What I made, by Sharon

 I’m not sure how much I’ve written about this on the blog, but Tarragon is a Bengal, and Bengals can be quite "special". He has terrible separation anxiety, and cats do not have a great many options for expressing how they are feeling. Tarragon expresses his feelings by what vets call “inappropriate urination” and what I call ‘why does Tarragon keep peeing on the bathmat”? We’ve done everything we can think of. We have multiple litter boxes, we got him a friend (yep, that’s why we got Juniper) and we are giving him prozac. A while a go he peed on my handspun bath mat, and I put it in a hot wash. I knew it would felt, but some things just have to washed hot. It did felt. It came out a little smaller, but wonderfully  thick and ruglike. I was looking at all the unspun wool I have, and got inspired. I’m going to spin this up thick and self stripping and knit it into a bathmat: probably a 10 stitch blanket for the bathroom and another half mitred square for ...

I finished the knitting on the Travelling Jumper. It doesn't look it in the photo below, but it's HUGE.  As in the circumference of the body piece is 2.8 metres around. There is quite a bit of finishing on this, after blocking all that ribbing to size, it ahs to be seamed and then iCord applied. I can’t wait until it’s dry so I can start finishing it off. This is going to be one cosy, cosy cardigan, perfect for the bitter middle of winter, which we have just hit now. I’m hopping to have the whole thing finished, and reblocked if necessary, so I can wear it on the weekend. A new snugly jumper makes me hate winter just that little bit less.   

Leon had a birthday today, so I made him a hedgehog . I also bought him some home brewing equipment, although that doesn't feel so much like a gift as an investment, sort of like him giving me the yarn to make him a jumper. I provided beer cake and  made beer ice cream and a good time was had by all. Especially the hedgehog.

The latest Miss Babs package came yesterday and it was a wonderful as the first one. Beautifully presented, our destination this time is the Galapagos Islands, which is good really because I can do with a nice holiday in the warm, sunny,summer. The yarn is a stunning blue, inspired by the blue of the sea around the Islands. And as usual there were some really cute extras. As a bonus this time there were two patterns, a shawl with a turtle shaped cable (!) that I am going to make out of the club yarn for myself, and one for  some really nice socks, which I will make for Leon. But all the time I am knitting either of these, I am going to pretend to be on the deck of a catamaran, floating around in beautiful warm sunshine.

I finished the body / collar part of the Travelling Sweater on the weekend. For the majority of the knitting it was perfect travelling knitting, rythmic interesting but not requiring much concentration or looking at the pattern. I really feel like I've nailed the short row technique too. There are 36 rows that each require the picking up of wraps from 9 stitches, so I had a lot of practice. Still, because the big piece was broken into 8 parts, and each of those was divided into 4 smaller parts that took just over an hour each, it always felt like I was making progress. Near the end though, it just got BIG. Big so it covered Tarragon while I was knitting, big so it struggled to fit in the big blue bag . Here's a picture of the finished piece: I'm going to pretend that Fern is included for scale. Now I'm knitting away on the back / sleeves. I'm enjoying the yarn and the fabric I'm making, but it might be a while before I do another project done entirely ...

I went to Big W the other day, looking for some winter tights. I like the cotton ones like I wore to school. The ones with a gusset and a heel. Still, while I was there I spotted Razza matazz fleece tights . Lets leave aside the sad fact that this fleece bears no relation to sheep, the tights were 55 percent cotton and lined with warmth. I bought the appropriate size being  oddly enough called "average/tall" . I am neither average nor tall, but that's the smallest size. I wore them to work on Friday and they were amazing. It was like wearing trackies, so comfortable and incredibly warm. I got changed out of them to ride home, and when i got home decided to put the tights back on, because I love being snuggly and warm and comfortable. And that's where the trouble started. When I put them on again they felt very odd at my toes, like they were rubbing the ends of my toes even when I was just sitting there. Eventually I had a look and found this: A great big ugly ...

I gave Elise her Stripe Study the other day. I was really happy with it. She was really happy with it too.   I'm even happy with the photos we took.     An all round happy making project!