Support group talk and knitting/yarns etc

 I bought these two balls of WYS dk to knit the High Pines Cowl that I bought ages ago on a whim, the colour is more mustard in real life and I think it will knit well.  I bought them from Ana at Stitch Solihull on the occasion of her shop's 4th birthday celebration.

Below is a progress shot of the lovely Soft Sunday shawl by Suvi Simola Designs, the pattern is easy and very straightforward to follow which makes it a pleasure to knit I've done 4 lace repeats of 8 now.

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The photos above show progress on this months A Year of Techniques challenge of Intarsia by way of a shawl knit in the fluffy Cumulus by Fyberspates.  Progress is slow on account of the highly challenging pattern instructions - the actual intarsia is a doddle by comparison and while I'm enjoying it I have to confess to finding it a tricky project!
My cat, Bertie, quite enjoys me knitting with fluffy yarns and when he got his teeth into this one I thought I was in trouble - three separate balls of fluffy yarn, a complex pattern a dropped stitch and a cat that wants to sit on your lap does NOT make for a fun experience!  we got through though.

The next three yarns are what I bought from Ana's guests - Coastal Colours and The Knitting Goddess - at her shop's 4th year birthday celebration.  The turquoise and grey from TKG are for the lovely I Heart Stripes shawl by Louise Tilbrook and the other? thats just for being lovely!  I'm sure I'll find a pattern for it.

I went with my knitting friends and we had a good time looking at wool and planning projects and Brenda kindly offered to wind my skeins so I'm all ready to go!

In other knitty news this month, I can report that at last you can enter my sewing room and actually walk on the floor!  all the yarn that was just sitting in corners and in the middle and all around are now bagged and tidied away - thanks to my long suffering dh for the help in this!

I feel somewhat embarassed at having such a lot of yarn, fabrics and other craft stuff but it is my main interest and has come about over many years of collecting.

This month at the Bipolar Support Group we had an interesting presentation and Q&A session with a Pharmacist and we had a talk on the different types of medication including Lithium which quite a few of us are either on or have been on and this coupled with recent article detailing only some 30% of people successfully respond to it, I was able to get my questions answered.
It was so interesting that Alison is going to try and book her for a future session.
The group was fuller than usual this time and it was pretty difficult to get your voice heard.