Monday 1 January 2007

great start to the new year

Happy new year everyone. Hope you had a good night, whatever you did. Ours was pretty quiet. Dinner and drinks with a couple of friends. No hangovers to nurse today, but it's been a lovely quiet day consisting of knitting (well, for me anyway!).

I set aside today to get started on the swatch for the steeked jacket knit along I'm joining with Julie and a bunch of other brave souls. It's supposed to start on Jan 2 so I got stuck into the swatch today. Here is the result.


After teaching myself invisible crochet cast on this morning, i spent the best part of this afternoon beavering away at the 30 rows for the swatch. I'm pretty slow. This whole stranded thing is easy enough but I'm not good yet at picking up speed. So this is about four hours' work. Still, it's worth getting it right.

And for Julie's comment, here is the back. How are my loops?




Are they even enough? I tried not to pull them too tight but I'm concerned there's a little puckering in the fabric. I'll see how it comes out after blocking.

And for something completely different, here is my first ever loaf of bread. I made it yesterday. It's Nigella Lawson's plain white loaf. It was fabulously yummy. I may have to add bread making to my list of addictions. There are so many...! We ate it with ham, jarlsberg cheese and butter. Making it was so much fun.






This whole being on leave thing is too great. I'm not going to cope with going back to work at all next week. Spending my time doing stuff I hate when I could be pottering at home like I am right now, it's going to be a bitch. I'm not going to be happy. Still, best not to think about it for now.

Off to block my swatch now.