Sleepy Knitter

I’m tired all the time at the moment. I'm not sleeping well. part of it is worry about L, I keep waking up thinking I’m going to hurt him on his wound. Add that to the amount of annoyance I have from work each day and you have the makings of a poor night of sleep. Then I go to bed later than I should.

As a result, I haven’t done much knitting over the last couple of days. I’m still knitting the scarf for L, although it’s curling at the edges something chronic! I don’t know whether I maybe should be knitting it a bit wider or what. I’m using stocking stitch. I don’t know whether it’s the most sensible stitch for a scarf, but L likes the pattern.

I do intend to finish my pink feathery scarf (the ends need weaving in) and then I’ll get a picture of it, though the light in the living room is not so good for that sort of photography. I might ask L to use his camera which has a flash. I will also take a picture of my bag – according to the pattern it’s meant to be a makeup purse, but it’s huge! So I’ll probably be using it to keep some of my short needles and knitting paraphernalia (pins, needles etc) in until I make myself a knitting needle roll.
I have picked the material I will be using for this, it’s the same material I used to make an “indian squaw” dress for Jaq’s birthday a long time ago. I also made chaps for L, and there’s still a big chunk left over. I may have to line it with something – I’ll have to see. I would put a picture of the dress up, but I don’t have any, and though Jaq does, I can’t figure out how to link to pictures on other flickr sites. If you’re interested, it’s here

Otherwise though, my next project is due to be a hat. I was going to follow a plan in one of my knitting books, but I don’t have a set of double pointed needles of the correct size. However, I did find a pattern for a hat not requiring circular or double pointed needles. The main difference is the colours (which I can change) and the fact that the new hat doesn’t have a pompom (which I can also change).

Once I have done with the hat, I think that I should be feeling up to progressing onto something a bit more complicated. The main problem I have is that my three knitting books aren’t 100% useful. The first one I bought (I can’t remember the exact title, will update) was a really good beginner’s guide, and took me through the basics. Mum showed me how to cast on. Then I bought Stitch ’n’ Bitch (cheapest here on 7-Mar-2007) which has been excellent, but is in American. By which I mean that the wool weights and names seem to be a bit different than in the UK! All the amounts of wool are in skeins, all the weights are in American (worsted which is between DK and Aran perhaps?) and so I have to do lots of test squares! The final book that I got, Big Book of Knitting Stitch Patterns (cheapest here, 7-Mar-2007), is more of a way of embellishing existing patterns. It’s great, and I’ve already used one of the patterns on L’s new iPod sock I made. (pic of that to come too!)

Anyway, yes, something more complicated. I have a variety of choices here, either I find a free pattern online, buy a pattern, borrow another book from the library, or make one up (risky). We’ll see…