cables and edging into account, as I’m going to be splitting it halfway down. It’s rather slow going, due to the cables. There are quite a few, and can really impede the natural rhythm when knitting.

This is a picture of my sketch I did for the design. It’s quite slip-shod; I don’t tend to get into the mathematical proportions of it. Luckily the cable pattern had it’s own graph, so I could adjust where needed.

I haven’t gotten very far. It took a little while to get used to the pattern, as it always does, but now I should be able to move faster.

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