Crikey! I'm knitting....

I know, I'm first and foremost a proud sewist and love sewing clothes for myself and here I am...knitting. Knitting!!!!! Well, I'll give you a couple of minutes to get over the shock of it all. Maybe it's the dark nights or something, but there it is.

There is a story behind how all this came to pass. A colleague went on summer holiday to the Faroe Islands and brought me back a ball of wool and a book on Fair Isle knitting. The gauntlet had been flung down! How could I NOT knit something. Also in the summer I went on my first sewing bloggers meet-up in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Some lovely ladies were helping visitors get to grips with knitting and they had some lovely wool cowls. I took one of their cowl patterns and worked myself up to the idea of knitting it. It took a few months!

Gives you an idea how long it is

It's been years since I knitted anything but I thought I'd like the challenge of a mini-project in knitting to take with me when I spent the weekend with my family and was physically parted from my sewing machine and overlocker. Idle hands, and all that!

Lovely golden trees in the communal garden

I bought Rowan Big Wool Colour in Jamboree colourway from John Lewis which has a high wool content, 96% wool and 4% polyamide, just enough man-made content to discourage our 'pet moths'. Hopefully. The knitting needles (10mm) are huge! It didn't take long to knit up the 4 balls of wool but it did take another fortnight to sew in the ends and sew up the one seam to change it from a scarf to a cowl. Then of course, there's finding daylight time to take photos but that's not going to change anytime soon! 

Beautiful carpet of golden fallen leaves

So, to round it all up, I'm very pleased with my new wool cowl and it will go with my new (when I get it finished) forest green jacket. It was lovely and toasty when I was outside taking these photos so that's good to know! What next? Well, I skulked about on Etsy and bought a knitting pattern for gloves/mittens/convertibles (not a type of car, they're fingerless gloves or mittens with a flip top on them). I've just finished knitting the first glove and done some rib on the second. I don't think I'm a knitter at all but I have enjoyed these small projects so far. Maybe I'm a seasonal winter knitter! What about you, do you take up the knitting needles in autumn and lay them down in spring?
 

And such a blue sky