Friday catch-up

Cats and knitting - if ever there is a combination made in heaven it’s this. Cats are natural seekers of warmth and a knitting basket or a knitted blanket may as well have catnip sewn into it, so irresistible do they find it.

And yet each time I share a photo like this online I invariably get a few comments along the lines of “No, how can you let your pets sit on your lovely knitted blanket”.

But honestly, why do we knit things if they aren’t to be used? Nothing makes me happier than seeing knits loved and used. And conversely, nothing is sadder than a pristine box of folded, unused knitted items. In my house knits are meant to be used by family - and cats are part of that family. Whether we like it or not :)

A recent influx of babies in my immediate circle has meant I’ve been doing a lot of surfing for blanket patterns - nothing says ‘welcome to earth’ like a new blanket as far as I’m concerned. I haven’t cast on yet but these have definitely made it into my short list.

Starflower Blanket

Prism Blanket

Megadahlia

Threads - the new app where knitters are making themselves at home.

I won’t bang on about it at length here, as it’s something you are either really interested in or really not interested - but my recent blog post on the new Threads app is here if you’d like a read. I’d be interested in what you think about it if you are also a Threads user.

Summer of Books and Yarn

Sign ups for my Summer of Books and Yarn, starting on July 24 are still open and plans afoot for our book choices. You can find all the details here.

Living in the present

I have been trying to conquer my anxiety and tendency to overthinking by employing a few mindfulness techniques recently and I came across this quote - which quite frankly stopped me in it’s tracks with it’s simplicity. It comes from this article, which I found really insightful - definitely one to bookmark for those days when your inner critic is in the driving seat.

I’m deliberately keeping this short this week as we are a Covid household again (a year, almost to the day since we last dealt with it). Thankfully it’s just my husband right now as he came back from a few weeks of a lot of travelling - we are hoping to keep it that way but in our small house it’s always a challenge.

Sending happy and healthy thoughts to you this weekend, and I hope you get to spend some quality time with your knitting.