News from the knitting front

I once bought some Twilley's cotton denim yarn. It's in two colours (let's call them dark blue and lighter blue) and I have enough to make a little blanket, I think. I'm still a bit nervous about this, since the yarn will shrink when first washed, and so just how am I supposed to make bits that will all fit together? Specially when I don't really know what exactly I'm making... I started out wanting a cabled blanket, but first I knit this lacy square, which I love.
Then I got the genius idea of making a baby blanket with the DNA cable and hearts, coz that's what babies are made of, right?

The long bit you see here is supposed to be the hearts (and yes, I just changed colours mid-strip). I don't have my whole knitting library here, or I might have tried something like Alice Starmore's cabled hearts, but I saw this lace pattern and thought I could pull it off as hearts. So, got it? They're hearts, not just lacy Vs! "But", I said to myself, "those are not at all cables!" Right-ho. So I started the DNA cable. I think this looks great in light coloured thickish wool, but in this it was making a tiny strip, even when I put the two DNAs together. The cabling is not regular and I had to keep looking at the pattern to see what I was doing, and this is no fun! So yesterday, after taking this picture, I ripped out the DNA and started another piece of lace and rope cable. So you can look forward to a bunch of various lacy, cably squares in the future. I have to make all the bits and then wash them, and then figure out how to put them all together. I read Polly's tips on working with denim, and I love the one which reminds us to throw a piece of the yarn in the wash to sew it all up with, because if you sew it with unwashed yarn, it will shrink later, making a mess of your work.
And what the heck is this, you say? This is a picture of a carpet which I cut out of some house-beauty magazine when we were renovating our house a few years ago. We still don't have a carpet in the living room, but I think this will be the template for my Summer Tweed sweater! Of course, I have more colours, and a sweater will not be that long and thin, so I could spend some time with some graph paper, but I think one could fudge this on the needles.

And the knitters among you may know about the project going on at Mason-Dixon Knitting. Ann is leading the world's knitters in a great consensus building exercise, out of which will come, somehow, the perfect handknit! So far we seem to have picked a yarn, and now we are baring our souls about our knitting highs and lows, or "proud" and "sorry" moments. When I was packing to come to England, I was in Toronto in August, and the idea of wearing a sweater seemed crazy. But I knew I had to have some. So I packed a few essentials, and soon had a suitcase filled with wool, cotton, outdoor, indoor, cardigan, pullover... so I had to edit a bit. But I did end up bringing this one, which is one of my "prouds." Although once again this did not turn out the way I had thought it would. I started collecting loose balls of Lopi from sale bins. I thought that way I could get some accent colours and then buy enough of one main colour and make myself a nice knit-in-the-round Icelandic, round-neck pullover. But I just kept finding more and more colours in the odd balls, and never stopped to pick a main body colour, so I had to change my plans a bit. It is a great warm sweater and I get lots of comments on it when I wear it. (This picture is taken from above and it makes it look like I have a gigantic body and tiny head, but I assure you I'm a more or less normally proportioned person!)
And what of the pink cotton, and the sweater I just have to sew some seams on...? Well, um, I'll save that for another post!