Still alive, still knitting.

I've been busy, I swear. Firstly, I've been buying yarn. Heaps of it. Compulsively, it would seem, as I glance guiltily at my yarn shelf, which looks like this:

Forgive the crappy quality. I need a real camera. 

In my defense, my favourite shop  (which we only get to every few months) had an amazing sale and I was in need of a sweater quantity of red. That's it on top of my hand cards. I bought 10 balls of Debbie Bliss Luxury Aran Tweed, at a fantastic 30% off, for which I am still hunting for an appropriate pattern. May just have to write something up myself.

In the nearly two weeks I've been away,  I've completed (and worn many times) the cotton pullover I designed. I love the flattering fit, though I could have knit a little longer. Laziness won in the end. With it being a top down raglan,  it's easily adjusted.
My husband took the model-esque photos on the gorgeous south coast this past weekend. The shot below shows better detail on the mock-cable (it's really just knitting a few stitches out of order) detail on the front and sleeves.

I especially like that I paid about $20 for this shirt, as I scored the yarn at the Morris and Sons winter sale. It's Fibranatura Cottonwood, which is discontinued (I'm seeing I buy a lot of discontinued yarns...bad designer), in 41115. I used six of the ten balls I snapped up for $30, so I'll whip up something for the bub.

We were down on the South Coast this weekend for my nephew's baptism, and I wouldn't be a knitter if I hadn't whipped something up to wear for the ceremony! I attempted this pattern about ten times over the past year (I've been knitting for a year this week, whoo!), never managing to get past the halfway mark of chart B1 without frogging. I put the pattern in time out about nine months ago, but with a week to go until the baptism, I thought what the hey. So I dragged it out, grabbed the gorgeous August Bird flare fingering in "stonefall" I had been hoarding since November, and gave it one more go.

More artsy photography.

Success! I love this shawl. It's soft, warm, and airy, and looks equally beautiful worn as a kerchief or pinned around my shoulders for maximum effect. It's the "Petal Shawlette", from Sock Yarn One Skein Wonders. modified slightly to suit my needs. As I used my 4.5 mm needles (I didn't really read the pattern prior to starting, and was NOT going to frog this attempt, damn it), I cut the shawl off with four rows left of chart C, as it was plenty large.

Better get the kidlet to school...