I don’t have a great deal to chat about today, other than the rather interesting fact pointed out to us by Alibongo on the forum, that at 12:34 and 56 seconds, the time and date read 123456789 today! 12:34, 56 seconds, 7th August 2009. Quirky. I marked the occassion by sitting in the pub on my lunchbreak, knitting a dishcloth whilst waiting for my pepperoni pizza to arrive. In fact, I think that’s almost precisely the time I was mocked by the ever-so-witty barman for knitting.
“Knitting?!” he jeered. “Are you in, like, a circle?”
Well, yes, actually. Although it’s an online one… I was all ready to tell him all about the joys of handknit dishcloths, but he ran away again before I had the chance.

I’ve been back at work this week after my lovely little week off last week, and haven’t been getting up to much craft-wise, except a few rows of dishcloth here and there, and a few more Summer Garden Squares. It’s coming along, I decided to get rid of the weird-looking white and stick to the bold colours. Peter’s poor little Dutch Square is now being used as a coaster! Once I got rid of the white, I felt a bit more confident about joining as I go, but I need another row before I join the two strips i have at the moment, else some of the outside edge colours will be too close together. I like it random, but not too random!

Mmmm, so colourful!

In other news, my new oven will be arriving on Sunday, hoorah! I’m going to mark the occassion by trying something I have done only a very few times before, and bake. Cupcakes! Fairycakes, to be precise. I’m very excited! I’ve got the ingredients all ready and it’s taking a lot of willpower not to give it a trial run in the broken oven, but I know it would just shut off mid-way through, and well and truly put me off baking forever. I promise I’ll show you the results, no matter how disasterous, and if it turns out well, I might even share the recipe. Oh yes, never one to do anything by halves, I’m not planning on actually following a recipe… adaptation is the way forward!

And I received the most wonderful package from Clicky Needles, with a beautiful crocheted bag – I’m so impressed by how neat it is – a fab little notebook and pencil which is made from an actual stick, two baileys truffles and some pompom makers! (The cat was not included, Zara just likes poking her nose in when I’m trying to take photos!)

While I’m posting swap pics, here’s the lovely package I received from Phantom Knitter for the dishcloth swap.

And the cloth I sent – I didn’t take a picture with the goodies unfortunately, but I sent a lovely soap from Lush and some white Thorntons choccies.

I do love swaps, I can’t wait for the next one!

My mum found a beautiful pattern called the Essential Tank from a great book called Lace Style. Instead of doubling laceweight as the pattern suggested, she tried it with a dk cotton/bamboo blend and it worked out great! Luckily for me, she had 2 balls left over when she was done in the most gorgeous, summery bright pink colour, so I decided to give it a go too as my first proper lace project. I’m pretty thrilled with the result! And even happier that today was warm enough to wear it to work, hoorah!

I made a bit of a modification to it, because I saw a few project photos on Ravelry which had a rather drapey neck and I wanted it to sit flat instead of gaping forwards. I was also not too keen on how it changes to the “small lace pattern” at the top, so I just carried on with the main large petal pattern, and began decreasing sooner than it asked for and just made the straps longer. Seems to have worked rather well! The colour is much brighter than in either of the pictures below – I really must learn how to use my camera properly one of these days so that it can capture the proper colour of things.

Pattern: Essential Tank from Lace Style
Yarn: King Cole Bamboo Cotton – Shade: 63916