Mid March

Finished this month is a pink cowl for Abby (eldest niece). Yep, it's the Ginny yarn (aka Madelinetosh Vintage in Corsage). Only took about 100g, and I still think I have enough for my Ginny and Jasmine's birthday jumper. But Jasmine's jumper may be mostly purple now... Think I'm the first person to make this pattern on Ravelry. It's the April Showers Cowl, and the pattern is nice to knit (not hard, not boring) and has stretch. And it has a smidgeon of lace, but the ribbing holds it up with a bit of structure.

Charms: knit something for Fleur.

This was a skein of laceweight silk from Bendigo last year. I was making it for Muggle Studies (which has a very easy prompt of "Something Green for St Patrick's Day" this month) but changed my mind. I used a bit less than half for the warp, and then ran out of warp, so I have about a third of the yarn left. Now I have to unwrap it from the shuttle stick :S (only 400m. Sigh.) I tried out this new technique called Brooks Bouquet, which was quite easy. Makes the scarf feel a bit fragile, though, like you're going to catch threads on everything, and you don't really see it very easily unless it's spread out on a white blanket like this. Oh well. Next time I might try some leno lace. This scarf is 160cm and 64g :)

History of Magic: Make something for a muggle from history that you suspect was secretly
magical. Explain. Here's my explanation...

Yarn acquisitions: I obtained some more of the white sock yarn from Ocean yarns, same as the stuff I dyed for Quidditch two posts ago. Also bought some of the merino/silk that they sent me a tiny sample of (good marketing technique; always give your customers extra free yarn. hehe) and I dyed two skeins of it yesterday. It was windy and warm, so dyeing and drying it only took about one hour. But wind and fingering weight yarn don't mix (or rather, they do) and so it took me three hours to untangle them into knitable yarn cakes. Sigh.Still, pretty semi-solid silver silk. At the moment, I'm thinking of a future This. Not just because it's called Elizabeth, either.

Care of Magical Creatures. Studied flying horses. The Granian winged horse is grey.

More yarn acquisitions: Malabrigo Rios. It is The Soft. That is all.

Apparently Malabrigo also employ women from cooperatives in Uruguay (ie. fair wages for people in poverty) like Manos del Uruguay.

Also got some Madelinetosh Vintage in a purple called Briar, because Jasmine is liking purple right now, and I'm encouraging any non-pink tendencies. It will probably end up being a purple, pink and white birthday jumper, but Byron's birthday comes first. I'm thinking of a ZigVest for him. Can't go wrong with a Georgie Hallam design, really. In black, of course. (or maybe Charcoal, but ssssshh; don't tell the boy.) I may add sleeves. Haven't decided.

And now, I'll leave you with a picture of my baby niece, Elizabeth, who scored a bunch of my knitting last year. She's now about 8 or 9 weeks old, and looks like this:

Looks good in green, hey? And any other color. (Knitted stuff is Bloom, Poppy, Dolly Bloom and Christine's Stay-on Baby Booties. She also got Elijah.)

I haven't met her in person yet! :(
But she's hopefully visiting Victoria for Easter :)