We took a drive on Saturday, into the Lakes and up to Penrith. As you can see, the weather was absolutely perfect - very bright sunshine, creating fabulous views wherever you looked. This is a shot of Ullswater - the water is like glass, as you can see. We went through the mountains towards Ambleside and there was still deep snow by the sides of the road, right on the tops. A truly magnificent day. It was our first trip to Penrith and I found a few crafty shops and a couple of wool shops - always a sign of a good town, don't you think? I didn't buy anything, but a very nice lady in a wool shop told me how to go about knitting with this
... a ball of bobbly wool that I picked up last year at the Knitting and Stiching Show in Harrogate. The guy (yes, that's a man) who sold it to me told me to just knit normally and I would get a bobbly scarf. I tried, and ended up in a right old pickle (not surprisingly). However, this kind lady in the Penrith shop told me to knit 2 stitches between each bobble, finishing each end of the knitting with a single stitch, so that when you turn at the end of the row you put the bobble there. Hopefully, it will become a lot clearer when I try it myself. Then I felt a bit guilty for not buying any bobbly wool from her and instead browsed around her shop for ages, before bolting out of her door empty-handed.
Anyhow, as hubby was out on Saturday, I had a rather nice evening catching up on Desperate Housewives - I can only watch it when I've recorded it because it seems to have sooooo many Ad breaks in it - and slopping about in my pygamas.
Sunday turned out perfectly - a whole day of knitting! I started by casting off my poncho
As you can see, it needs tassles, but I had to wash it first because it had a certain 'wool' smell to it - I don't know if it's lanolin or something they use on heavy-weight aran yarns. Anyhow, once washed it looks even better and came out of the machine as if I'd spent hours blocking and ironing it! Marvellous! It was a bit tricky deciding when to stop knitting with this poncho, as it was knitted on circular needles and the longer it got, the more bunched up it became (see my last post!). In the end, I measured from my neck to the length I wanted - 58cm - then measured my poncho - 68cm!! Ooops. So I thought well I'll just cast off anyway and if it's too long I can always pull it back a bit. But it turned out to be the perfect length - I guess when it's on, your shoulders pull it up a bit. I really should count the stitches at the bottom, just to see how many there were in the end. My last 100g ball of wool only did about 2 inches of poncho!
Anyway, next I decided it would definitely need some sort of corsage, so I consulted my new little book - 100 Flowers to Knit and Crochet. This is my Dahlia!
It looks exactly as it does in the picture, which is always a good sign, I feel, helped by the fact that I had exactly the same shade of yarn. So now I must tassle away so that I can sport it at the school gates this week! I still have lots of wool left over - do you think a matching bag would be naff? A bit overkill perhaps? Not that I've ever knitted a bag before. We'll see.
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