Knitting placeholder

I really mustn't leave a Christmas /New Year message up beyond the end of January, so this is just to show you what I've one since last summer. Not as much, as I might have wished. I had about 3 months where I couldn't knit! Frustration doesn't begin to describe my feelings...I had a funny lesion on the side of my right middle finger, and could't knit at all, couldn't type properly, and even buttons and tying shoelaces became a real problem. There was a dressing of some sort on the finger from July until early November, first my own attempt of an ordinary plaster when it first came up and kept bleeding messily on anything and everything, then a professional sausage-like finger-covering that the nurses kept renewing for what seemed like weeks after the GP excised the excrescence itself. Eventually it needed cauterising too, and I was able to finish the jumper I had started in June:

Dark Grey cable jumper

I really was glad to get the cable jumper finished! TMOH had chosen the yarn, and it was pure wool, and good to handle ... but such a dark colour that it was very wearing on the eyes, so in the dark autumn and winter evenings, I was only able to attack it in short bursts. During November, just after my dressing had finally come off the finger and I had restarted work on the jumper, I met some friends in Salisbury. After lunch we landed in the wool shop - as you do! And I rather fell for Sirdar's new yarn, Gisellle. So I bought a book of patterns specifically for it - it's aran weight - and sufficient yarn to make any of them I fancied, once I was free of the grey cables. 

Beginnings of cardigan in Giselle 131

Every so often I would go and look at my bag of soft purply-pink, blue and cream yarn, and tell myself that I could start on it as soon as the grey cables were finished. 

Finally, just after the New Year, the jumper was done, and I could make a start on something for myself. I decided on a cardigan, and this photo is from when I was 50 rows up both body and sleeves. It's a raglan pattern, so I'm doing the tops of both body and sleeves all together, with a couple of purl stitches to denote the 'seam' line and save having to sew in the sleeves afterwards. I'm more than twice as far on as this now, but I haven't taken another photo yet.  

Finished cardigan - and scarf, that I had enough yarn for as well 

Nearly missed January!

Where did that time go? I'm not long back from a folk-dance weekend and the Australian Open is over, so it must be nearly the end of the month!

So in order to show you something, I'm putting up a couple of pictures of things I've been knitting recently.

This was the cardigan I made for myself from some yarn I got at a Stitch and Craft exhibition. I'd bought two colourways of what I now know was the just discontinued Noro Silk Garden Chunky. The first made up into a sleeveless jacket/body warmer - not quite a gilet, as it had cap sleeves. I don't appear to have any photos of that, so I can't show it to you today. But I wanted something more of a jacket for the second lot of yarn, so I scoured the country on the net, and managed to get enough for a full cardigan. And then of course, being me, got about halfway up the body and decided it wasn't right, so unpicked it all. Last April's Simply Knitting came to the rescue with a cable patterned cardigan in chunky - and you see the results here. The cabling helps keep the whole thing from being too unstructured, which the pattern I started first of all was in danger of being, as it was in plain stocking-stitch. They also interlock  so that the widest part of each cable is next to the crossover part of the next-door one, which I thought was a great effect.

Naturally I changed things; theirs was a demure grey, as opposed to my vibrant colour mix - I had to use two different dye lot numbers  but with a variegated yarn, dye batches are not that important anyway. And the original had a wrap-over with a belt, which I knew would make me look like a sack of potatoes, so I made buttonholes and sewed on some buttons instead.




And then I decided to make a first birthday present for the little girl who had Lewis the elephant so I started with some supposedly baby yarn - but after a while it seemed to feel almost slimy, and I just couldn't work with it any more. So I started another jumper with some soya cotton ... only to find it was making up into something that would be enormous on a five-year-old! So I found yet another pattern, this time for aran yarn, and made this little cardigan - and had enough over to make a hat to go with it. 

So there you are ... just made it before the new month is upon us!