I Just Needed Some Colour

Progress on the Princess continues steadily along.

I'm now on the final chart of the wide border (hurrah!) but still have a long way to go before I can call the shawl done.  Once the wide border is finished, I've got the triangle body to complete and then finally, another round of tedious edging.

I'm actually really enjoying knitting on the Princess at the moment but I went into a bit of a panic a few days ago as I considered the coming weeks (and weeks) of 'antique silver' (GREY) knitting I had ahead of me.

As most knitters would, I turned to Ravelry when the panic hit and catching up on some of the projects of a local knitting group I saw the PERFECT DVD watching colourful project the Lily Crochet Blanket.   Before I knew it I had downloaded the pattern and was ordering mini skeins of yarn from the Knitting Goddess to get started.

This won't be enough yarn to complete the blanket (each skein is about 1/5 of a regular skein) - but should get me started.

(The Natural Dye Studio who have made the pattern available also has mini skeins perfect for this project - but they were sadly out of stock when my 'need it now' mood struck!)

The yarn dropped through the letterbox a few minutes ago and I'm itching to get the colour flowing, but I need to tidy up the glue and glitter and get ready for gorgeous god daughter Genevieve's weekly pizza and gossip session.

Maybe tomorrow.....

Milestones

Thanks for all the blanket/afghan suggestions - keep them coming!  I still haven't settled on one.  I've started 2 so far and both have been abandoned as I haven't hit on the right yarn/pattern combo yet.  I made a trip to the new John Lewis to buy some yarn at the newly opened Westfield Stratford mall on Monday - but was defeated by the other 700 million people who also decided to check it out that day.  It was busier than the last Saturday before Christmas on Oxford St.  Crazy.

In the meantime I continue to make slow and steady progress on the Princess. With projects like this I keep motivated by focusing on small milestones - goodness knows the end seems too far away to be achievable.

I've just finished row 110 - so I'm halfway through the 220 rows of the wide border charts.  For the time being I ignore what's left to do after that!

What are the Chances???

Most of the time when I make socks from self striping yarn I don't bother trying to get the second sock to be exactly the same as the first sock.  I know how to, and I have on occasion bothered, but most of the people I make socks for have been convinced (bullied?) by me into preferring the more casual look of the 'fraternal' sock.

So imagine my surprise when I was a couple of inches into the second sock of this pair and realised it was coming out EXACTLY like the first.

Totally randomly.

I finished the first sock, cut off the yarn and cast on the second sock and through some little knitting miracle it started in EXACTLY the same place in the striping pattern. 

My rusty stats skills say that the odds of randomly picking the same place in the pattern from the yarn is  about 1 in 1039.

I only wish I was so lucky when it came to picking lottery numbers. 



Now that I've accepted it's fall I need a good mindless-ish knitting project for DVD watching.  (I've still got the final season of 24 to devour!)(And I'm way behind on The Office.)(And Downton Abbey is due to start again this week.....)  Anyway - I'm drawn to the idea of another afghan.  (Not that I need one - but they are satisfying knitting.)

Any interesting blanket/afghan/throw patterns to suggest??