Knitting epiphanies - When the wrong way turns out to be the best way

My reading week was spent knitting a load of snoods over the reading week for a craft fair my auntie was doing, I figured they're popular now and people are more likely to buy them (and they did), I just have one left. Here are some of them, note that they are smaller than my snood which is enormous and sit more closely round the neck which is much better!

I love the cabling on them and they were nice and quick to make!! The purple one is still left over though, one lady must have tried it on a million times but didn't buy it :-(

Anyway, I've since moved on to bigger and more challenging things, I've decided to start my most complicated knitting pattern to date, I'm knitting a Dr Who Dalek!! I'm so excited by this project and it's not at all repetitive, it requires a lot of concentration so it's more fun to knit than other things however it involves a lot of techniques I've never used before. I'm using double knit wool and 4mm needles but I think it's still going to be enormous, we'll see...

Knitting this dalek has caused me to have an epiphany, an epiphany related to knitting bobbles! My Dalek pattern has a lot of 'mb' in it, or 'make bobble' and I've never had the need to make bobbles up until this point. So I did what I always do, read up on it, watched you tube videos and followed the instructions on the pattern but my bobbles didn't really look like bobbles and they definitely didn't look like the bobbles on the pattern writer's Dalek. In fact every bobble seemed to look different! So I kept trying and today I came to it and was merrily knitting away at my bobble when I realised that I'd knitted my bobble wrong! I'd knitted where I was supposed to be purling and I changed back to the original coloured wool/yarn a little later than I was meant to. Swearing away at myself I feared the worst and went to look at what I'd done, and what had I done? I appeared to have made a perfect bobble, one which looked like the ones in the pictures! So to check it wasn't a fluke I used my new 'method' for the next bobble and that bobble looked perfect too. So I made a note on the pattern and decided to use my new technique for bobble making instead of the original instructions. Now, I am a person who tends to follow instructions religiously, when I'm cooking, when I'm crafting, when I'm putting together furniture... because I panic that if I don't it's all going to go wrong! So what was my epiphany? Sometimes, just because one way is meant to be the right way it doesn't necessarily mean it's the only way. And sometimes mistakes are a blessing because they open your eyes to a new way of doing things. And finally, just because it's the 'right' way it doesn't always mean that it's the best way. So if you stumble across something which makes your life a lot easier then don't be afraid to go with it because one size doesn't always fit all!

I'm sure I'll be back soon reporting on how my Dalek is doing! I also have another project in the pipeline, I bought a dress today from Asda for Christmas parties and I had wanted a dress with a bit of sparkle but this dress doesn't have any (however it looked good and was too much of a bargain to pass up)! Never fear, I plan to get myself some sequins and sew them onto my dress to make it a bit more sparkly and original! I'll definitely be back with pics.