Stitch and Bitch

So I've used up the first skein of the felting wool and when it came time to add the second one to the mix I decided to do a Russian join. I think the technique must work better with stranded (plied) wool, rather than the felting wool (which is kind of like what I've seen called "roving" -- but since I'm not a spinner I probably don't know what I'm talking about, so maybe I shouldn't speculate).

This is what my Russian join looked like when I did it:



Sorry about the bad photo. I've been using a Mac for several months now, but it has all my old PC stuff nestled inside it somehow using some magic software called Parallels, and for editing this photo I went back to some really old PC tools -- like 10 years old. Um, what can I say? It shows!

But the Russian join doesn't show nearly as much as my bulky old method of joining a new skein, even if it is a bit more fiddly to achieve.



I've decided my next project should be a cat bed, because the cat liked my Lopi panel (I had set it out on the floor to measure the gusset piece against it) so much she curled herself comfortably up on it and had a nice lie-down.



Apparently (at least according to Ravelry) there is a very good cat bed pattern in the Stitch 'n' Bitch Knitter's Handbook. Great, I just got the Knitter's Handbook from Knitter's Magazine, and it bothered me that my searches kept showing the Debbie Stoller S&B book instead. Now I need to get myself the S&B one.

Life is full of small ironies.