The road to hell is paved with good intentions

Yeah, I know. I said I'd do another post last week. And now it's this week. Where does the time go? I think it's something to do with all those evenings spent wrestling with two pointy sticks and a ball of string rather than diligently blogging about it :)

Anyway, last time I posted I promised you a guest knitter of the week. And here she is. May I present my mother-in-law, knitter extraordinaire, modelling her very own version of Rosedale.


Rosedale MIL style

Nice, ney? MIL has been knitting for a long, long time and can leave me for dust in the stitches per minute stakes. She also likes to strike out from the pattern and do her own thing, a trait that she also evidences in her cookery. Hence puddings that are described as apple crumble but actually have oranges in them. But I digress. Anyway, MIL's Rosedale has been knit from a load of wool that I brought her back from a trip that Mr A & I made in summer 2003. We went to the Orknies, Shetland, Iceland and the Faroes, and MIL was presented with wool from every location on our return. All different weights of course, and certainly not chosen in contemplation of including them in the same project, but hasn't it come out great?

Here's another shot of it.


More Rosedale

Of course sometimes MIL's knitting experience is humbling to behold. But she does make mistakes like us lesser mortals. Like when she joined the second sleeve of her Rosedale in the centre of the back, but don't tell her I told you about that one :)

Here is another of her projects. This is here version of Clapotis, knit with Axelle's alpaca in the Waterlilies shade. Yet another victory for both yarn and pattern I think:


Clapotis encore

The more times I see Clapotis being made up, the more I like it. I think I may have to knit one for my mum now to stop her getting sartorial envy.

So what is going on in my own knitting at the moment. Well, the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed that despite me proclaiming that I am not a joiner a couple of posts ago there is a new button in my sidebar for the Dulaan Project, run by Ryan over at Mossy Cottage Knits. Check it out. You can knit pretty much anything you fancy (provided it's warn of course) and you get to send it to Mongolian children to protect them against winter temperatures in the -40's in Ulaan Batar. Plus the receiving charity has expressed some scepticism that they will be donated even 500 garments as a result of Ryan's efforts. Bah!. They have clearly never met a determined group of knitters before. They better be bracing themselves for the onslaught, that's all I can say.

I do not yet have anything on the needles for this project as I am in London, my stash is in Norfolk and the twain have not met for nearly 2 weeks now. But I've got my eye on Coronet from knitty, and maybe a couple of scarves. We shall see.

In terms of actual knitting - knitting I am still ploughing on with the Feather and Fan lace. It is now enormously long, but because the scarf is also quite wide I feel it still needs to be longer. So I'm knitting onwards. Heaven alone knows where I'm going to block the thing, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Pics later in the week (yeah, yeah) when I finally manage to get home in the hours of daylight. Also Secret Pal loot pictures - I promise. You really need to see the mohair.