Treading water

I've reached a hiatus in knitting the Essential Cardigan. When I bought the yarn (from the Yarn Gathering in Coventry, since closed down after all the, ahem, problems of Knit Camp) there was one ball less than I needed in stock, and the owner convinced me that a ball of grey would work as a contrast. Now that I've knitted the fronts, back and collar I don't want a contrast colour in it, I want it to be all red. Of course, it then proved nearly impossible to find more balls of Grignasco Merino Gold DK, but I've eventually tracked some down in Wisconsin (!!) and arranged a yarn swop with a kind woman on Ravelry who wanted some sock yarn and British things. Thank God for Ravelry. So, progress has stopped on the cardigan for the time being, whilst I wait for a yarn parcel to arrive from the US. We'll ignore the niceties of dye lots...

So I've been treading water, getting on with some bits and bobs of other projects to fill the time. I did the 12th square of my blanket KAL, which is as big as I was planning to go. Now all I need to do is crochet all the squares together.

And I started some socks as I had a trip to Cambridge one afternoon for a masterclass at the University Library and wanted something to knit on the train. I was amused to spot this sign at King's Cross on the way:

These are Broadripple socks, from Knitty, a pattern I've made before, way back in 2005. The yarn is Opal Cotton sock, which Zeah gave me a while ago. I really like the cotton sock yarns - I like the muted colours and they wear really well. The 2005 Broadripple socks still look almost as good as when they were first finished, and they have been worn regularly ever since.

With the arrival of the snow last week we went and stocked up on bird food. We also bought a ground feeding tray and some mealworms as we have a robin who visits the garden regularly and we thought he'd like them. The mealworms look totally disgusting (I refused to touch them, so the OH had to do it!) but they seem to be doing the trick, as, a week later, we now have two robins, male and female blackbirds and more blue tits!

Look, aren't they gross?! I can just about handle cooking bacon these days (although a whole roast chicken was nearly my undoing) but I draw the line at mealworms.

And in other exciting news, Nicsknots, whose blog I linked to a couple of weeks ago has a new website - it's here, for groovy knitting bags and knitting needle rolls and cards.

That's all for now. I have a busy couple of weeks coming up so I'm not sure how much time I'll get to blog for the rest of February.

There seem to have been a few problems with the comment function on the blog, so I've adjusted the settings. Hopefully it now works...