Review: The Master and Margarita

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall an enjoyable book. There were a couple of occasions where I got totally confused and had to re-listen to get myself back on track. There were also a few times, mostly in the story of Margarita where I laughed out loud.
The narrator, Julian Rhind-Tutt was most engaging and kept my attention throughout.

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Review: Niccolò Rising

Niccolò Rising by Dorothy Dunnett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At around 40 hours long this book was quite a slog. I felt the story really dragged at the start with, for me, too many in depth descriptions of things that did not seem totally necessary to the tale. The pace picked up in the last quarter of the book and it became more enjoyable.

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Still Dreaming

Hexagon 2 is now finished and grafted to the first. Again I used Drops Baby Alpaca/Silk in Powder and Drops Fabel this time in Turquoise Blue.

I have run out of stitch holders so from now on I will be using random spare circular needles and waste yarn to hold stitches still to be grafted.
For those who are interested I am knitting this on a 3mm 80cm Hiya Hiya circular needle. I begin by magic looping, move on to single loop and finish the last 5 or so rows using the full circle. My hexagons are coming out at around 30cm across from point to point. I know I am being a bit vague, this is due to me having misplaced my measuring tape. A hunt will be setting out shortly to try and locate it.

Now it is time to get back to No 3.

Dreaming in Colour

For quite sometime now I have admired the Persian Dreams pattern which is available from Ravelry or Knit Picks. It is a beautiful colourful throw made up of 24 individual hexagons which are grafted together. The original pattern uses 14 different colours of Palette and has a lot of changes throughout each hexagon.
Finally last week I took the plunge and bought the pattern. I decided that rather than do it as the original I would use self striping yarn so that I would be using only 2 yarns for each hexagon. Yesterday I finished the first one and although I have had a few tension issues with my stranding I am delighted with the result.

For this 1st module I used as background Drops Baby Alpaca/Silk in the colour Powder and Drops Fabel sock yarn in Sunset which was left over from the jumper I knitted for my Mum.
The Powder colour will be my base colour throughout the entire project and I have bought 11 further balls of Fabel to complete the blanket.

I bought these yarns from Wool Warehouse which offers amazing speed of delivery along with the yarn coming in gorgeous organza bags which then double up as project bags.
I have just today started hexagon 2 and I will make sure to keep you updated with my progress.

M.I.A.

Well look who is here? Yes it's me. I finally have time to draw breath and get back to you. This work for a living malarky does not half get in the way of knitting, reading and blogging.
As many of you will know I am essentially carer to my beloved hubby who has severe mobility issues. Between the months of April and October I am also to be found hovering around the likes of Concorde, the Vulcan and other iconic aircraft at the National Museum of Flight in East Lothian, doing my very best to help visitors rather than confuse them. Parts of the museum have just undergone a massive £3.6 million redevelopment and the opening of this is what has kept me from keeping up my blog.

The last time I wrote I was having a bit of a moment to myself and kidding myself on that I could knit a top in around 48 hours. Well it did not happen. I did manage to knit about 3/4 of it but I was not at all happy with how it was turning out. It was duly sent off to the frog pond and I had a glorious day out with my mum at the Edinburgh Yarn Festival.
This year two things happened which conspired to deny me photos of the festival. 1st I forgot the camera and 2nd I was pushing mum in a wheelchair which would have made for very difficult snap taking. I did however come away with very happy memories and a little stash enhancement.

Clockwise from top left, Date with Ada pattern, Soak wash, Plaua gradient by Bilum, Wee Rainbow on a Vespa by La Bien Aimee and the gradient and Indigo sock yarn are both Blue Moon from The Border Tart

I was a very good girl and stuck to both my budget and with the exception of the pack of mini-skeins, my shopping list. I seem to have had a bit of a blue theme going on this year and I am delighted with my purchases.

Back to knitting.
The top I was kidding myself I could knit was Elfe by Astrid Schamm. I saw a finished one whizz by on the Ravelry radar and I fell in love. As I said before I was not loving how my first attempt was turning out, so after the festival I started it again with different yarn and I am about half way through the new version.

I will leave you with that for this post but will be back very soon with details of a very gorgeous pattern which I also have on the needles.