It’s a total pleasure to point you towards a project my friend Felix is running:

The Knitted Walking Stick Cosy Competition 2007: WIN £40 IN YARN VOUCHERS!

Inspired by the dignifying powers of health-related knitting projects
everywhere, The Missability Radio Show is organising a walking stick cosy
knitting competition. With your great ideas, knitting skills and visionary
powers, you can transform even an ordinary grey walking stick into a
fantastical design!

The competition is open NOW and all entries must be received by 7th
September 2007.

There are two categories for this competition; the winner in each category
will be awarded £40 in yarn vouchers. There is no limit on submissions. The
first category is Fantastical Designs and the second is Real Life. Entries
will be judged by walking stick users and The Oxford Bluestockings, an
incredibly talented and accomplished bunch of knitters based here in Oxford.

The cosies will be featured on The Missability Radio Show. Notable
submissions will be described by our knitting correspondents on the
programmes due for podcast release 9th September!) Photographs and cosies
will be publicly exhibited from 12th – 16th September in The Drama Studio at
Oxford Brookes University and from 12th – 19th September in The Oxford
Centre for Enablement, Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford.

Links
Full details of how to enter the competition:
http://www.missability.com/knittingcompetition.html
See other people’s knitted walking stick cosies:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/knittedwalkingstickcosy
More information about The Missability Radio Show:
http://www.myspace.com/themissabilityradioshow
Alternatively you can phone Felicity Ford on 07835 136201

Sewn cast offs look amazing, and it would be a mistake to finish this project any other way.

However, with 380 stitches, it’s going to take an absolute AGE.

Photos in about a week. 😉

This may end up being a very quick knit, given that I started it yesterday and I’m half way through already. The yarn is Baby Alpaca and Silk from Mobair (who unfortunately don’t have a website. 🙁 that I bought at a craft show at Blenheim Palace a month or so ago. (Liz blogged about it here.)

Anyways I bought about 200g and always planned to make a scarf (for myself) but the lace patterns I tried didn’t really work with the yarn, which I realised after a while, really just wanted to be left alone to do it’s own thing, and show off in a simple way. So inspired by how my Ruana was coming along, a given that actually I get really bored when I knit scarves back and forth width-wise I decided to cast on a WHOLE MASS of stitches and knit it length ways.

So here is the recipe:

Long tail cast on (of sorts, in that actually I used the same method as with the ruana, in that I used one end of one ball, and one end of the other so that I never ran out of yarn when I was casting on. Yes you have another end to darn in, but I don’t care about that), about 380 stitches on 4mm needles (my new addi turbo lace needle. *hearts*).

Knit back and forth until either I run out of yarn or the scarf is wide enough. (Any left overs will get added to the Ruana stash, and I’m good with that.)

Cast off using the sewn cast off for Knitting Without Rules, so that it looks and acts the same as the cast on.

Done.

I don’t know why I’m enjoying such mindless knitting at the moment. Certainly it makes watching the Tour de France easier (oh Vino – you utter star!) Mind you when my sister gets back from the US next week with the books that I ordered, I’m planning to use them to start on the shawl for my other grandma, and really – in the meantime – when I finish this scarf, I should spend some more time on the waistcoat for W’s mum – (can you tell I’ve started to avoid it? Horrible intarsia pretending to be fairisle! Even just the darning in I’ve created so far – only 6″ into the project – is bringing me out in a cold sweat!)