I’ve got a lot going on right now, and as a result, I’m spending less time knitting. I am fully hoping to devote lots of time to knitting in the second half of the year, but until then, as a chronicle of knitting, this blog leaves something to be desired.

I finished the body of my piping hot sweater weeks ago:

I am worried it is a bit short, and that I may need to rip the ribbing back and add an inch or two to the length. I sensibly decided to wait until after it is blocked to make that decision. In the meantime, it has been sitting in a pile on the coffee table in front of my sofa, giving me occasional exasperated looks and trying to make me feel guilty. Sorry, piping hot, I am not falling for this manipulative behaviour!

In the spirit of having something mindless (and small) on the needles, I decided to cast on for a hat. Everyone these days seems to be churning out double layered hats with a fold up brim; there are quite a few patterns out there to choose from. I decided to use the A.N.T. (A New Take) pattern by Aimee DeBaun. This pattern starts in the middle with a provisional cast-on, and then you knit up to the crown, pick up the provisional stitches with the second colour, and finally knit the second side down to the crown. I found some nice yarn in my stash which I had purchased some years ago in Copenhagen, and cast on. I am nearly ready to start the crown shaping on the second side:

It doesn’t look like a hat, of course, until the one side is folded into the other and the brim turned up. Trust me, it will look pretty cool when finished. The important thing for me at the moment is that it is fairly mindless TV knitting, all you do is knit around and around and around in stockinette:

The fact that I am not doing much knitting doesn’t mean that I am not finding time to dream about knitting, which has led me to make two purchases today. The first is to join a Pressed Flowers KAL with the lovely folks at A Yarn Story in Bath (which starts tomorrow). I am rationalising that I don’t need to actually keep up with the KAL, but it does give me a reason to have a weekly zoom chat with other knitters, which I think will do my poor lonely knitter’s soul some good. Also, I am pretty sure I have something in my stash that will work. I will start a swatch during the first call. I’m not sure yet whether to knit the cardigan or pullover (or the vest, for that matter). It will depend a lot on the swatch.

The second was to pre-order the new book by Kate Davies and Felicity Ford, Colour at Work. They are both so creative and I am really looking forward to reading this book in which they, together with some fantastic collaborators, explore colour.

I took the bus home from work on Friday and noticed that the sun is setting later in the day. It may be grey and windy today, but that extra few minutes of daily light is definitely impacting my mood. Have a good Sunday, everyone!