Yeah for new books and a finished bolero

I love the feeling of excitement when my parcel of books arrives from Amazon. It feels like my birthday when I rip open the cardboard to reveal the goodies beneath. I knew what I had ordered but on Amazon you only get to see the cover page and a brief description so it's all an exciting mystery as to what is inside. I got Everyday crochet by Doris Chan which at my first brief glance is filled with very wearable items. I will tell you more once I have the time later to really browse through it. My second book is Crocheted socks and again looks full of fun patterns. I prefer knitted socks but think that I can rattle a few pairs of dog walking and house socks far quicker in crochet.

I photographed the black Sanctuary Bolero from the Sensual Crochet book by Amy Swenson. Terrible photos but black is so hard to photograph on a miserable dull day. I had to make the sleeves a lot shorter as I only had 200 + grams of yarn left. My niece had bought Patons Diploma Acrylic DK and it was lovely to work with. I love Yarn that glides through my fingers silkily. It has a really good yardeage which is why I had the 2 balls left over from her ribbed sweater. My other niece picked it up last night so it will be on it's way to it's new owner soon.

I started knitting Carrie cropped flared sleeve cardigan from the Fitted Knits book in some brown fleck super chunky I had got from Lidl. I am making it for my super skinny friend Caroline but I had to unravel and re-do the first sleeve I made. The garment is worked top down all in one so it was difficult to gauge the right size until the sleeve was finished. I know she has arms like Calista Flokhart on a thin day but this sleeve was ultra skinny. I unravelled it and increased the yolk to a couple of sizes larger and re-did the sleeve. It is so fast to knit. I am using 8mm needles but the pattern actually uses 10mm which is probably why the sleeves turned out a bit on the slim side. I knit quite loose so normally drop the needle size by one but as I didn't have any 9mm needles I had to use 8mm. I think I will probably have to decrease the body size back down to the smaller size once I join it all together again as the body is knitted downwards. It fastens with one button at the waist so will not look right if it is too large. I have almost finished the second sleeve so should have it finished by tonight. A cardigan in 2 evenings. My kind of knitting!

I am off to get a coffee and drool over my new books. I will let you know the final thoughts about them tomorrow.