Having succeeded at using my punchcards earlier in the week, I had the idea to use a pattern on some arm warmers to wear when I'm cycling. The idea being that two layers are better than one.

This is the result, cycling go-faster stripes. They are shorter than normal legwarmers to make up for my little arms, but they are very warm indeed. On the first go through I had a stitch or two fall off at the suggested fairisle tension of 6, so shifted it down to 5.. on the next one and that seemed to work much better.

So finally yesterday I took the plunge. After months of telling myself that it was way too hard I had a go at using my punchcards in my knitting machine.

After about thirty minutes of twiddling and one failed attempt I got this:

It's a Christmas tree Imagine that! It was fascinating to watch it develop, I really couldn't believe how easy it was.

Then I moved onto this:

This is some sort of Scandanavian pattern snowflake I think, anyway it looks pretty good in the strong contrast colours.

A little lace. this started to go to my head. Imagine that lace! I was and indeed, still am astounded that it's so easy on the machine. Amazing, astounding, wherever there is knitting I'll be there (I wonder if they still show Dangermouse on the tv?)

My friend Leanne asked for pictures of cats, chickens and teapots. A hunt through the pile found this:

No chickens or teapots sadly, but I found a cat, and managed to work out how to get a two pattern repeat.

I'm so impressed with just how fast it was to learn and produce something. I can see now that when this type of machine first entered the knitting industry it really must have revolutionised the way people worked and the patterns they produced. The world must have turned totally upside down for those people, just like mine now has.

I got this from the library last week.

250 plus different stitches with cute little charts to help you knit them. Ooooo, I love this kind of book and it's published in that ring bound form that means that when you open it the pages actually lie flat so you can knit at the same time.

And I got this through the post yesterday.

This is the contents of a huge bag of yarn sample cards I ordered from Yeoman Yarns. They do all kinds of yarn including a small selection of eco yarns which are naturally dyed too.

All I need now is an infinitely large amount of cash to buy it all.