Easter Holidays

On holiday for a week, so plenty of knitty content. We went up north to visit my folks - the obligatory mountain shot at Badenoch & Strathspey above, and below a lovely sunlight tree shot from Brodie Countryfare. I popped in for some inspiration for my latest Craftster swap "My Country Doesn't Have That" - my swapee is looking for traditional Scottish paper, ribbon, buttons, tins, old postcards and so on.

My granny gave me a lesson in picking up stitches and I have it cracked at last! I tried to take action shots, but I'm not sure how successful they are... The main tips are - right-side facing you, much smaller needles for the pick-up. When picking up from a knit edge there is a 'bobbly' bit, a 'long' bit another 'bobbly' bit and so on. If you pull the long thread it will open a hole in the 'bobbly' bit that you put the needle straight through to the back of the fabric. Wrap new yarn around the needle and knit ...

And look below - much neater! Beautiful - thank you granny! :0)

And the buttons to go with it, from John Lewis. It's as close to the ringed wood buttons that I was after as I can get.

Earnshaw is getting on well too - only another couple of rows and the back is finished - easy-peasy with no shaping. I'm a little concerned that it's going to be a knitted mini-dress, but I suppose they are 'in' at the moment. I'm not sure that they're quite as 'in' for nearly 30 year-old librarian types ...

And I also suffered a minor lapse in the knitting from the stash resolution and bought the yarn and pattern for Rogue. The yarn is Airedale Aran made with Blue-faced Leicester in Petrol Blue from Texere Yarns.

Right! I'm off to watch nature programs and try to finish the edge ribbing on Central Park Hoodie for this evening's Knit n' Stitch meetup