Smokies and Green Magnus.

The fish eaters of Scotland are in my newspaper this week, Arbroath Smokies, one of my areas most famous local delicacies has Protected Geographical Indication status which means that only fish smoked within a certain radius can be called Arbroath Smokies. It is the same legislation that protects the quality of Champagne and Parma Ham. There were some wonderful photos in the Guardian newspaper and you can find them here. I live about seven miles away from where the pictures were taken and it is my favourite spot for puffin watching in the summer.

A most amazing gift came into the Mog household this week, appropriately from a woman called Kit. A wee while ago we gave Kit and her son a computer that we no longer needed ( my mum had won us a new one. ) To say thank you Kit has carved us a Green Magnus from some Birch wood. You might be familiar with the idea of a Green Man but I can honestly say that no-one else will have a Green Magnus. A truly wonderful present!

I've been knitting away on the same nine balls of yarn for days now. I have some Rowan Aran and had planned to make a Placed Cable Aran from Interweave Knits but then realised that the jumper looked best in white or cream and my yarn is a winey sort of purple. I then tried a couple of things and estimated that I didn't have enough yarn for any of them. Finally I settled on Fitzmaurice from Noro Unlimited. Having finished the back and measured myself and other clothes to work out how long the thing would be I decided that I would suit a cardigan much more than the jumper I was actually knitting. Undeterred, I divided the front instructions in two, fiddled around a bit with decreases and necklines and now I only have the sleeves to do. There is still an element of finger crossing going on but by next blog post, I should have something to show for all of my labouring.