Astrid and other shawls

I promised you all a photo of Astrid, now that she is finished, so here she is in all her glory -

And in greater detail -

The techie bit - this is Astrid from Norah Gaughan Book One, knit in Jaeger Alpaca, unknown shade (from the stash). I love this shawl, which is just the right size to sit around the shoulders and fasten with a pin on one side. I might knit another in a different colour / texture.

Before I do that though, I accidentally cast on and knitted a Simple Yet Effective Shawl - I couldn't help it - they were all over the web tempting me. Here's mine. I don't know what the colourway is but it's in Noro Kureyon Sock Yarn, bought in Florida last year.

And because this turned out to be just the perfect no-brain knitting project, suitable for knitting while watching TV, talking, drinking wine etc, I finished it and went straight out and bought some more Noro to knit another one.

That was on my day out to North Staffordshire yesterday when I visited P2Tog, fine knitting shop near Newcastle-under-Lyme; passed briefly through Newcastle and on to Stoke on Trent where they have a fantastic independent book shop - Webberleys, and a great fabric shop - Abakhan Fabrics and a number of charity shops (which were sadly disappointing in their wares) and a new Starbucks which wasn't there last time I was in Stoke. I came back via Stone for more charity shops but the charity gods were not shining upon me and the pickings were slim.

Today I have a cold and am feeling very rough - hence there has been very little gardening done, which was today's allotted task, and just a little bit of knitting because my head aches and my fingers are stiff. Hopefully I will be feeling better tomorrow. The spare parts for my spinning wheel have finally turned up so I shall try and get it back up and running tomorrow, so I can get a bit of spinning done before the end of the week.