Swatching and luscious walnuts

I have been reading a lot about Claudia's Handpainted sock yarn, and finally gave in. The Woolly Workshop very kindly (and swiftly: fantastic service) sent me this:

2 Skeins of Black Walnut. Luscious. I am hoping there's enough to make a very stylish and manly scarf. Interestingly, there's not nearly as much pink in the yarn as any image on the internet indicated, but it's very lovely and I don't mind at all.

I've been doing a little random swatching: seed stitch and eastern crossed stocking stitch in Regia Crazy Color:

Plain knitting on the knitting machine in Knitpick's Memories in Redwood Forest:

I redid the bee stripe swatch and am much happier with this edge:


One of the problems with our London flat is the lack of sunlight. We inhabit a north-facing flat which gets a 20 cm wide strip of sunlight for approximately 20 minutes in the early evening for a couple of weeks in spring. I am attempting to make the most of it by photographing anything even vaguely knitting-related.

This is some Paris from Texere which I have plans for... must implement severe stash reduction before heading to Australia... so difficult.

One positive thing about returning to Australia is that I am unlikely to have too much trouble finding light to photograph by. Over there we also inhabit a north-facing flat, which, being in the other hemisphere, gets enough sunlight to bleach the spines of all our books, CDs and DVDs, despite the fact that we keep the blinds half-closed most of the time. Unfortunately I don't like the heat, but we may solve this by installing air-conditioning.