Batik is finished.

There will be better pictures after it finishes blocking. The colour doesn't look great against the carpet, and the colour contrast is pretty nasty, but I don't care :)
I used a ball and a half of Mercia Wools 100% cotton 4ply. It was sometimes a little rough on the hands, and I feel that the cables would pop more if I had used wool, but even so I am ridiculously happy with it.

It is easily the most challenging thing I've made, and this one I may keep for me.
I will sadly not be wearing it to the WI Christmas do though. We didn't sell enough tickets, so it's being postponed and possibly turned into a spring fling.

This was the 10th shawl this year, leaving me 20 days to finish ethereal in order to complete my 11 shawls in 2011. I am hopeful about managing it.

Dinner tonight is sausages and roasted vegetables (carrots and potatoes and sweet potatoes and jerusalem artichokes and leeks and onion and garlic and parsnips) with braised cabbage and red wine gravy. Easy, low effort and hopefully very tasty.

In with a shot

I have realised that there is a chance I may finish 11 shawls in 2011. I haven't posted any of my FOs in the group, and I am pretty sure that I am counting one they wouldn't count on yardage, which was 198 yrds of heaven,  but in my on mind, and for my own challenge, I may actually finish it.

Revolouti is finished, and what a fun knit it was. Excuse the state of the carpet. It was stained when I first started living here, and I haven't yet steam cleaned it.
I like it very much, but I am currently a little irritated by it. The pattern and the yarn combined come out as really striking, and I have had a load of complements. I feel a little bit like a fraud though, because the pattern wasn't very complicated, and the skill level used wasn't so great. It was, dare I say it, pretty mindless knitting when I got started. And as such, I don't really feel I deserve the praise that it's been getting.
I also chose not to knit it as large as I had intended. My good friend K is a fairly new knitter, and I thought this pattern would be perfect for her, so I passed the second ball of the zauberball to her. I think that this is a great pattern for fairly new knitters - it's simple, it's logical, and once the set up is done it knits up really really easily.
I bet I'll get over that soon enough :)

Batik is going really well. I'm up to about row 114 (of 168 for the large size), and because the rows are getting smaller all the time, I am feeling hopeful that I will finish it this week. Then of course is the big decision about which shawl to wear to the WI Christmas party on Friday. Usually I give my shawls away so fast that I don't get a chance to wear them.

Then, if that is finished, I am determined to pick up Ethereal once again. I have started the border charts and so the end is in sight. And I have 21 days of knitting to get them done in.

Let us ignore the Christmas knitting I am supposed to be doing, please.

Reading rav I came across a tip for blocking beanie style hats. I had knitted the other half a lovely hat, but it was slightly too tight for his head. I knew a good blocking would rectify the whole situation, but had utterly no idea how to block a hat that wasn't a slouchy beret (tip, block the berets over a plate). And rav, as always, came through. So I bought balloons, and blocked the hat over a balloon. It came out well.
There will be pictures at some point.

Speaking of pictures, it occurs to me that in my first post I promised pictures of my Winterfell shawl (pattern not yet published, it was a test knit), and then never got round to posting them. So without further ado, here there are.

I broke. I know last time I spoke about how I was resoloute, and I would not cast on another thing until I had finished something. But my LYS had two balls of the crazy zauberball I have been coveting, so I bought it.

And I cast on Revontuli-huvi by Anne M.

It is coming along just delightfully and I am charmed by it. I love large shawls, so I am planning on knitting in pattern until the rows are so long that the white stripes become teeny. I have two balls of the yarn, and look forward to having a lovely large shawl for me. I am wanting to wear it to the WI Christmas bash on the 16th.

In recipe news, tonight we had chole. Its a recipe that I have been cooking for years, and it is one of those that I have always found surprising in it's simplicity and deliciousness.

1/2 onion
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp oil
Pinch of hing (also known as asafoetida, and this is optional)
1/2 tsp tumeric
2 cloves of garlic (or about 1/2 tsp garlic powder)
1 tin tomatoes/pack passata/4 whole tomatoes
1 tin chickpeas (or equivalent dried, soaked and cooked)
Pinch garam masala
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground corriander
1/8-1/2 tsp chili powder, or to taste
Pinch sugar
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Chop the onion. Put the oil into a pan and heat. When it is hot add the cumin seeds and let splutter for a couple of seconds. Add the hing and the tumeric and leave for a few more seconds. Add the onion and cook until brown.
Chop the garlic and add, cooking for a couple more minutes. Then add the tomatoes, and the rest of the spices. Add the chickpeas and simmer for about 20 minutes with a mug or so of water. Stir every now and then adding enough water that it not become too dry. Salt to taste.

Serves two generously over rice (and this goes particularly well with brown rice).