Marooned on Sleeve Island, send a lifeboat.

I tried to save myself by working a scarf, but as you can see that bit me on the butt.  (Please excuse the bad phone pic taken in the car)

Chevrons, Donna, chevrons. Back to my island.

So I”m plodding along on Ursula, and she’s growing nicely!

Fair isle and steeking amuses me – at this point it bears very little resemblance to a cardigan, then you do the scary cutting, and ta-da! Hopefully your knitting doesn’t fall apart in your lap! (Yes, it still scares the crap out of me)

It’s not growing quickly, but I’m okay with that. It feels a lot quicker than it actually is. Did I mention that I’ve finally got a permanent position at the library? That happened a couple of months ago, and although the position is part time, it’s been pretty much full time lately, due to people having holidays and such, which is nice for the yarn fund, not so much for the yarn use!

In addition to that, I start Uni tomorrow. Yup. University. I think I’m insane. It’s part time, all done online, and I have no intention of finishing quickly, but there’ll be another impact on the knitting time.

None of this has impacted the yarn purchasing. There’s been some pretties in the mail!

Knit to Flatter (all the items I like are the ones for other body shapes!) a set of Dyakcraft Darn Pretty DPNS in charcoal, bubblegum and Positively Pink, and some Quince and Co from the lovely Suzyhausfrau. That just there is Tern in Columbine and Stonington. The Suzyhausfrau parcels come wrapped in brown paper and string, I love it. There have been others.

This one has some Finch, some Chickadee and some Osprey. There may be a few more skeins that have arrived. Maybe.  I can’t help it, they’re so pretty! I had ordered some ore Tern last week, when the Dusk arrived in store, but the universe ate my order and lost it.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something.

I wandered through my Ravelry queue the other day, trying to decide what to knit next. I was temporarily blinded by Juliet from the new Rowan magazine (number 54)

I was almost reaching for the needles before I realised that I don’t know a single crochet from a treble and that that little fact could be a slight problem when it comes to that centre panel. So back to the queue I went. There’s a little bit of everything in my queue, and quite frankly I’m a little sick of my stash, but a decision (and a swatch) was made.

Ursula by Kate Davies in Wollmeise. I had so much fun making the swatch that I couldn’t quite remember why it had been so long since I’d done any Fair Isle. The colours won’t be the same – apart from the pink and the natural, and my tension is off. I needed 28 sts/10cm and I was getting 30sts/10cm on 2.75mm, so after a twitter consultation, I’ve made an executive decision and will be going up to 3.25mm.

I don’t imagine this will be a quick one!

So, I knit a Tempest cardi back in Mid-2010.

I wear it a lot. It’s knit out of Wollmeise, and there’s been no pilling, it hasn’t lost its shape, it’s been great. But I lost a button.

It’s hard to tell, because the cardi has the buttons unevenly placed – the buttons are further apart on the wide stripes, and closer together on the narrow stripes. But there is one missing, down on the second lowest narrow stripe. I’ve been trying to ignore it, because I didn’t purchase any extra when I bought them, and I didn’t really want to replace all of the buttons. I got the buttons at the button shop at Newtown on a shopping date with Knitabulous, and I thought it’d be a long shot that they’d still have them.

But two weeks ago, David and I headed off to Newtown, and while we were there, I popped into the buttons shop. Not particularly looking for these buttons, because you know, three years and all. I just happen to be a button fiend and was looking out for new buttons.

But lo and behold!

They had about 5 left. I bought a spare.

And much more seasonally appropriate – Still by Kim Hargreaves (again!). In Calmer, sadly discontinued. But when I see two knots in ten centimetres – I’m suddenly not quite so surprised it’s been discontinued. Most of the balls I’ve used for this project have had knots in them, but this is ridiculous.

And why does vertical ribbing seem to take so much longer than horizontal?!?