Stress!

It's the end of November and I haven't so much as written a Christmas Present list, I haven't written any cards, I haven't ordered a turkey, my Babette Blanket squares for November aren't finished, I am so busy at work I can hardly take a lunch hour and I haven't made any progress on my cable sweater for two weeks.

I'm stressed!
DSoK the Graduate called last night and he's stressed too, mainly by work, which sounds just as badly run as where I work, so I listened to him ranting about it for a while. We are going walking together tomorrow so I hope that will be nice and relaxing. If not I'll just have to hit the gin. Maybe I'll put some in my thermos now I come to think of it.


I have done some work on my Babette Blanket this month and I'm rather pleased with the results so far. I'm on the 9th block, and there is one more to go, so unless I get a lot done over Christmas I don't think I'll quite get it finished this year. If I can find the time I think I'm going to start blocking the finished squares soon and sewing them together to see how it all looks.


I also have to do about eight more rows on my Scarf Interrupted. It is done with the left overs of my Manos del Uruguay and some Katia Venus which I bought in Mallorca a few years ago. I think it is quite pretty, and I expect it will be nice and warm. Once it's done I can get on with my Cable Sweater.

I also bought a lovely booklet with crochet snowflake patterns in. I just have to send off for crochet cotton, a tiny crochet hook and some little beads and I can begin! I need a new activity I reckon. Probably stress relieving...
Oh yes, I was going to knit the Alan Dart Nativity as well. At night, maybe...

UPDATE: I haven't even had time to take photos of all this stuff, but I did manage to do some Christmas shopping over the weekend, so I'm feeling a bit better. I'll try and take some photos later in the week.

Babette Interrupted

Here are some updated photos of my Babette Blanket. I have done eight out of ten sections now. There are still eight nasty little two-round squares to do, in fact, but they don't take long. I am dying to get started with the ninth section, which I am planning to do in some lovely autumn leaves colours.


In the meantime I also started these Mittens Interrupted, by Eunny Jang, from Interweave Knits Fall 2008. I bought the Manos del Uruguay Wool Classica specially, at Alexandra Palace. It is gorgeous to knit with, lovely and soft. I've finished one mitten and am half way through the second. I plan to make a matching scarf with the remaining wool, plus a little bit of something left over from another project.

Like Ghosts From an Enchanter Fleeing

Well, I don't know about you, but here the weather has been cold and wild alternately for a week or so now. On Friday we got out a kind of vacuum cleaner for leaves, and had fun blowing them off the lawn into a pile and then hoovering them up. As they danced along in front of the blower they reminded me of the description of autumn in Shelley's poem, Ode To The West Wind.

The lawn looked nice and tidy until this morning, when there was a fresh set of leaves blown down overnight. At least they are all gorgeous colours. Driving to work at the moment is through a wonderland of autumn foliage, and it has made me decide that my next set of Babette squares will be in the colours of sutumn leaves. I've still got nine little squares to do in Waves colours (for July) first, though.

As you can see from the photo above, we have been successful in obtaining windfall apples from a variety of sources, from colleagues at work with an apple tree to free windfall apples at the side of the road, and we have 12 gallons of cider currently fermenting. We should be bottling the first three gallons tomorrow!

I knitted some Alan Dart Christmas decorations last week, for a swap, but forgot to take any photos of them, doh! and I haven't finished anything else yet. However, I have made some more progress with my refurbished duvet cover. I decided to do the overdying in a hot pink colour, so a couple of weekends ago I got out some string and the blue pieces I dyed last time, and got to work tying them up.


After going in the wash with the pink dye they looked like this!


And when the string was cut off them the pattern was revealed:


Here is the duvet cover drying on the line. Now I just have to make some new pillowcases with the dyed fabric and the African Fabric I got at Ally Pally.