This week

This week seems to have both flown by and dragged at the same time - does anyone else ever have those weeks?

Work has been very busy this week, and will remain so for the next 4-6 weeks...but I'm also desperate to get home in the evenings and focus on other things.

This week has had two outstanding points. Firstly this...

I cannot tell you how much I adored this book. Yet again, coming several years late to a phenomenon that swept the world (this book was originally published in the UK in 2008), I too sucuumbed to its delights. I would look forward to the moment of leaving work everyday knowing that I had an hour tube ride home during which I could again transport myself into 1946 Guernsey and all of its delightful inhabitants. So, you can imagine my sadness when the book came to an end on my morning commute today - I just wanted it to go on forever.

Secondly, this...

Whilst I have knitted on and off since my Nanna first taught me one hot Sydney summer when I think I was about 7 or 8 years old, two things I have never felt confident to try are cables and fair-isle. (Actually, my first knitting experience wasn't the most positive. Nan taught both my sister and I at the same time. My sister, who is 2 years older produced an immaculate striped scarf for her teddy in stocking stitch with beautifully even tension - I think I even recall Nanna crocheting a fancy edging onto it for her. Not to be outdone, I also wanted to make an attempt. Using the delightful(?) combination of orange, green and white, Nanna started me off with plain and simple garter stitch - just 10 stitches across, which you wouldn't think would be that hard. Work away I did, and by the end (about 40cm later) there were at least 30 stitches on the needle and more holes in it than most lace patterns are meant to have. Nanna even declined to put an edging on it - I think she thought that not even an edging would salvage the mess I had made of it...at least Teddy accepted my offering in good grace...).

Anyway, to get back to the cable-knitting, I decided to use the benefit of my mother staying with me in August to finally make an attempt - I also decided to do a child-size jumper in case it went horribly wrong. So for that last week in August, our evenings in the cottage in Cornwall were spent in front of a Agatha Christie Miss Marple film (having purchased the box set specifically for the purpose of our holiday) and knitting. Mum was able to cast the occassional eye over my work, but other than that it was full-steam ahead. This cabling lark didn't seem so difficult at all (though, Mum did let me know that many cable patterns are significantly more difficult than the one I attempted...).

I've continued working away at it during the evenings, and the little jumper is now finished. I'm just sewing through the final wool ends into the seams and then it will be all ready to block over the weekend. I like to think that Nanna would be proud of how far my knitting has come since those early days. I'll post some pictures once it is completed.

Fair isle here I come...