Between Christmas knitting and test knits there have been very few things I can post publicly, but a few weeks back, a colleague had a baby and we threw a shower for her at the office.

I could contribute cash to the generic gift…which turned out to be cash…or I could make something.  I really didn’t want to knit anything, although I really should learn a nice baby sweater pattern, so I made a blanket that my Mom taught me to make several years ago.

It really just takes some polar fleece and some scissors, a ruler and a couple of hours to make a cute baby blanket.  I had the fabric – purchased to make a blanket for a baby who now will be two come Christmas – so I just had to set aside an evening to make it.

This was the result:

And here is a close-up of the fabric motif:

Duckies and bunnies and bears, oh my!

I don’t make a lot of these, but I really do think they are cute.

And huzzah!  Soon, I will have an actual knitted FO I can post.   Just needs blocking and a pretty picture.

So, there is this cowl pattern that has haunted me for the better part of two years.  And it’s not even a complicated one.

My darling husband wanted me to make him a Stonehenge Neck Warmer so we purchased a skein of Plymouth Earth Hillside Linen in a nice grey and off I went.

After I got a little ways in, it became painfully evident that it looked terrible and I frogged it.  According to my notes I tried it a second time with the same yarn and the same result (but I don’t remember – clearly I have repressed this memory).

So try number two with a commercial yarn I adore, Filatura Di Crosa Zara Chinè.  Again, two cast ons and two froggings.  I gave up.

Then last December, a colleague of mine stopped by my desk to admire something I was knitting and in a fit of madness, I offered to knit him a cowl – and what pattern did he pick?  The very same one.  So I told him I would order him some of indigodragonfly’s MCN Sport (one of my very favourite bases to knit with!) and he picked a gorgeous grey mix called “Angst For The Memories”.  As I am traditionally a tight knitter, I cast on using the recommended needle size, but again, the cowl was huge, the fabric was gappy and unattractive and needed frogging.  The recommended needle was clearly too large for the DK weight yarn.  In a last ditch effort, I cast on two needle sizes smaller.

Success!!  The fabric finally started to look reasonable, and the size looked as though it would fit a regular-sized human.

It got put down a dozen times over the next several months…in favour of KALs and the Ravellenic Games and whatever else struck my fancy, as in my head I was thinking, “It’s not like he will need it anytime soon, right?”

I decided, about a month ago that I was sick of looking at it in the WIP section on my project page so, I finally motored through to finish it.  Hubby loves it – so there is a distinct chance I will end up knitting another but at least now I know what size needles to use to try it again, if I were to use another DK weight yarn.  I think using worsted yarn in the prescribed needle size would really necessitate a smaller cast on, as this size turned out to be perfect.

(Clearly I really need to complete the Craftsy course I paid for – my photography needs serious help!)

And perhaps I am crazy (some would argue that there is no “perhaps” about it!) but I thought I might resurrect this blog to write about the fibre crafting that has consumed a fair bit of my life these past two years.

I have been envying my friend Christina’s blog for a while now…she does some beautiful work and her blog has led me to sign up for a photography course on Craftsy.com.

But the real push to get this started came from my friend and hand-dyed yarn pusher, Kim (go check her out – she’s half the reason for my fibre addiction) last weekend, when there was discussion about a knit-along using one of her very special yarns and an Anne Hanson pattern (but I’ll get to that later).  Kim said, “You should totally blog that!” and I agreed.  Then I remembered that somewhere in cyberspace, there was a blog with my (user)name on it.  Took some doing, but I found it and regained access to it, and now there’s this plan…

Let’s see how it works out.