Rest...

Sometimes you just need a good rest.  A week spent camping in the Highlands was just that.

I took some easy knitting and a sketchbook with me, and I'm afraid to say that neither left my bag.  I did manage to read a couple of books, but mostly I was just looking at the amazing scenery.

I am recharged for the city now!

Crafted Notecards Swap

I hadn't swapped for a while, and when I saw a crafted notecard swap on Craftster, I knew that would be a great stashbust.  It was a good challenge to try to create cards to match the themes given, and good fun to use some techniques I've not used in a while.  For gala_apples I made the following:  

A stitch apple.

Pizza base printed robots.

Lesbian pride card. 

Zombie collage.

Saltire (with my reflection in it!). 

And as an extra, some train ticket tags.  And for FairyHazeDesigns:

Unicorn pizza base prints.

Fabric paper textured cards (made from this tutorial).

Mushroom collage.

Silk painting, with salt added cards.

And with some extra silk, some gift tags.  I really enjoyed this swap, and have already signed up to another!

Adventures in cables...

 I had been wanting to knit more items with cables, however not being particularly proficient with cable needles, and not having quite as many arms as an octopus, I decided to start somewhere simple.  I picked Blue Blanket by LondonLeo for a friend's new arrival.

This pattern has blocks of cable, moss stitch and garter stitch, which together look very impressive, although is actually quite simple to do.  It is a two row repeat, with a cable needle required every tenth row, and you just knit until you are finished (or run out of yarn).  This project also uses a K1B stitch, that is to knit a stitch into the stitch below (essentially dropping a stitch).  This results is quite a prominent line either side of the cable section.

I am quite happy with how this turned out, and this has given me confidence to try some more adventurous cable patterns.  The ravelry details with yarn info are here.  Does anyone have any suggestions of easy cable patterns to try next?