life and more knitting

Work is a little busy and stressful at the moment plus I've ended up on Facebook too in order to keep up with my extended family around the world. So its time for a catchup post. Over the past weeks, there's been a family party too - My cousin and her family are leaving the UK to settle in Canada. We are all going to miss them a lot but I am sure they will visit plus its nearly 20 years since I last visited Canada so it might be time to plan another trip.

As work has been a little crazy, I've been in need of relaxation and destressing when I'm at home. One of my favourite things about all the craft things that I do is that I find that they all help to reduce stress. I have a tendency to let things bother me and get me down so things that relax me are really vital. At the moment, its mostly knitting thats grabbing my attention. I've finished two projects since my last post.

Firstly Shur'tugal socks in absolutely divine Malabrigo sock in the shade Abril. The colour is even more purple in real life. These took a while to get done but it was worth it.



My second knitting finish, on the other hand, just flew off the needles. 18 days from start to finish and I didn't knit on it most days. The pattern is Ishbel by Ysolda Teague. I've knitted a lot of her designs largely because they are so pretty and so well put together. She seems to put a lot of clever detail into her designs. The yarn is Habu naturally dyed laceweight cashmere. I bought this yarn several years ago when I first started knitting as I loved the colour but wasn't confident enough to knit it up into something that would do it justice until now.



I love this little close up in the window as it shows how light and airy the lace is.



I now know why people knit lace as it is so addictive plus blocking a lace shawl is just like magic. Blocking boards aren't available in the UK so following some advice on Ravelry, I used children's foam puzzle tiles which worked out fairly well.