Happy holidays.

Well, I've had a really great Christmas, lots of knitting and not allot of anything else! Got to be good.

I got a couple of great knitting presents, a lovely knitting pattern calendar from Marie, And from Anth I got Lantern moon needles, a novelty tape measure with a fluffy end, and a knitting magazine, OH, and two Kaffe Fasset books! How sweet is that?  I tried the lantern moon needles with some tussah silk I had left over from the shop. They are dreamy to knit with, so comfortable! I'll think I'll be collecting these.

The next picture I just have to show you because it's Sage being cute on Christmas morning, messing about in the packaging!

And finally my Noro cardigan! I'm very pleased with this, and here's why:

A couple of months ago, I had my colours done, because I often buy clothes and wool in colours I love, and then I am really disappointed when I knit them because the don't look right on me. So after much hit and miss, I had my colours done and I'm an autumn.

So in-line with the diagnosis I started buying clothes in those colours, and quell suprise they look great! Then I visited Getknitted before Christmas to get my Christmas noro project, and saw the wool, I was a little apprehensive because I wouldn't normally buy those particular colours but they were my colours! So I took a chance and made the cardigan. And weirdly I will wear it allot, because it just suits me! I can't believe I've been getting it wrong all this time. I also took a look in my UFO box and realized that all the things I haven't finished are jumpers which are not my colours.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

The cardigan is knitted in Noro silver thaw, I had to completely adapt the pattern because it was written for silk garden, and it's SIlver thaw is a very different guage, but thankfully it fits great .

Anyway here is the cardigan:

Hampers.

My mum does the best christmas presents! Firstly she brought me a really unusual jumper, which I am wearing, a very strange shape, but looks amazing, I'll add a picure once the photo's on typepad are back to normal, and then her and dad made up the most amazing food hamper I have ever seen! It's huge, just Huge! She made it mostly gluten free, which is so thoughtful of her and amongst many things there were luxuries such as fabulous coffees, ammeratti biscuits, cheeses, dates, crackers, baby pears in almond sauce, lobster bisque, nuts, chocolates, dried fruits, wine, vegetable crisps, amazing curry sauces, and mango chutney, 2 different types of pesto, christmas puddng, shortbread, champagne, salmon, sardines....loads more .....I can't go on! There was also a huge box of luxury (snap) crackers (i'm not too sure if other countries have these, but they are tubes that you pull , they go crack, with a little explosion, and then you have a toy/gift a silly hat and a very bad joke!) and sprinkles of chocolate money. Amazing, What a fab present. Thanks mum and dad you are the best ever.

Spinning

I'm a little addicted to my spinning wheel at the moment, I spun some more of the turquiose and brown yarn for a freind, there will be some in the shop too, because it's a bit of a popular colour.

I also spun some orange and red yarn for the shop which contains lengths of puffy silk, its a huge skein or yarn and the silk makes it so soft.

I took a little trip to getknitted on the way to taking carmen to the the airport for the last time (sob sob) I'm going to miss her so much :-(

I have a tradition of knitting a noro jumper every christmas, and so this time I decided to try some silver thaw in this colour:

I can't wait to start, but I'm trying to save it for the holiday.

While I was there I got some noro tubu on sale and it's perfect for a scarf for Anthony  for christmas:

Hmm it does have the texture of a rug, anyone know of any manly scarf patterns for tubu?

Knitting experiment commences tomorrow, rather excited actually, I think this might be rather fun. we also have our stitch  n' bitch christmas party tomorrow evening as well I think there might be quite a bit of  food and alcohol involved!

I love holidays....

I know were not actually at the holidays yet, but it feels like it. I have a group of friends at work and we have so much fun, (they are all learning to knit) we have dinners and party's planned all the way up until Christmas, I'm the only English one, so I benefit from trying all the wonderful food that each of us cooks. Last weekend was firstly Carmen's farewell party on sat night, then our Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday, my first, and boy was it wonderful, I've never had pumpkin pie before, but I think it might become a tradition. Then yesterday was our German Gingerbread party, where we had so many different kinds of ginger bread and tea. Today for dinner we are having a traditional Spanish dish with beans and chorizo and lots of other things that Carmen is cooking us. Then  on Wednesday we have our social psychology tradition where we all go for lunch somewhere nice, and then late afternoon after plenty of food and wine we all go ice skating to the winter wonderland in Cardiff. OK, were not done yet! Friday is our staff party with a delicious Christmas menu...welsh style! (I love this party, the lecturers always let their hair down and there's enough bad behavior to keep us entertained for months.) Then Saturday night we are having a Mexican party, to say goodbye to my special Spanish friend Sole. Then of course we have Christmas. Let's just say I'll probably be rather fat after that. Oh and not forgetting our stitchn'bitch Christmas party. I've never had a  year like it, and will probably never have one again, so I wanted to document it.

So in the spirit of things I put up our Christmas tree, yes I know I'm a Buddhist, but I like to use the excuse that we are celebrating the pagan festival of winter solstice.

Here it is:

So knitting anyone? A couple of weeks ago I spun some yarn, and gave it to Carmen to work her 'I can't read patterns but I always make amazing thing's' magic and this is what she made:

And here's a picture of the back of my head with it on!

It is so warm!

OK then this afternoon we were putting some kits together for the shop when she spotted some fleece which she loved, so I thought I would spin her something a bit special because I won;t have the pleasure of her company because she goes back to Spain next week. So I spun her a very thick yarn with a serious amount of silk in it. Silk always seems like you should spin it thin because it's special but really it spins up so well when it's thick. Here's the result:

The shiny turquoise is the silk! I can;t wait to see what she does with it.

I will make some more like this for the shop, its so amazing.