Just one little cloud in a blue blue sky…

Well, Enid is almost finished bar some jigging around with the neck, weaving in ends and blocking… Now we’ve hit mid-summer I wonder how many weeks it will languish before those final finishing touches are applied – ahem!!

Having worked with the gorgeous Alpaca 4 ply for so many weeks and with the arrival of some much needed summer weather I had been contemplating a little ‘lighter’ knitting for my next project. Enter Cloud…

This cake of dreamy Merino Silk lace weight from the Natural Dye Studio in a subtle heathery shade of dusky pinky beige is destined to become a gorgeous Annis shawl. As soon as this pattern appeared as a Knitty ‘surprise’ recently I knew it would be on the needles before long.  A nice, lightweight, airy knit for hot summer days spent lounging under a tree (well, a girl can dream!) and hopefully complete in time for cooler evenings when its Merino warmth will be just the thing…

Casting on 363 stitches ‘German’ style was challenging but the first few rows of the lace pattern are settling into a nice rhythm and I have a good feeling about Annis. I’ll keep you in the loop!

nice weather for lizards!

Just in time to coincide with the start of Summer ‘proper’ (for once the solstice has coincided with what looks like a nice long spell of warm, dry weather in the UK!) I posted off my Lizard Ridge square to the organiser of this year’s ‘community knit’ project.

Lizard Ridge is a fabulous pattern, originally published on Knitty (one of the very best free pattern resources and if you don’t already know it get yourself over there right now!) and the designer very kindly agreed that the wonderful p/hop fund raising group could make one to auction for MSF later this year.

Each square will be knit with a random shade of Noro Kureyon so the end result will, I am sure, be spectacular. The square was great fun to knit and I am seriously tempted to embark on an enormous Lizard Ridge of my own! We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I urge you to check out the p/hop pattern collection. They are all wonderful and the concept is inspired. In a nutshell, designers donate patterns to the p/hop cause and buyers decide how much they would like to pay for each pattern and donate to MSF via the ‘Just Giving‘ site.

And if you feel inspired to join in I am sure that more squares would be appreciated. Find the details here on Ravelry.