Grab a cup of tea ...

It's been a fortnight and quite a bit has been happening.


There's been a trip up north to see the relatives - above; we went to Loch Ruthven to see the Slavonian Grebes. You'll just have to trust me that they were there, we don't have the equipment to photograph them as well as Springwatch can. (If you select the 3rd video down on the Springwatch page "A Farewell to Speyside" you can see them near the end of the video)

We also took my sister, who managed to spot an Osprey on her 1st time! I think she was unimpresed with the whole birdwatching malarky though ... oh well.


Then we went to Boat of Garten, a regular stop on the way back to Glasgow. The boy took this shot using the telescopes at the hide - you can just see one of the Osprey chicks if you look carefully. One day we'll get there a daybreak to try and catch a Capercaillie.


Anyway, enough birdwatching - onto knitting! I finally stopped procrastinating, and blocked the button band. Finding the buttons was such a challenge - purple is really hard to match buttons with - especially using online button websites.

I found ribbonmoon.co.uk - which was great, but I was too impatient to send off a length of yarn for them to match. Instead I bought 8 sets of purple buttons (they're really cheap!). Not one of the buttons matched ...



... however I finally found these silver buttons at John Lewis, on the way to knitting group.


Remember Lilith's Race for Life in my last post? Well I won a prize! The best prize! A cashmere Swallowtail shawl, hand-dyed and hand-knitted by Lilith herself. It's utterly sumptious and I got lots of envious looks at my knitting group - hee-hee!



You can see the beads in the shot below.



And I had another birthday, making me officially in my thirties now. I got oodles of lovely pressies; Some long coveted Socks that Rock from Lilith, some utterly lovely Fyberspates yarn from Lynette, an Amazon voucher from India (which bought me Fitted Knits), and a yarny voucher from my sis. I also got lots of lovely cash from my grannies, parents and the boy for Woolfest - less than a week away! I'm so frigging excited!!

So a massive thank you to everyone for all my yarny joy!



Twilley's tank top is going well - I've been knitting it in the round instead of flat pieces. I've just separated it for the back, and am nearly at the neck. Obviously without sleeves, this is a quicker knit. I doubt that it'll be long before this yarn felts, but at the moment it's very cosy, and looks like it's be nice and toasty.


Given that it won't be long until the tank top is done, I'm swatching for Apres Surf Hoodie from the latest Interweave magazine - it's looking good so far. I'm doing it in a superwash sock yarn so that I can bung it in the wash - handknits can be very high maintenance, and I'd like a few machine wash jumpers that I can wear to work.

We're getting our office refurbished over the summer, and when we come back it'll be baltic-freezing air conditioning that will engage in a constant battle with me and my foot heater to keep the temperature at freezer levels ... I know this because we have aircon on the main floor where I work at the enquiry desk, and I'm in a scarf and layers of clothing all year round. Knitting is not just a hobby for me, it's a survivalist neccesity! (I'm the only one that's cold - everyone else is fine in t-shirts)

I digress. The lace tension square is very pretty, but I am wondering this; how exactly do you measure a lace tension square? I should have 24 stitches per 4 inches, but it's going to be hard to figure out.

The lace repeat is 10 stitches, so it would have been fine if it was 30 stitches equals x measurement, as I could just measure the repeats. But 24 stitches is 2 repeats and a bit ... anyone?