We’ve put up the tree, made the first batch of mince pies and had the first snowfall of winter. Pollok Park in Glasgow was looking particularly spectacular in winter conditions. Pollok Park is an amazing place - there's an award winning museum and art gallery, a beautiful stately home with gardens, miles of paths through the woodland, cafes, a farmer's market every month, and even a herd of Highland Cows. All free to access, and literally over the road from my house! 
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We’re so lucky to live in a big city with all the benefits that come with it, and also have a huge country park literally across the road. Best of both worlds for sure!

And here’s a bump pic for this week too, this week I’m sporting my Burrell Sweater. It’s a lovely comfy oversized sweater perfect for cosy winter wear when the snow’s falling! I was a bit sceptical about oversized, cropped sweaters initially but I’m a huge convert. I knitted my first one – Tentsmuir Sweater when I was postpartum with my preschooler and genuinely it was the most flattering sweater ever. 

Now for the knitting news! ​This week I’ve been chipping away at my latest cardi with Eden Cottage Yarns Lowther Lace and Titus 4ply. I finally got the shoulders finished - normally I’m quite good at sneaking in a bit of mindless knitting here and there, but it’s much tricker when you actually need to focus! The lace here is a little fiddly and the increases at the inner edges of the fronts and for the armhole shaping made it even spicier. I do love knitting lace, but I'm definitely enjoying how fast the stocking stitch section is now!

From the back, you can see the zigzag transition from the lace a bit more clearly. I’m thinking about calling this pattern Brocken Spectre. It’s an optical illusion you see in the mist sometimes at the top of a mountain. It’s just your shadow really but it looks like a figure in the fog. I was thinking that the zigzag at the top of the stocking stitch with the airy lace on top looked like mist on the mountaintops. Let me know what you think!

We’re just back from a lovely week away in the Cairngorms. The holiday itself was great, but in knitting terms there’s been a few ups and downs! One of my very best friends has asked me to knit her a cardigan for her wedding. She liked my, Epsilon Cardigan Knitting Pattern so I’ve used the same kind of construction but amped up the lace a bit. I made a huge swatch to test that the lace worked out, but didn’t include much stockinette. How I have paid for that mistake! The gauge in my calculations was off by half a stitch in the “worked flat” sections, and by considerably more when worked in the round.

I think every knitter has probably gone through that denial of knitting a garment, especially with lace, and knowing it’s going to be the wrong size, but just thinking “it’ll all work out when I block it”. Blocking does not solve everything – it looked lovely but didn’t fit. So a week ago I had to bite the bullet and frog the stockinette. All of it. In 4ply yarn.

I’m a maths teacher, and I’m constantly saying to the kids that making mistakes is fine, you just need to learn from them. No need to get stressed, just go through it again and fix it. Maybe that has sunk in for me too, because to be honest, it was all pretty quick and painless to reknit. Being on holiday definitely helped, and we had a few bad weather days so I just curled up with a good book and my knitting and got through it.

We did manage to get lots of really nice walks in too. We’ve got a rescue Jack Russell Terrier who is very high energy so it was a real treat for her to get lots of good long hikes. The area round Aviemore is absolutely stunning too. We mainly kept to the footpaths near Loch Morlich, but every path you go down is absolutely stunning. Here’s a few highlights from the many, many photos:

And by the time we got back home, the cardigan was ready to block. Looking much better this time round! I'm writing the pattern up this week, so it should hopefully be tech edited and ready to purchase soon - I'll keep you posted!