What a week!

It's been a week that's not quite gone to plan. On Monday I had a phone call from one of my knitters who was knitting up a garment that was due on Tuesday. I'd already e-mailed the editor to say the yarn would be a couple of days late. Debbie was halfway through the yoke of an all in one sweater and had run our of yarn. Panic! She sent the sweater back to me and I got it on Wednesday.  After a look at it and a lot of thinking trying to work out the best way to tackle this, I decided to undo the ribs and make them shorter which would hopefully give me enough yarn to finish the yoke. I stayed up late knitting on Wednesday and knitted like mad on Thursday and finished it at 4pm and put it straight in the post. Debbie's knitting was fantastic and I felt awful undoing her beautiful ribs. But the final result was beautiful. Can't wait to see it in the magazine.

I've also done some swatching for new designs this week. This is one of the diffiult things I find about designing. When you have one deadline after the other, trying to find time to swatch and sketch for new designs can be a problem. And I quite often need time to think about it and swatch quite a lot. One idea leads to another and things evolve. I did end up with 3 swatches to send off to an editor. There are several magazines with deadlines for their sping/summer issues over the nex few weeks so lots more swatching to come.

One swatch I can show you is this one:

It's a swatch for a new easy lace scarf pattern.

I love this stitch pattern and have used it before. This is the centre of the scarf and I'm thinking I may have to find somethign else to go alongside it on each side. It's on hold for a couple of days. I'm hoping this may be my easy to knit project for London next weekend.

I've been trying to get around to doing a small yarn update this week and finally tonight it's up. You can see it here. These are my favorites:

Merino Plus Forgetmenot

Merino Plus Fruit Harvest

I love this silvery green/blue colourway of Ocean Silk. One of the skeins has a tiny bit of copper on it and I felt that was enough for it to fail quality control and it needed to stay with me. I'm tempted to keep both and do a shawl with it. But I'm only keeping one. But if noone busy the other one, I may keep it too.

Antoher one I'm tempted to keep is this 'posh' colourway. I love it! Another shawl maybe?

I'm keeping one of these as one skein is really tangled. So if I can untangle it, it's mine.

Today I've been working on finishing off a cardigan. I've been procrastinating a bit while i've been deciding on fastenings. i've been looking for buttons and can't find the right ones so need to think up something else for tomorrow morning. It has to be finished tomorrow to go in the post. Then its back to my favorite secret project in THAT gorgeous gold yarn. I'm about halfway through and i'd like to finish it before I go to London.

I'm also planning some yarn dyeing this weekend. And next week, the autumn workshop term starts. To see what I'm up to this autum, look here. Simon and the girls have gone to one of our local theatres (Sterts) to see Peter Pan. I've felt a bit rough today. Took girls to Plymouth to buy school shoes. Felt really ill and struggled to drive home. Fell  asleep when I got home and feel a bit better now but an early night would be nice.

have a nice weekend x