Starting and Finishing (or should that be finishing and starting and finishing??)

Its been a long time between posts..... what with book fairs, school, parents and winter it seems that August has flown.... Hopefully September will bring some nicer (and consistant) weather.

But I haven't been (too) lazy - well I probably have but we wont go down that path.....

Finally, after in excess of 600 rows of knitting the Clara shawl/scarf its finished.

I absolutely love wearing it and it lives at the shop on the mannekin when not in use. Noro wool is lovely to work with.... it sort of feels rough as you start but once it is knitted it softens up beautifully.

So having finished one thing I had to start yet another bag - even though there are heaps of works in progress being ignored at home.

Here is the Kitchen Garden Bag by Charlie's Aunt.  I think one of my favourite bag designers of late.

  I have made it with our milled wool Lucy Blue.  When I started I thought it would be quite dark so I put in the mustard coloured lining.

But, once again Emma Brennan of Charlie's Aunt has made a pattern that just works really well.

It is suppose to have buttons on the front but I am not sure whether I will put them on or not.

On to the next unplanned project.....

Noro Knitting - Addiction Maybe??

I have talked about this in Twitter and it is still not finished....

This book, Noro Vintage, arrived a while ago and I just loved the different designs that were available.  Jane Ellison is amazing with her patterns for Noro

 So then I opened it to the pattern Clara - the picture shows the long version - there is a shorter version

Now to be perfectly honest I definitely don't look like this (read short and greying!! Hello hair dye), so I am not going to do a picture of my swanning around in this ... just show you it using Silk Garden 309 but really any Noro would work.

Since this photo it has grown quite a bit - now I am up to reducing the stitches... so here it is now

Definitely a new addiction kicking in here.... (let it be known that while the pattern is one page in the book - for me to get my "pattern head" on, I had to write it out in detail..definitely a knitter in training here).

With any luck it should be finished by end of the winter...