Picture this: The Op Art blanket is blocking. I finished knitting the final stripe of six hundred plus stitches, which in turn used no less than two 50g balls on Thursday evening. The ends were sewn in this morning. It has been machine washed on a fancy woollens cycle and is currently harnessed between 4 strong blocking wires effectively making it square. It looks awesome. I’m not talking about the knitting, my meaning is to the optical pattern which has suddenly come to life in my knitting.

Despite having begun a pair of socks in a weak moment a few weeks ago, and desperately wanting to cast on Golden Wheat; my thoughts this morning returned to my Winter set.

I entered my personal yarn store and spent a good amount of time accessing and deciding on yarn and in turn patterns to make up my winter set. I must say I was a little inspired by Katie’s recent cardigan, in the pink and grey stripes. It reminds me of my fav fleecy dress which I wore throughout grade one and two. It’s a colour combination which still speaks to me today. It’s pink, it’s grey, it’s the best of both worlds!

I was determined to knit something a little chunkier, something a little faster, my attention span for projects is a maximum of four weeks as proven by my recent projects. Ideally, I would like my winter set complete in under two weeks; that’s do-able.

Without further a do, my winter set for 2012 will consist of Veera’s ‘shimmer in blue’ cowl and ‘here and there’ cabled hat and ‘Dashing’ mitts from Knitty for my hands (Veera hasn’t designed any mitts as yet). I have chosen a selection of yarns which I hope will complement each other and not look dreadfully ‘matchy matchy’, just cool and considered, thanks Louisa for the tip!

After making my pattern decisions, I purchased them and they downloaded immediately. I wound my yarn from skeins to balls and I cast on. Is there anything better than that? Perhaps downloading an entire book to my new kindle in under 10 seconds flat, that was pretty shocking. Technology has made me feel very powerful this week, I’m excited and a little afraid.