Hemlock Ring Blanket

I started this project at the end of June and it has been a rather quick knit. I would have finished it sooner, but I was away in Canada for a week and a half and I deemed this project too heavy to take with me. The yarn I used was Rowan Pure Wool Aran in a lovely chocolate brown. I used almost exactly 5 balls. I enjoyed knitting it, but it did get rather laborious by the end when I had over 600sts on the needles. Each round took me about 20mins! (I don't knit that fast.)



This was the first project which has really needed blocking and I did my best at blocking it hard. However, I think perhaps I could have blocked it more since it's still a bit wrinkly. I kept going for 120-something rounds, I can't quite remember the exact number off the top of my head. I'd definitely like to knit another one. This one is to be gifted to my boyfriend's brother and his fiancee as a housewarming gift. I'll be sad to see it go. It was also really hard to photograph. In real life, it's a rich chocolate brown colour, but in these photos it looks rather washed out. I think the truest colour is in the picture above.

I have been knitting! Honest!

Well, I have no good reason for such a long absence from my blog. I could claim I've been too busy, but really I think laziness does factor in there somewhere. To be fair, the end of the summer term at school was pretty manic and I didn't really have time to even do much knitting. Now I'm on holiday I have all the time in the world to knit!

My current wips are The Hemlock Ring Blanket, which I finished the other night and is now waiting to be blocked. I really hope it's going to block well because at the moment it just looks like a crumpled mess! I'm halfway through knitting Butterfly from Rowan 37. I've wanted to knit this for years, but I've always been put off because I thought it'd be difficult. Now I'm actually doing it I'm rather underwhelmed by the pattern. I hope as well that it doesn't stretch too much because otherwise it's going to turn out huge even though I'm knitting a size smaller. The last thing I'm working on is a second version of this cardigan. I've had so many people ask me for a pattern on Ravelry, but there are quite a few things I wasn't happy about with the first one. So I'm knitting it again and trying to work out a pattern as I go along.

I've decided that writing patterns is a lot like writing songs. When I was in a band, we were constantly re-working songs, and even though a song would be officially "finished" you were always changing little bits here and there. Another similarity is that for me, when designing songs I have to have an idea before I can find a yarn. When I write songs, for me the music has to come first and then the words. I could never do it the other way around. And for ages I felt that I wasn't a proper songwriter because I felt it was so hard to write a song for my lyrics. But I've learnt that however you want to create is ok. This makes me feel slightly better about my ever-expanding stash and the fact that my poor boyfriend does not understand when I have to buy more to fulfil a design because nothing in my stash will do.

So here's to lots more creativity this summer before I sign my life away to my PGCE course in September!