I know .......

.....that you have all been waiting with baited breath for my return - and - well, here I am !

I am afraid things went a little pear shaped for a time here. Well pear shapedish ! I found out two days before the knitting olympics began that we are expecting another junior mooknit in October of this year - which is wonderful news after two years of trying, but unfortunately had adverse effects on my knitting - in that I sadly failed to complete my Olympic project. The fatigue and general restlessness seemed to settle in pretty much immediately. On top of that, we were house hunting and that was hard work - we then found a nice new place, which we had to move in to. Not only did we have to organise all our bits from the UK being delivered, we had to move all our gubbins from the other house in Muscat and I can tell you - it totally wiped me out. I have been sick as a dog - some days not being able to get up out of bed and so tired I can't tell you. I have discovered though, that if I eat about every half an hour and rest plenty I'm just fine most of the time ! So that is what I have been doing !

Not much knitting has been done just recently round our way. I completed a little cardi for a friend's baby - but it was off the neddles and wrapped so quickly I didn't take a piccie - I am doing another for her at the moment and I will take a picture of this one before I hand it over.

I am slogging away on Ballerina - which is coming out very small - I mean about 20cm shorter than it should be - has anyone else knitted a Hanne Falkenberg jumper and found that it needed to be blocked to high heaven - my gauge is right, it's just a lot shorter than the given measurements - this not good, 'cause if it doesn't block to the right size, it's going to look dreadful on my Mum and will have been a total waste of time. Please reassure me someone !

I have done quite a bit of my Olympic Diagonal Front Jacket - but I discovered that I do not like knitting on circular needles in a chunky yarn, it just doesn't look as even - still I am nearly at the armholes where I can transfer to straights and then it shouldn't take me long to just get it done and dusted. If I ever suggest knitting another garment in the round - please beat me about the head !

So, I have at last some pictures of the finished Manhattan. This has now been received and worn by the lovely Sam and she says she loves it - I'm just waiting for a photo of her wearing it - which I will post when I get it. In the mean time, you will have to make do with sofa shots I'm afraid !

So here she is in all her glory




And photo the second is of the crochet edge, which was a mamoth task I can tell you. Once I'd got the hang of it, it wasn't difficult at all, just time consuming. This baby went everywhere with me, including the beach, where I got some very funny looks whilst I sat on my sun lounger crocheting - well I got it done and it looks fabulous. But just one point, the amount of wool that I needed for this jumper was out by FOUR balls. Count them - FOUR balls. This is not a cheap yarn, and that made this cardi, not just a bit of an expensive project, but a very expensive project. I mean, it looks fab, but really - unless I was sharing the cost with someone as I did this time around who is going to spend that kind of money on yarn to knit a cardi ? I had to order the extra yarn to be sent to me in Oman - I was only going to order three balls, thank god I didn't - four were definately needed and I couldn't believe that the pattern could be so out - the size of it is perfect and my gauge was spot on - so it's nothing to do with that. Also, this is the small size - who knows how much it would be out by on the bigger sizes - so instead of using 14 balls, this used 18 balls - that's lots in anyones book. Anyway enough ranting from me - it's done, it's fab and Sam is a happy bunny - I love it when a plan comes together as that man from the A-team would say. By the way, the colour is more accurate in the first photo.



So I'm not going to promise to blog more often from now on as I am well aware that I have done that before and then totally not done it, so all I'm going to say is that - we now have a computer at home, the camera is all set up and I know how to use it, so lets just see what happens. As long as I don't feel so sick that there is no possibility of doing any knitting, I should be around a bit more.

Ta ta