Yowza

Knitting adorable things for my adorable niece and watching The Tudors on cbc. Holy schamoly. Gorgeous men in doublets and hose. And lots of sexy love scenes.
I think I may need to stop knitting - I keep dropping stitches. But that could be from the horrible sound levels on cbc - you need to turn the sound way up for the actual show, then the commercials blow you out the back of the room with their volume. And there seems to be commercials every 5 minutes.
Here's the back of the hoodie sweater I'm doing for the child, in a beautiful salmon-coloured cotton from cottonlicious.

New toy!

I just found the neatest thing online - it's a pattern generator. You just load in a jpg of your logo or photo, and it generates a grid schema of your image. I'm in the middle of designing a courier bag. My plan is to submit it to Knitty - cross your fingers for me!

Completely and totally off topic

Somebody actually wasted money on a study to show that men choose women based on their looks. Seriously. There was a study of a group of speed daters in Germany - 26 men and 20 women and who knows how much money to confirm this. Because the millions of single women in their 30s and 40s out there couldn't have proved this on their own. Want a laugh? Here's the link to the article.

speedy gonzales!

I am just whizzing along on Cromarty! Here is half a sleeve that I just started on Sunday. I love doing cable and knotwork! I usually find single colour knitting to be ridiculously tedious, but cables and knotwork make it go much faster.
The colour is a little off in this pic - must be the flash. It's actually a really dark, eggplant-ish purple.

Ah, knitting.

It's so Zen. Seriously, there were times on my trip where I thought I would go insane because I couldn't knit - on the train, the plane, sitting in a beautiful park in Paris...
I've been working on Cromarty and watching Pride & Prejudice all day. Colin Firth - sigh. For those of you who fell in love with his brooding Mr. Darcy, you are hereby commanded to track down a copy of North & South with the beautiful Richard Armitage, whose brooding knocked Colin Firth right out of my Freebie Five. That's saying something!
I may have to watch North & South now. Richard Armitage - droooooool. He broods very well as Sir Guy of Gisborne in the very cheesy new BBC Robin Hood series. And in black leather, no less. I had planned to stalk him when I was in London, but I never saw him. Apparently he was filming Robin Hood in Hungary, which was not on my itinerary. Oh well. Next time.
During knitting breaks (in order to avoid knitting injuries - I had one before; don't ask) I surfed knitting sites and found this cool one from Interweave Press. You have to register (free), and there are tons of great free pattern downloads. These sites are so dangerous - they distract ADD knitters from their projects and cause them to go bankrupt buying more expensive yarn for new ones. Is there a cheaper hobby I can take up?

The return of me!

I have returned from 3 weeks in Europe! What an amazing vacation! It broke my heart to pass by all the yarn shops, but if I hadn't, I would have run out of money a lot quicker than I did (just ask my mum). There was one shop in Bayeux, France, that probably is still trying to get my nose prints off the window! I will, someday, do a knit-and-yarn based voyage to England.
So I was back in time for my lovely niece's christening - jetlagged, but there to stand up as godmother. And here are some pictures - the gown and ma petite souricette wearing it.
I'm now working on the 'Cromarty' sweater from Alice Starmore's Celtic Collection book. I'm doing it in dark purple New Zealand guernsey. (sorry, can't find a link for it) All the knotwork and cables are making it very thick - it's going to be a warm one! But the square neckline is so beautiful. Here's a link to a fellow knitter's blog showing her finished sweater.

More sweet niece things

Here's the little cardigan and shoes I knit for my lovely niece. My sister wanted something 'girlie' - I don't think it gets more girlie than this! Pink & white & flowers - oh my! It's actually been finished for quite some time, but I just found the perfect buttons today. So here it is! And I've almost finished her christening gown - just in time, because I'm off to France soon and I can't knit on the plane! I apparently can't bring human bodies, either, so there go my plans for in-flight reanimation experiments during electrical storms. Oh well.