New year with lace

Christmas is in the memories and the new year is just around the corner. The darkest day is gone and slowly the light is returning. This fall went past so quickly that I really don't know just where it went, I never intended to neglect the blog as much as I ended up doing. I did knit some but not as much as I have done during the past years. The blog turned five years in October and it is sort of amazing to be still here. I would not be if there were not you, so thank you for being here for all these years.

During the fall I did knit few hats that were all given away, they were knit out of necessity. I finished few cowls, few little scarves and couple of socks, and all of those were gone the minute they were off the needles, they were either used right away or wrapped into the gift paper. I managed to get pictures of Wallflower socks

and of Maya,

as they visited the house during the holidays, both of them have seen some use already, but I thought they were in good enough shape to be photographed.

Since much of my knitting was Christmas related and finished by December 24th, it was time to get something else on the needles. As always it is difficult to pick up a new project so I ended up digging through the ufo pin and came across Ice Fantasia.

Ice Fantasia (no picture yet, you all know how lace looks on the needles, not much) is a beautiful shawl designed by Anne Hanson and I cast on for it in the spring of 2009. I had some trouble getting started on it again but now the progress is quite good and the lightness of lace is working its magic on my knitting mojo. (I am now in part D in Ice Fantasy, it has patterning in both sides so the progress is going to slow down ...) I am truly hoping for mojo to return, it has been so odd not to be feeling the love of the process. I have knitted, but I have been missing the deep love, more or less my knitting has just been occupying the idle hands when watching TV and since I watch so very little, not very much has been accomplished.

I did visit few yarn shops to see if there were interesting new yarns out there and I did come across two that I have not noticed before:

Rustic Naturgarn (Karen Noe Design) 58% bourettesilk 42% cotton

Rowan Lima 84% baby alpaca 8% merino 8% nylon

I don't know what I will use them for and I really bought them just to remind me of the many different structures yarn can have and to give some boost on the spinning. I don't think I have even scratched the surface what it comes to spinning. Spinning is so often just this quiet act and I spin away in lost thoughts but really I should put some thought into it and try to produce something interesting.

Few weeks ago I received a beautiful book. It is written by two lovely Estonian women, Anu Raud and Anu Kotli. I took a workshop from Anu Kotli some years ago and she really taught me to knit. With this I mean that she gave me the toolbox and the courage to knit any shape and any figure and taught me to see the possibilities of yarn and that yarn can be sculpted into just about any form with few increases and decreases. The book ia called Kiri Kari, it is in Estonian and has the schematics for many animal patterns plus it has lots of traditional Estonian knitting patterns in the back of the book. The photos are just beautiful. (The isbn of the book is 9789985996416.)

I hope you all had beautiful holidays and are now well rested and ready to turn the new knitting page. So wool with you in 2011!

Love,

Lene