I have been furiously knitting hexagons since I last posted. My fingers hurt.
















This bucket'o'yarn represents...probably about 60 hours of TVlinks, Videostic and Lovefilm. I have never been more grateful for my internet connection.

The beast is now stretched out in one of the spare bedrooms (God knows where I'm going to block when the rest of my housemates actually move in) and it is mercifully flat. I did have a great pre-dunking picture laid out flat and taken from the side, which looked like a blue knitted mountain range. Then my memory card decided it needed reformatting and kindly deleted everything for me. I do not have a healthy relationship with my gadgets apparently. But hey! The peaks are gone at least, nothing a good deluge couldn't fix. The skirt is all but finished,all I have to do is wait about 4 days for it to dry and then I can start knitting waistbands and suchlike. And then I just have to pray that it fits me. And then I also have to pray that Summer returns and I can actually wear it. Hmmm.
















There is a marked improvement as you travel down the skirt. This is what my picked up stitches looked like at the beginning.

This is what they look like now.

I feel I have progressed somewhat.

P.S. I just had to edit this post about 20 times to try and get the pictures in the right places with the words UNDER them. I still can't do anything about that last bit. I detest Blogger.

Old ladies are officially cooler than me.

I was knitting on the bus yesterday and an old lady started a conversation with me about how unusual it is to see people knitting these days. I told her it gave me something to do on the achingly long journeys. She said she used to knit a lot and I asked why she didn't anymore, expecting her to blame arthritis or something similar. Nope.

"I don't really have the patience anymore. I tend to go out and enjoy life instead."

Well, dang. So that's it. I knit because I have no life. I knew something was missing.

Anyhoo, this is what I was knitting:

Ths is my first pair of toe-up socks, using the Knitty Universal toe-up formula, which has a short row toe starting from a provisional cast on. I love this toe, tis genius.

Other than that I haven't done a lot since the last time I updated. The month sort of ran away with me really. The Snapping Turtle skirt is 2 and a half rows down and, man these hexagons go slowly. I finished Mia, and will take a photograph at....some....point, but I didn't get to wear it. The dress I was making for Nancy and Olly's wedding is still in piles of spotty fabric on my desk because (surprise, surprise) my sewing machine broke again, and my fallback dress wasn't quite as shrug-friendly.

I really need to buy myself a new sewing machine.

An update! A REAL update!

I'm a little late on this. The entire world has now forgotten about Woolfest, but I've only just unpacked my yarn from my many many moving boxes so I shall inflict it on you all now anyway (oh, I'm sure you are backing away from the screen in horror).

I took a grand total of...no photos in Cockermouth, big surprise, so we just have pictures of piles of yarn on my dining table instead. Hurrah! Somewhere, possibly on my mother's computer, there are photos of me wrestling a pair of giant knitting needles with which I managed all of 4 stitches, but it's probably a good thing I don't have these photos. The needles were about 9 foot long, they were very heavy, and there was much gurning involved in my manoeuvring of them.

I was very good at Woolfest. I had to be very good, because I only took cash. As in I only took cash to Cumbria. I left my cards in Bournemouth, so I'm not entirely sure what I would have done if I'd lost my train ticket home or something equally horrible. It was reasonably easy to be good, since the majority of the festival was fibre and I'm not a spinner (Mum is - she spent horrendous amounts of money on the offcuts of exotic beasties). Besides, I'd gone with specific garment projects in mind and most of the yarn stalls were selling variegated sock yarn rather than jumper's-worth amounts of solid colours. I did buy some sock yarn though. It was too fun to pass up. Only one though. I was good.
















Both my 'sensible' yarn purchases were from a stall called Knitting4fun (not at the same time - I had to umm and aah and then come back for more). This is a wool/silk blend for the Silk Ribbed Corset, hopefully, though I forgot to take my notebook with me so I have no idea if it's going to come close to the right gauge or yardage.
















These are pure wool for Candy, which Mum has promised to make me matching Fimo buttons for. Remember that Mum? I'm gonna remind you in like, 4 years time when I actually get round to making it.

















This is my fun yarn. See, I told you it was fun. It's Colinette Jitterbug in MARDI GRAS!! (I may have added the capitals and exclamation marks myself). As always, the photo does not do it justice, it's much more...glowy in real life. Especially the yellow, I could wrap the yellow around myself as a reflectivejacket. A very small and pathetic one, but a glow-in-the-dark one all the same.


I have new WIPs since settling (Ha!) in my new abode, mainly because I am a huge quitter and can't be arsed to work out the new sleeve caps on the red jmper.
















This is the first row of the Snapping Turtle Skirt. As far as I can tell it's going to fit me around the hips (yay!) but it is so far merely a Snapping Turtle Belt. I'm getting over my fear of picking up stitches though.





















This is the beginning of Mia, and is also an out of date photo. I took this two days ago (before I could be bothered to update the blog) and I have since knit about 4 inches of the lace back, decided it was too tight with twisted stitches, frogged it back to the sleeve, knit the entire back with nice normal stitches and started the second sleeve. I may even finish this. Woot.





I use brackets too much.

Hannah actually has some knitted stuff!

So, I've finally returned from Kentucky, land of yummy yarn shops and crappy internet connection, and yes, I had an amazing time, and no, I did not meet Colonel Sanders. (He's dead. Go figure.) I took off from Cincinnati airport in brilliant sunshine and landed at Heathrow in snow. Ah, welcome back to England, where Spring has a different meaning from the rest of the world. Mind you, it wasn't just in the UK; my layover in Minnesota, 'Land of 10,000 Lakes', was actually a layover in Minnesota, 'Land of 10,000 Ice rinks'.

I have loads to say, mostly about my 5 LYS trips and the $220 I spent there, but since I am hugely behind on my blogging I shall save that for tomorrow. For now, I have the 'PLURAL FO'S' that I seemed so excited about in February but never got around to blogging about for some reason.

These all seem pretty old now.

First off, the gifts I sent for the Monthly Adventurers Tops and Pots swap - in case you missed it when I was showing off my goodies in my last post (you know, the one so long ago you can't remember it), the idea was to send a knitted hat - in red, pink or white, since we started around Valentine's Day - and a recipe for a one-pot main meal.




















My hat to Paula aka TwinsMama, is the Sunflower Tam from Norah Gaughan's Knitting Nature, a gorgeous, gorgeous book I bought myself for my birthday. I liked this pattern when I flicked through the book but knew I would never wear it (berets and tams look ridiculous on me) so I was quite excited to make it for someone else. The yarn is Cascade 220 from Get Knitted.










































I also did some stash busting extra presents - a cute flower brooch and a couple of beanies for her boys (she is TwinsMama after all).

She sent me a fabby picure of them modelling for me, and waving my Jambalaya recipe that I made such a mess of the kitchen creating.



















This one's an even older FO, I finished this at the end of January, just in time for a 'knit-your-chrismas-yarn' knitalong that I won a runner up prize for! Woo!





































This is the Anthropologie Inspired Capelet, rewritten to work in the aran-ish yarn my Mum span me for Christmas. It's supposed to be reverse stocking stitch, but it's reversible and I prefer the inside. It's also technically round neck but my brooch is too heavy for it. Eh, I still like it.

By some bizarre coincidence, I just received my prize for this knitalong today. I would have got it sooner, but...er...I may have given our lovely group moderator the wrong address by mistake.

Anyhoo, I got some lovely soaps, a mini book on knitting and some cartoony post-its.



















Sweeeeet.

You can't tell in the picure above, but I'm wearing the capelet with my black skinny jeans and the 'be-nice-to-me-or-I-will-flatten-you' boots. According to Lucy I look like 'a dominatrix. But the sweet and fluffy kind.' I was previously unaware that there was a sweet and fluffy kind of dominatrix. How sheltered my life must have been.