With the Clues only taking a couple of days and then the enforced hiatus on the MKAL, due to there being no clues at all for the version I am making for a whole FORTNIGHT, my restless hands have turned to other projects.

Monday saw a very quick knit that has been in my queue for absolutely aaaaaaages, namely the Medievalesque neck warmer. The original pattern is a bit minimal and stood some improvement as the lace section was way too short, so I added a few more rows and altered some of the existing lace pattern. I used DROPS Eskimo, but any super bulky yarn will work just fine. Here is how mine came out:

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The Autumn Mystery KAL I mentioned a couple of weeks ago is looking less mysterious now I have completed three-quarters of the pattern. Aside from regularly getting outwitted by where I’ve got to in the lace repeats, due to the usual distractions (dog, TV, offspring, DH, Farcebook), and then having to tink back when it becomes apparent that the pattern no longer lines up, it has all gone quite swiftly. I find myself finishing a Clue after a couple of days and then spending the next 4 or 5 drumming my fingers impatiently on the keyboard awaiting the next release.

Spoiler alert…

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I jumped in and started the Autumn MKAL a few days ago and was was busy congratulating myself on how quickly I managed to finish the first clue…Except, then I realised that I’d misread the instructions for the short rows and so had to tink* back the last 4 rows and re-do them, plus the additional rows required to finish the short row section correctly *sigh*.  Still, the nice thing about the short row section is that they got progressively shorter and so it didm;t take me too long to finish Clue 1 (correctly, this time).

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I haven’t blogged about knitting for a while…well, I haven’t really had much time to blog about anything over the summer season…but I have had my arm twisted been persuaded to participate in Susanna IC’s latest MKAL (Mystery Knit Along) and have been tempted to have a go at NaKniSweMo (National Knit a Sweater Month), which runs parallel to NaNoWriMo* (National Novel Writing Month) during November.

*(You may recall that I have participated that for two years – you can read about my efforts here).

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I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. It seems rather bizarre to me to suppose that my will and determination would be significantly stronger on any given date over any other. Neither do I see the point in waiting until the New Year to begin something – if one has already decided to do it, why wait?

The closest I came to a New Year resolution was to have a dry January, for economic and detox reasons to recover slightly from the excesses of the Christmas holidays. I admit I have fallen off the wagon to the tune of two pints thus far, (I made it six days, including New Year’s Day) I will not go in to the reasons, but I’m fine with them and still broadly sticking to the alcohol-free plan, despite continuing to be sorely tried by ongoing and, as yet, unresolved plumbing issues.

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My enthusiasms tend to wax and wane like the moon (yes, OK, so I’m a looney 😉 and after stalling on DH’s Kilt Hose earlier this year, my knitting muse left me in disgust. I lost track of where I was in the pattern and had somehow ended up with a stitch short one one sock, so when I volunteered to knit Hestia a pair of new bed socks to replace those tragically murdered by Tartarus, I  decided it was easier to just frog it all back and start from scratch rather than trying to work out what was going on. I quite enjoyed making them and found myself at a loss as to what to do next when they were finished. (I haven’t sent them off yet, so no spoiler pics yet, I’m afraid. They will be in the post tomorrow, promise 🙂

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The trouble, I have discovered, with writing fictional characters is that they have a habit of trying to take over.  Like Pinocchio, they all yearn to be real, to cut the strings by which you control them.

It starts off well enough, you write something to define who they are, what they look like, how they fit into the story and that’s straightforward enough. Great, you think, this is easy. So you sit down and  write some dialogue for them and suddenly they are saying all sorts of things that never entered your head. You think, fine, enough dialogue, lets do some action, may be a description of what’s happening, a bit of ordinary stuff, scenery and that. Next thing you know, they are trying to muscle into the limelight and if that’s not enough, they have you writing all kinds of salacious and other nonsense. Then there are the characters that have no business being there at all and just wander in off the street for a look around before disappearing again.

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I went to the library on Tuesday, primarily for the children, but I always enjoy a good browse and while I was there I popped upstairs to the non-fiction section to look at the crafty books. This is probably a bit sad and middle-aged, but I was really excited to find both this and this. (more…)