A quick update

I have been really busy just lately. I went away to a motorbike club 40th anniversary a couple of weeks back and caught up with some people I hadn't seen in decades, then came back to a lot of work to catch up on.

I took some panforte and Italian almond cookies with me as a gift for the friends I stayed with:

The cookies are sort of an Italian version of macaroons. They are just meringue with quite a lot of ground almonds mixed in, whole almonds pressed into the tops, then baked until hard and dry.

I finished my Aran sweater just after I got back …

… and then started designing the next project …

… which is to be a Fair Isle cardigan. I cast on the stitches yesterday and have done the bottom ribbing and half the first pattern band. I planned the design on an iPad app called RectPaint. It's supposed to be for small children to draw blocky pictures with but works quite well for Fair Isle - I just wish it had more, and variable, colours. I had to design it in horrible colours then import the resulting graphics into Gimp so I could replace them with the colours of the wool. I am sorely tempted to have a go at writing an app to design Fair Isle with myself.

I have done a little bit of cooking, and have photos which I MUST get around to posting about - including some new shoes!