WIP Wednesday - Cast-on-itis

Before I start with the WIPs, I had a lovely time with my niece yesterday! After work she and I met up in Lyngby where I took her to the biggest yarn store around. I think she was slightly overwhelmed by the large selection, but she ended up finding some gorgeously soft yarn in hot pink-yellow-blue-purple. It's very loud and very cool! We took the bus back to my place, and after we'd gotten dinner started, I took her to my hobby room and showed her how to use the swift so we could get the yarn wound up, and the knitting started :)

I cast on for her, (and knit the first round as I discovered too late that I'd cast on WAY too tight for her), and after that she was flying. She immediately got the hang of knitting in the round ("This isn't difficult at ALL, aunt Maria!" No, nor should it be :) ), and had gotten another two rounds knit between dinner and the time my sister came to pick her up. I had such a great time just hanging out with her, each doing our own knitting, and according to her mother, she'd enjoyed herself too - so that's all good :) I'm looking forward to seeing how her cowl will turn out :)


I have cast-on-itis :-/ Don't know why I'm surprised, because the same goes for my reading, so.... Should have seen this coming ;)

Of course this means that the chances of me participating in NaKniSweaMo are looking slim at the moment. I'm okay with that - my main reason for setting that as a goal for 2013 was because I wanted to push myself to knit a sweater, and as I've already knit 3 and am half-way through a third I've completed the spirit of the goal even if perhaps not the letter of it :) And the Moyen Age isn't going anywhere ;)

Anyway, this means I have no fewer than four WIPs to show off to you today. Unfortunately the Red Chocolate isn't one of them. I haven't touched that one for almost two weeks - which I'm slightly embarrassed about. But it's really not travel-knitting, so it has to wait for my evenings at home.

In fact, one of the reasons why I've cast on so many new things is that after I'd finished the Boticelli Blue, I had no travel-knitting! I love to knit on my commute, so obviously this just wasn't good enough! At the same time I was hit by a request and an adorable test-knit I just couldn't refuse, and now I have more WIPs than ever!

First, my sister asked if I'd knit her some fingerless mittens. She'd seen some at the woman's conference we went on last month, but figured I could just as well knit some for her ;) She wanted the yarn to be varigated in earthly tones, and fortunately I already had just the thing in my stash, so I could get started on those right away.
I've only made it through 1 repeat of the cable pattern so far (out of 4), but that only took me 1 hour, so it's going well. The yarn is very different from my usual stock, but I love it - very soft and squishy, especially in the garter stitch :)

Next, I've finally got started on the Wombat blanket. I absolutely LOVE the idea of this reading/knitting blanket and have been wanting to knit it ever since I first saw it (... ever since I got far enough with my knitting that I believed I could actually do it anyway ;) ). I'm almost finished with the pouch and getting ready to knit flat.

Then there's a test-knit that jumped up and attacked me on Friday. I wasn't going to sign up for any more test-knits until I'd limited the number of my WIPs, but this was an absolutely adorable Christmas sweater for toddlers. Fun without being tacky :) And at size 12mo I figured I could get it done quickly enough. So once again I have stolen one of my nieblings to knit for ;)

But amazingly enough none of these WIPs will work as travel-knits! The Wombat blanket is too big, and the two others require constant checking in with the pattern. Travel-knitting - at least on my train commutes - needs to be small('ish) and easily memorized. So... of course I had to cast on one more project before I was satisfied. I ended up picking the Honey Cowl, so I would finally have the chance to use this terrifically soft bamboo yarn that I bought last summer, but never oculd figure out what to use for! Haven't come very far yet, but I'll post this photo anyway to show off the colours! ;)

That's all for me this week... more than enough, really ;)