One of the real pleasures of living in this part of the world is that an everyday trip to the post office turns into a great photo opportunity.  Over the last couple of days we've been having all four seasons every few hours of the day.  One moment there's glorious sunshine, and within minutes it's changed to windy, wet and very, very wintery weather.  This morning, on my way into Lochinver to post some parcels, I made my way up Sròn, a steep hill with a rather tricky 90 degree bend halfway up, and just as I went over the brow of the hill this is the view that greeted me:



Then, on my return home, again on reaching the brow this was the view in the opposite direction, looking across Assynt and over the Minch:



You can't quite see the "bend in the road" sign in the middle of the photo.  It's amazing how many times you meet a car on that bend, given how little traffic there is on this road.

There has been some knitting taking place in the workshop.  On the 11th October I'll be running a knitting workshop at Four Winds Inspiration Centre in Edinburgh for relative beginners, and so I've been brushing up on a few of my own knitting skills, including aran work:



This is the front of Baby Poonam, a free pattern available from Berroco.  I'm knitting it in some discontinued Jaeger pure cotton, which shows the cables up beautifully, but I find is pretty hard on my hands.

This week I also started, and finished, Elizabeth Zimmermann's February Baby Sweater.  It is such a quick knit, and a complete delight.  I invested in EZ's Knitters Almanac, and while many find her approach to patterns old fashioned and a bit pithy, I have really enjoyed reading them.  It is a long time since I found a pattern that gave such a pleasing result condensed into about three quarters of an A5 page.  It doesn't say much for my knitting ability that I forgot to add buttonholes!  However I plan to use presstuds and sew buttons on top.  For this version I used Berroco Alpaca Ultra which I had in my stash, and I used just over one hank.  It's probably not the best choice for a baby's jacket, as it is quite fluffy, and will definitely need handwashing, but it's very pretty and every so soft.



And finally .... some really exciting news - well it is for me, anyway.  Next week is the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace in London.  If you're planning to visit the show, make your way to the Woolly Workshop stand, talk to Gill and she will show you some of my Ripples Crafts yarn.  In a joint venture between Woolly Workshop and Cherry Tree Hill Yarns, I've had the opportunity to enter some of my yarns into the show.  I did include some colour combinations which were quite different to ones I've done in the past, and perhaps quite "unusual", but if you do see them on the stand do let me have your feedback - good or bad!