Swift in action

I bought myself a swift recently.  Up until now I've been wrapping skeins round my ankles to prevent tangling when winding into them a ball.  This doesn't always work well and is quite slow. I'd held off on buying a swift because a) it seemed a bit self-indulgent, they're not cheap after all, and b) I don't like the look of umbrella swifts.  I don't even like umbrellas, or umbrella-fold buggies, so an umbrella swift had no chance.  But then My Beloved had a bonus and it didn't seem that indulgent after all, and actually given the amount people will spend on mobile 'phones it seemed positively frugal - so I bought a Sunflower swift.

It's beautiful. It's like something my dad would make, which may sound like the kind of catty negative thing people say sometimes, but as my dad is particularly good at making beautiful wooden things it's actually high praise.  Anyway.  The swift is brilliant.  I think I wound that ball in about an eighth of the time it would usually take me. I don't have a ballwinder. I use a nostepinne when I can find it, a spurtle when I can't, but I might get a ballwinder too now just to speed it up a bit more for those impatient-to-knit days.  The day I took the pictures was an impatient-to-knit day.  My wool ran out on the last point of my Hitchhiker. I was amazed I'd got so far on one skein actually and had bought two skeins knowing I'd need them, but in fact I used only a tiny amount of that second skein.  I wound that wool with the end of the Hitchhiker gloriously in sight, mentally belting down the home straight towards the cast-off. And now it is finished and is lovely but I've got the lack-of-natural-daylight-in-winter problem and keep forgetting to take pictures of it in the middle of the day. And actually today was so dreich the pictures would have been rubbish even if I had remembered at midday.  And also actually, I was dyeing my hair at midday. I've been looking ever more like Lily Munster the last few weeks...  which is cool in its own way but I got fed up with it and hit the chestnut brown 'colour masque'.  Aye, right. Just call it gloop, all our senses tell us it's foul-smelling but functional, don't turn it into a lifestyle thing.

So anyway, back to the point - the Hitchhiker is finished but no pics. I have been wearing it though and it's warm and has a lovely shape and is a pretty colour. The wool (Sparkleduck Pulsar) is lovely but I've rather wasted it on the Hitchhiker, not because it's not a nice pattern (it is - the shape is soooo drapey) but because it's garter stitch. The Pulsar has a substantial proportion of silk in it and thus has a lovely sheen to it but you don't really get to see that in garter stitch. A stocking stitch project would have shown it off better.  I have the best part of a skein left though so I want to make a hat in stocking stitch, maybe with a bit of lace. And then I'll be like co-ordinated. Well, there's a first time for everything.

I shall finish with my cat having no dignity. He does this of an evening while we're watching tv. I don't know why. He also likes playing with my shoes. I suspect he may in fact but be a hitherto unknown species of dog-cat. But we love him anyway.

My cat has no dignity, doodah, doodah; My cat has no dignity, Doo-de-doodah-day!