Old Maiden Aunt yarns had an open studio day/housewarming yesterday, but as I could not make it, I travelled out to West Kilbride to help Lilith set things up. Her new studio space is marvellous: there is a real shop front where she can display her yarns and host workshops with a huge, airy workshop space in the back for the dyeing and drying of yarns. Now, Lilith and I go back years (our friendship is an ace story I must remember to blog at some point) and I am over the moon that she has managed to build her business to a point where she has been able to get such a wonderful space for Old Maiden Aunt and that she has such a huge amount of support from the knitting community. It makes me so damn happy. It could not have happened to a nicer person.

Gushing over ;)

Lilith and I spoke about my Karise shawl and I realised that my inner diary was out of sync. I thought Knit Nation was this forthcoming week when it is actually the following week. I was going to release the Karise pattern tomorrow, but instead I am going to take advantage of the extra week to work out the laceweight instructions. I was always going to include laceweight instructions but thought I would have to do that with a later update. Not so .. huzzah!

My head is buzzing with shawl design ideas and I've begun using Pinterest as a way of creating micro-mood boards (Polyvore might have been more obvious, but I don't like that community all that much). I was watching a documentary on the Ballets Russes the other night and started looking through my old source books on early 20th C design. I've also been swatching a tiny bit, but I need to finish writing Karise before I let myself begin something new.

At the same time I am also yearning for a big, big project. This year has been a year of small projects that I finish relatively quickly, but I want to sink my teeth into a really juicy project. One that I won't finish in two weeks. I just have to bide my time, because I know my big juicy knit will be a colourwork project from Rowan Nordic Tweed (out on August 1st). I'm torn between three projects from that book, actually: a cardigan with intarsia reindeers(!) knitted in Rowan Colourspun and Kid Classic (it has a sort of faded, vintagey sense of glamour to it), a lusekofte-inspired jumper in Rowan Tweed (very fitted, very lovely), and a cool shrug/bolero/sleeveless cardigan with selbu-motifs done in a sort-of positive/negative colour way which is also knitted in Rowan Tweed (very, very cool looking and knitting it might hurt my brain).

Perhaps I should start by ripping out two half-sleeves and reknit them before I contemplate doing anything. A month .. I should totally be able to finish that red cardigan of mine..