In Stitches

Today I have not been a happy bunny (as my mum would say).
It started last night with shivers and nausea as I was trying to fall asleep and today it took all I had to just have some breakfast and a bath. So, I got in a fresh pair of jammies and back to bed with my current knitting project and a bunch of episodes of Modern Family to catch up on.

This is a circle scarf I started for myself back in October(?) but had to put on hold: a) because I ran out of yarn and b) because I had a whole family to make Christmas presents for!
It's currently about 1.8m long and 8cm wide (relaxed, 17cm when stretched) and I plan on knitting till I'm out of wool again then simply sewing it together.
I wanted a really long circle I could wind around my neck a good few times to layer it up for extra warmth as I already have a very wide, but short, cowl scarf that gets a little breezy.
I found this Saskia yarn in Wibra, the dutch equivalent of a Pound Land (sort of) for €1 and I really liked this fun, bright red. Yes, it's 100% acrylic but it's not scratchy (a pet hate of mine with scarves) and, most importantly, cheap!

I began this before I had done much experimentation with stitches and so it's just a basic 3 knit, 3 purl rib, but this means it's perfect for beginners to try. It's easy as there's no real pattern to follow, you can make it as wide and long as you like and you can play with the stitches for different size ribbing, plus because it's quite narrow you can see it grow pretty quickly which is always satisfying!

(top tip: want to remove that annoyingly beautiful nail polish you spent hours on the day before? Have a hot bath and it peels right off!)

I started by casting on 30 stitches using size 4 needles, not sure exactly what weight yarn this is (I threw out the labels) and I'm not great at following instructions for what needles you should use with what yarn etc, I just play around and make some swatches until I find what I like!
This seems to be working out ok so far and doesn't take much thought so it's perfect to do in front of the TV. I'll make another post when it's finished so you can see how it turns out.

I realised before I even started writing this post that for anyone who doesn't knit, this may be akin to me reading 'Power Tools Weekly', both boring and confusing, but I sincerely urge anyone who is not already a Stitch Bitch to give it a try! I think I may also try my hand at some very basic tutorials for absolute beginners just in case anyone has been inspired by this, so keep an eye out in the coming weeks.

I'm going back to my family home in York, UK, in a weeks time and whilst I'm there my mum and I are going to a knitting workshop where we'll learn how to make cable knit cushion covers! I am both excited and terrified for this as I have been put off by how complicated cable knitting looks, but not wanting to look like a complete novice in the class, I decided to test it out with surprising results! (here is a webcam picture I took just to show my mum, I was very pleased with myself)

Anyway, I'm going to crawl back in to my pit of self-pity now with a mug of tea and more Modern Family. I'm having to pity myself because Arjan is not here to do it for me (how rude), he has gone to a local radio station to talk about a night he is putting on this week for his old band, and will no doubt come back drunk in a few hours so it's best to just wait up for him, he'd wake me up if I was asleep anyway!