Is it Autumn??

It's been a knitting-heavy couple of weeks what with the start of the ravelympics and everything, so I'm proud to present my two most recent finished objects to you. It seems like I'm very into leaf motifs at the moment, must be thinking of Autumn already. First of all, we have 'Iceland' from the Rowan 42 book in Cocoon (the shade is called tundra). It's been finished for a week or so, but I didn't get the buttons until we went to Twist Fibre Craft on Saturday. I modified it to make it a bit smaller than the smallest size. Follow the link to check out their updated website by the way - they've had a reshuffle in the shop and got in a selction of gorgeous fabric. More things to tempt my wallet!

The second FO is one of my ravelympic projects, the Kevat Shawl (kevat means spring in Finnish). I knitted it with the Utiku possum merino yarn that Jane sent for my birthday on 6.5mm needles. It's a nice easy lace pattern, easy to memorise and 'read' the pattern from the previous row of knitting, and it went especially quickly because I was using such big needles. Cast on at 1pm on Friday during the opening ceremony, cast off at 11.35pm on Saturday and blocked on Sunday! I'm wearing it right now to protect myself from this decidedly cold Scottish August.

Somebody on Ravelry tells me that the reason possum fur is so warm is that it has hollow fibres, which rings a bell now that I think of it. And apparently polar bear fleece is the warmest fibre of all for exactly the same reason.

Yesterday I made a start on my second ravelympics project, this time for team GB. I'm crocheting a scarf with large flower motifs. I've done about 30% so far, it's looking ok, but a bit skinny, I might decide to double up and do two flowers side by side if it's looking long enough by the time I get half way through the yarn.