Any plans I might have had for designing and knitting this week ended up being put on hold from Wednesday, when I came down with a doozy of a cold. I’d had a bit of a scratchy throat on Tuesday, a slightly stuffy nose on Wednesday morning but generally felt OK, but then by the time I woke up on Thursday I felt rubbish. I spent literally day all Thursday blowing my nose (honestly, you’d think there would be a limit to the productivity of one human nose but I must have exceeded all normal limits on Thursday and maybe considered seeking sponsorship from Kleenex or something!), and when I put the kids to bed at 8pm, I went too.
I actually took a day off sick from work on Friday, which is a real rarity for me, spent the morning sleeping, the afternoon vegetating on the sofa under a blanket, and when I went to collect the children from the after-school childminder she answered the door with “oh my goodness, you look awful!”. Thanks!
There have been some nasty cold viruses going around this winter and I can attest to the unpleasantness of this one. If I don’t even have the energy to knit, I must be feeling bad.
By Saturday afternoon I decided I could manage some work on my current shawl design, but then switched back to my garter stitch scrap blanket later after I’d taken some cough medicine which causes drowsiness. I’m susceptible to drowsy-making medicines at the best of times. Never mind “do not drive or operate machinery”, I was treating it as “may cause drowsiness; if affected, do not attempt knit design”!
It’s now Sunday and I’m feeling much better today. Still coughing and sneezing but infinitely better in myself and more than up to some stocking stitch. Coincidentally this yarn happens to change colour just at the eyelet row! Couldn’t have planned that if I’d tried!

This is (clearly!) the beginning of a shawl. What is less obvious is that it has taken two full evenings and an afternoon of knitting to get this far. I’m not that slow! This is the third incarnation of this shawl, however. In my head I had an idea for a shallow crescent shawl, but when I started it, I didn’t like it. That transformed into a modified triangular shawl, but then that didn’t turn out how I had envisioned it either.
Turns out this shawl wants to be a semi-circular one! Who knew?! I think this is the right choice though. The yarn cake is forming a heart in the centre as I knit it!

It’s rare that I knit two samples for a pattern. In fact, it may even be unprecedented but on this occasion it is necessary. Next month’s pattern is to be socks, but unfortunately the sample pair I have knitted have proved to be completely impossible to photograph! The yarn is a gorgeous variegated green, and it’s the variegation that is causing the issue. In real life, the stitch pattern shows beautifully, the variegation and the design work together in delightful harmony, and the name suits the design. Rendered on film (or rather in pixels) the stitch pattern totally vanishes among the colour variegation. I’ve tried indoor lighting, outdoor lighting, cloudy overcast sky, bright sunshine, it makes no difference, the stitch pattern is completely indiscernible.
And so here I am, casting on another pair in a different yarn, hoping the socks and the camera will play nicely this time!

My first pattern release of 2018 went live on Ravelry today. Earth Space Love is a stranded colourwork beret, worked top-down from the crown down to the ribbed band.

The pattern came about from a design challenge on the theme of Mandala. A mandala is a Hindu or Buddhist circular symbol which represents the universe. I wanted to take that universal theme one step further than just designing a circular pattern. The hat is worked top-down, a first for me. The central green shape represents Planet Earth. The blue area around it represents the seas, with waves. Outside of that is a wide stripe representing space and the wider universe, with motifs of stars, moons and planets. Beyond space, a round of hearts represents the universal force of love, and then the design comes full circle through its colours. The two-colour ribbed band is worked using the green and blue that began the hat and the pattern is complete.

OK, that’s definitely an overstatement, but it is true that the holidays are over and thoughts must return to work once more. When “Work” involves this gorgeous rich blue laceweight yarn, pretty beads, and a pattern that has been just challenging enough to design with, it doesn’t feel like work though.

It does feel like this project has been on the needles for ages, but I haven’t been working on it exclusively. Far from it! This poor, patient shawl has waited, uncomplaining, while I have put it aside time and again to make no less than nine other knitting projects plus spinning projects and now finally I can give it my full attention. With over 400 stitches per row now I’m going to need to!

Once that is done, I have a pattern to release (scheduled for next week), another that will start testing around the same time, and then I can move on to the shawlette which is clamouring to get out of my imagination and on to my needles.