I coined the name Nicolaknits when I started this blog and it was an apt name. I was mostly knitting back then. However  I then went through a phase of almost 100% crochet and I was wondering if I’d ever get my knitting mojo back.

Seems I have!

The two projects I’ve been working on the last couple of weeks have been knitted. The Pebble Beach Baktus was put aside for a week or so to get some mittens made for a co-worker, but today I picked it back up again and made good progress (of course I’m on the “downhill” side now, so it will go faster as the decreases make my rows shorter and shorter).

It will need blocking at the end but I do love the look of squishy yarn in garter and cables. I cut off the last bit of brown at the end of cake #1 and also had to remove the blue at the centre of cake #2 to get to the brown section, but I allowed for that by turning the corner (starting the decreases) well before cake #1 ran out.

The mitten pattern I chose was Minky Mittens. These were made with yarn that my co-worker bought (at my recommendation – I thought the Deborah Norville Wool Naturals yarn would be really warm, especially in the slipstitch pattern).

I knitted the adult medium size and they came out perfectly. The yarn is brown though it looks rather grey in these nighttime shots.

They would look more exciting in more contrasting colours but they will do the job, which is to keep her hands warm when shovelling snow this winter.

What else is new? I took a new class at the gym today. It’s called SST which is a mixture of cardio and weights and gets your whole body sweating. Often, on a Tuesday evening, I’ve been going into yoga and have seen the people leaving the SST class looking like they had a really good workout. So rather than just do my usual solo treadmill/weights workout today, I joined the class and had a really good time. Definitely an experience to repeat.

Then I headed over to a friend’s house to fix a knitting emergency. Wouldn’t it be great to have a decal and some flashing lights to attach to my car so I could go over there with sirens blasting to help her with her scarf!? Anyway, she was stuck. There was a knot in the yarn which she’d knitted past and on the next row it was causing problems. So all that was needed was a bit of tinking (unknitting) a stitch at a time to get to the root of the problem on the previous row. Luckily it was an easy fix and my reputation as a knitting goddess is intact!

Well, I may have done a fitness class this morning but I wouldn’t want to cancel out the benefits by spending the entire rest of the day on the couch. I’ll sign off for now and wish you all happy crafting.