Knitting again

As you may have noticed from the lack of a post last week, I've run out of pre-written posts so I'll be back on a infrequent posting schedule for a while.

This week's post is just showing a few knitting things I've made recently.

Just before Christmas, the Christmas Edititon of Let's Get Crafting Knitting & Crochet #54 caught my eye, particularly the little gnome on the front of the magazine.  In fact it was enough for me to buy the magazine, even though the other patterns didn't really appeal.  So despite the fact that my personal rule is that a book or magazine should have at least 2-3 patterns I can at least pretend I will try making in my lifetime, I bought it anyway and made Noel the Gnome (Noel- Christmas- oh they must've racked their brains on that name!)

The other thing I've just finished is a scarf that was in my Ravelry queue for a long time- the Hitchhiker scarf that, as of the time of writing, 13,546 projects on Ravelry have been made!  It's a little popular!

I really liked the pattern- it's simple enough to do without needing to read the pattern once you get a few points done and the shape is really different for a scarf.  The only downside I had initially was putting it down and picking it up if I hadn't kept track of my rows carefully enough.  I kept forgetting which side had the increases (there is an increase on the end of every row on the non-pointed side of knitting but the pointed sides don't have increases except on the point).

I also didn't have quite enough wool to make 42 points (which is of course important as it is the answer to life, the universe and everything).  The wool was some handspun I got from the Bendigo wool show a few years ago so getting more wasn't really an option.   It has got 40 points, so it isn't as if it is significantly shorter however, and I hope that my little sister likes it as part of her birthday present this year!  She's been starting to get into doing markets so as the weather finally starts to think about turning cooler, it might be useful on cold mornings.

The only other thing at the moment is still on the needles and has been for a while.  It's a cardigan but it's at the 'sleeves of doom' stage which combines boring stockingette with knitting in the round on double pointed needles.  I don't mind the stockingette so much (which is good as the whole thing was stockingette!) but I am not a fan of double pointed needles as I can't build up a good mindless rhythm while I do something else.  I'm about half way through the first sleeve and at the moment I'm not allowing myself to cast anything else on until I get this thing done.  I figure that either I'll procrastinate knitting with the marking I have to do, or procrastinate my marking with knitting sleeves of doom!