Meet Zork and Lala!

There are a lot of gift-giving occasions coming up in my family these next few weeks, so I've been working hard out on getting stuff ready. And yesterday I finally finished the two last presents, so I proudly present to you - Lala the Panda and Zork the Alien!
I can't quite decide whether they're cute, ugly or just plain weird... a bit of all three, perhaps? I hope the intended recipients will like them, at least :)

After working concentrated on a lot of deadline knitting (pretty much all I've done so far this year, although much of that is deadlines I've set myself, e.g. to take part in the Clean Slate Challenge) I felt like a long term project, where I could focus on the process rather than the product, so I've picked my Cozy Memories blanket back up, and have added another 16 squares to it :)
I've decided on the width now, so from here on, it's just straight up! Still a loooong way off from finishing it, but I absolutely love how it's turning out! I'm keeping a record of all the yarn I use for future reference, but already now I think it's cool to be able to say "Oh, those are the socks I knit for my sister" or "That's the sweater Mum knit me" etc.

I've also finished my first "real" spinning project. The others have mainly been for practise, but I got some amazingly gorgeous Merino fiber in a rainbow colourway that I just HAD to use for something real. I finished spinning it up this weekend, and after meassuring out how much yardage (or meterage ;) ) I got out of it, immediately went to Ravelry to see what I could do with it.

It went from this:
to this:
and finally to this:

I was thrilled to realize I'd have enough for the contrasting colour of the Conjunction Cowl and immediately added it to my library... only to turn around and realize I'd miscalculated the yardage, and only had half as much as I thought I did! So I had to great creative and add another CC. I went yarn shopping Monday and found two colours that I think will look totally awesome with my rainbow skein, so here is the first step towards knitting the cowl!
(I'll use black as MC and then the light blue and rainbow as the CC. I was inspired by this yarn which I think is absolutely GORGEOUS!).

I've decided this will be my London knitting (small, easy and portable), so I won't cast on until after Easter sometime, in order to have it ready for when we leave :)