I am still plodding on with my Kauni cardigan, I have now cut it and all seems to be okay, there will eventually be photos of this monumental moment once I have learnt how to download them, afraid I am a bit of a technophobic. Anyway I have nearly completed one sleeve but unfortunately have now strayed onto another project. We have just taken delivery of the new yarns from Rowan and I got so excited I just had to start something else, I couldn’t resist the Kidsilk Aura it is so soft and the patterns are great.

Next weekend I am visiting relations up on the North East coast so will have plenty of time for knitting, hopefully I will finish the cardigan. I am hoping there will be plenty of football to keep my husband occupied, he is a Newcastle United supporter, then I won’t feel too guilty with all of my knitting, and of course I will need to have time for shopping.

For my weeks holiday in Cornwall I packed:

2 x pairs socks to knit

numerous bookmarks to crochet

1 scarf to crochet

I was worried that it wouldn’t be enough what with the 4-5 hour drive each way in the car and 6 nights and days! How much did I do? Half a bookmark and the foot of a sock and that’s all. I don’t really know where the time went! But, I did do some crocheting on the beach…

I have a cool crochet pattern to make bookmarks from the Crochet-Pattern-A-Day calendar and I thought they’d make good pressies for the kids teachers at christmas. It isn’t finished but I reckon it’ll only take about half an hour to do each one once I get going.

The webmaster also enjoyed his holiday…

although some random woman shouted at him that he was a sissy for going in with a wetsuit on!

I’m back to serious knitting now and am making good progress on a Rowan Cocoon cardi which will appear in the window when it’s finished. It is beautiful yarn, lovely to knit and pretty quick. Also, even though I’m not normally a cable fan it’s a nice pattern to knit.

Sorry have just reread my last effort and apologise for all the mistakes that jump out at me on the new screen.  I do know about the use of capital letters, really!

I love the summer holidays. When the girls were small it was always so relaxing not being thrown into the hurly burly of early mornings and sorting out games kit and homework. Now they are both teachers the bonus is we get to see alot more of them in the holidays. Katie has spent quite a lot of time with us this holiday as she is househunting in the area/ she loves coming in the shop and would really like my job! She also enjoys knitting and has finishes a cardigan in NORO BLOSSOM which looks really good and will be very useful in.school. she is never afraid and last night sat down and got well on the way to mastering crochet.

My own knitting has slowed down a bit. The BLUR carigan is nearly finished and I have done the lacy borders down the two fronts. These were a little tricky as I found it difficult to see the pattern in the furry wool, I had to really concentrate.

The next two weeks are a bit hectic withlots of visitors. As both my mother and my grandaughter are staying there will be four generations of women in the house ! I do, in passing, have a moment of sympathy for my husband!

Like most dedicated knitters I have many projects on the go at once, I sometimes feel like a women possessed as I can’t stop knitting, even at the hairdressers. I think I am turning into my mother as she was exactly the same and I used to think I would never get like that, how wrong can you be! There is no hope for Vicki she will obviously be like me, she already shares my passion for knitting, shoes and handbags.

Enough of all that, one of the many projects I am knitting at the moment, and it is a first, is a cardigan using multicolour Kauni yarn, the colour I am using is rainbow coloured and very pretty. It is one of those garments that is knit in the round and when completed is cut. The beauty of it is that there is no sewing up, the armholes are cut and stitches picked up for the sleeves which are also knit in the round, the same goes for the front this is also cut and stitches picked up for the bands, at this stage I think I will be very nervous of something going wrong. We don’t stock this yarn at the moment as we thought it best to try it first, but as it is turning out so nicely we are definitely planning to stock this in the future.

We seem to be getting quite a lot of visitors in the shop which is really nice and a lot of nice comments about the shop and the range of wools we have.

There are some super patterns in all the new books from Rowan and Noro and at the moment the refurbished stock room is brimming with new stock.

We are off on holiday in September and earlier in the year I started a cardigan in Sirdar Blur as I thought it would be light to pack and warm on chilly evenings. I suddenly realised I need to get on with it so everyhing else has been put on one side to get that finished. It knits up quickly so I should be alright.

Looking forward to the Festival of Quilts at the NEC next week. Rowan has a stand there so maybe there will be some of the samples from the new magazine on show