Not updated for a little while as have had some issues to deal with which have been a little overwhelming but knitting has been keeping me sane and happy! As it does.

So I finished this at the weekend, it's a retro tea cosy...just like granny used to make!

This is a vintage pattern, from 1977...but I as you can see I didn't knit it in 70's brown and orange! The pattern is from a Patons and Woolcraft knitting booklet my grandmother gave to me and I can even remember one of these that she made from it, in pastel green and yellow (which I wasn't keen on!). These old patterns are so well written and easy to follow, seems like things were less complicated back then.

It was fun to knit with all these ridges. It's basically just garter stitch in two colours and the ridges are formed by keeping the wool to the wrong side of the work and pulling it across when changing colours every 7 stitches. It makes an extremely thick and warm fabric, to keep the pot warm, and all the ends weave in together on the back, here's a picture of how it looks on the wrong side.

This style of knitting appears to be making a little comeback, I was watching BBC Breakfast news the other day and they were filming in a fashionable tea shop in London and lo and behold I spied almost this exact same cosy on the teapots in there! So I think I'm on trend with this one ;-)

I was swithering about whether or not to put the pom poms on the top as that is really so kitsch and also I ABSOLUTELY HATE making pom poms, but decided to go with the spirit of the design and I like how it turned out.

On the needles this week I still have my blue version of the Canadian slippers project, I'm making the man's size so these will take a while, the book buddy bag for my mother I showed you in a previous posting (which is somewhat on hold for now as the online shop has been busy and I have so much else to do!) and this lacey scarf I'm knitting in a 4 ply Regia yarn, colour 01933 denim black. It has some subtle fade to grey colour changing in it that I really liked.

I'm just making this design up as I go along like most of my things! I started with a little shell lace pattern on the end and now I'm doing all over eyelets and will do the end in little shell again. I think I might put some beading on the ends when it's done to make it glamorous. I'm not sure if I will stretch it out and block it out into more of a wrap or seam it and finish it as a narrower scarf. I don't tend to like having a visible wrong side unless the lace is really fine and airy, so probably the latter. 

Also I recently designed this tiny wee Westie dog, a present for a friend who has two Westies. It's just so adorable, I want a whole kennel full of these now!