My, how the time has flown! Now that I look back I've been missing in action from here for quite awhile. Nothing serious, just not much to talk about I guess, and I was sick for about three weeks with the dreaded cold that has been going around so I wasn't really feeling up to anything much.
As you can see by my pictures, I've got knitting, or lack of it, to talk about! I'm sad to say I seem to be struggling with my knitting a bit at the moment. Lots of frogging has been taking place which is annoying, but also liberating. Back in March I think it was, I began work on a beautiful Kim Hargreaves cardigan, but as you can see by the first photo here it's now gone. I'd managed to complete the back and almost finished the left front piece, and then I'd made a mistake. To me, mistakes seem to be the signal to stop a project (until recently that is but I'll get to that later). Needless to say this project languished in it's bag for many months until last month when I decided to take another look at it. I looked, then looked again and it just didn't seem to be right, so I measured it, then I measured it again, and I was right, the whole thing was completely the wrong shape and size. Not sure what happened but I think that my tension is totally different when I'm just doing straight garter stitch and not stocking stitch. So the yarn has been bagged up again until I can find the perfect project for it. There's a few ideas floating around so I'll see what happens with those when the need arises.
I did, however, manage to finish my Eyelet Cardigan and it came out quite nicely.....BUT.....it just does not suit me. I'm not sure if it's the colour or the shape or a combination of the two but whenever I tried to put it on I felt like a complete frump, it did not look good at all. So, it's been packaged up, and we'll see if Mum likes it at Christmas time. If not, I guess it will be frogged and the yarn used for something else. You see, my fear of frogging has finally gone!
Other attempts at shawls this past couple of weeks have also fallen by the wayside. Firstly I tried
Traveling Woman by Liz Abinante (Rav link). It's a really nice, simple shawl pattern that I thought would be good for a friends birthday present. It went along swimmingly until I got to the last row, I made a tiny mistake which I just left thinking nothing of it. Then, I was silly and did an extra row that wasn't necessary, again I left it thinking it would be ok. After that I did the bind off, hmmmm, this didn't look so good. Tried blocking it, still not good. The bind off was obviously way too tight, the shawl just looked misshapen and wanted to fold itself in half when I tried to stretch it out. It sat, forlorn for a couple of weeks until today when I thought I would try to rescue it. Then I thought, why bother, just start again. So it's been......frogged!!
Next, I tried Miriam L. Felton's
Seraphim. I thought I would use the beautiful Malabrigo Sock yarn that I have here in the Turner colourway and it was going very well. I spent a week slogging away on the very large, and boring, stockinette section of the shawl and early this week got to the first chart. Something wasn't right, the second half of the pattern isn't matching up with the first half. I counted my stitches, then I counted again. WEIRD!!! I ended up with
seven extra stitches on one half of the shawl. Really don't know how that happened, so I paused and thought, and realised that the colour just wasn't working for me in that shawl. Needless to say, it's now gone and another project has been started with the yarn. I'm not going to mention it yet in the fear that I may jinx myself to another failure!!!
One project that has been successful this past month has been gifted, so I can't even pull it out to remind myself that I have managed to finish something lately! It was Gudrun Johnston's
Aestlight Shawl (Rav link). Quite a few of these have been popping up on Ravelry and I can add that it's a fun and interesting knit. The construction is quite different from any other shawls I have made. I'm fairly certain that it is mistake free and it blocked out rather nicely. The fact that my friend put it on straight away and left it on for our entire dinner out made me feel good about the fact that I'd passed it on to her. After all, I can always make another one!!
Well a new year has begun and my first finished project is...wait for it...another shawl!! I started working on Gudrun Johnston's Wast Side Shawl just before Christmas and finished it last week after having left it alone for a week or so. The construction of this shawl is different from anything else that I've tried in that you start with the border (which becomes a huge long chain of points) that you then pick up so that you can work inwards until you get to the top where you usually start a triangular shawl.
The border seemed to take forever, but the pattern works to a really good rhythm that is very easy to memorise, so it's not too painful. Then you work on the Fern lace, which again is pretty intuitive and easy to remember and on to the stockinette portion which just flies off the needles. Before you know it you've finished - smiles all around. Especially when your almost three year old son says "That's brilliant Mummy!".
As for the yarn I used, well yes, it's Malabrigo Sock again. I love this stuff, the colours are great, the yarn is lovely and soft and the yardage is really good for making shawls. Luckily I have a bit more left over in the stash so I'm off to see what else I can make - yippee!!
