Thanks for the comments on the last post’s mysterious knitted thing. It is indeed a toy, but what it is can’t be revealed just yet, in part because I am awaiting eyes and a nose, so it currently has no expression and looks rather pathetic (if something without a face can have any expression, that is).

So instead of creating interesting knitted widgets over the weekend, I pulled out my old design notebooks which had been gathering dust over the past year while I was growing a baby. I’ve been mulling over a few ideas of late and intended to make a start after Christmas, but I’ve mentioned before how a certain person had other ideas about me having any free time. Now all that’s stopping me are the normal baby interruptions, apparently they’re most likely to occur just when I’ve just had an eureka moment and need to get it on paper IMMEDIATELY before it falls out of my brain never to return.

I always knew there was a reason why I kept all the little oddments of yarn from old projects, even the tiniest bits. I used to design using the project yearn, but when it’s been frogged in disgust several times, it ends up looking very tired and sorry for itself. So using random yarn in the right weight to work out the technical part of a pattern is very clever and is a good reason to have bags of tiny balls of yarn. Now the project yarn is saved for “best” and only ripped out if it doesn’t suit the pattern or – and this is quite common – I make a cock up mistake.

Currently my designing is making me wish I’d paid more attention in maths and not spent my time doodling all over my workbook. But it’s lovely to play with yarn again and setting myself another challenge after my Olympic knitting.