January is selfish knitting month!

Well the holidays passed in the blink of an eye didn't they?! All of a sudden it was the first Monday in January & our eldest was happily going back to school delighted to catch up with all of his friends. Our youngest on the other hand was sad.. she misses her brother greatly when he goes back to school especially when she still has another couple of weeks until her kindergarten starts again.

With snow on the ground & temperatures decidedly brrrrr with added negative wind chill.. playing outside has been in short bursts while wearing multiple layers of snow gear at the moment. So indoor play has mostly filled this week.. Lego building, art/crafts, having friends over to play & helping me organize & sort my supplies has kept us busy during the day.

After both are tucked up in bed and fast asleep I'm getting a chance to use my Christmas present... 7 skeins of squishy yummy merino yarns. I'm knitting something I've had at #1 in my ravelry queue for over a year now.. these thrummed mittens by Tanis http://www.ravelry.com/projects/fiona-kelly/thrummed-mittens & they're going to be for me! Rarely do I knit something for myself these days so I'm thoroughly enjoying my selfish evening knitting. I'm delighted with how they're coming along and love how the thrums make little POPs of colour amongst the dark purple.

 And the inside is just wild lol! 

Thrums are usually made of roving which is much thicker than my worsted weight yarn.. so i'm using 3 strands of yarn to make each my thrums & fortunately they're working great! 

So how has your 2014 been so far..  Have you been trying anything new or making plans for this year?

Scarf progress :)

I'm off to a good start with the scarf. The Elenya yarn is delightful to use and the pattern is easy to remember. I'm working alternate stripes of each colour and they're blending very nicely.

Three Irish Girls Elenya

My Three Irish Girls Stash of Elenya 50%Alpaca/50%Merino. When I saw the Multi-colourway was called Fiona I just had to have it :)

I also ordered a matching cerise and pumpkin orange.

My plan was to use it for a felted project... but it's absolutely perfect for the Feather & Fan scarf I'm trying out from the Beautiful Knits for Heads, Hands & Toes book... my December book review.

So now I've 3 projects on the go... Haggis the highland cow, Finn's Christmas stocking & the Feather & Fan scarf. The scarf is knitted... which is something I've not done in years!

I've always been an extremely slow knitter so it will be interesting to see if I'm any faster these days. I'll post my review at the end of the month with photos of how far I've got... as somehow I don't think it will be finished in 3 wks :)

Felted stocking

Felted stocking

Originally uploaded by fiona-kelly

Eek! Slightly more of a colour run when it felted than I expected. The red isn't so Christmassy and the cream... well it's now more of a definite pink... even the snowman is the same shade (i'm not even going to bother photographing that). On the plus side the fringing felted extremely well and if this was done in a single colour it could work. But this wasn't exactly the overall look I was going for so I think this time it'll have to be a non felted pattern.

Stocking snowman

This is the snowman so far for our F's stocking. It's also in the machine and I'll add the rest of his details when I sew him into place.

F's stocking almost finished!

Just a bit more to do. I re-did the toe section and I'm now doing some fringing around the top plus a little snowman decoration next before felting..