Oops, I’ve been away from the blog for too long, although I do have several quite good reasons. For most of the last three weeks I’ve been busy with several work trips and a series of family birthday celebrations, but the really unfortunate bit is that I’ve had a very nasty cold during most of this period. Once the cold got better I then developed a general faceache. I thought for a while it was toothache, but I think it’s more probable that it’s been sinus trouble to which I am prone. So I’ve been feeling rather sorry for myself, and not much like doing anything apart from what’s absolutely necessary. However, I did get on with a bit of knitting. I completed a jumper and then stitched it up using mattress stitch which is my great new discovery. Any of you out there reading this who know about knitting have probably been using this for aeons, but it’s new to me. Here’s a link to a video tutorial that I found very useful for learning how to do it. It’s a quite magical stitch. You stitch away quite loosely, and then pull the wool gently and, voilà, the two pieces of knitting come together making an apparently seamless join. Well, what a good thing! One of the reasons I gave up knitting years ago was that, even though I might be satisfied with the knitting, making up the garment always left me dissatisfied. But mattress stitch gives it a really professional look, and I’m very happy with it.
Anyway, that was all a bit of a digression, as I keep repeating that this is not meant to be a knitting blog. I’m having to resist the temptation to buy more wool, because I know it will deflect me from my true purpose which is getting on with things like stitching, dyeing and drawing. So, more on that in due course, I hope.