Baby Cardigan in Sock Yarn

I am glad to see from the comments on my last blog page to find that not alone in valuing my old patterns and that each one invokes memories for me as I look through them. When I have mentioned it to some people they think I am a bit weird. I am a bit weird, I have always known that but I did think that most people loved old patterns like me but when I have mentioned it in the past most people look at me strangely and say they love New patterns and making new things. I browse through my patterns like other people browse old photographs. I think if my house were on fire that I would be seen dragging my boxes of patterns to safety and screaming at the firemen not to drench them in water. Memo to myself I must make sure that the lids are firmly on my boxes in case of water damage. The storage boxes are, of course, made of plastic which would melt and glue themselves to my patterns in a fire which doesn't bear thinking about!

I have finally finished one of the baby cardigans. I made this in sock yam. I don't know the colour as I have lost the label but it is Lana Grossa Meilenweit Cotton Fun which is a slight misnomer as fun to knit it certainly wasn't. I had previously attempted 2 different knitted sock patterns and even a crochet sock pattern but the wool is so bouncy and slippery that it refuses to stay on the needles half of the time leading to dropped stitches. I felt like a beginner whilst knitting this cardigan as I retrieved more slipped and dropped stitches than I had done in many years. I don't feel that the yarn is suitable for socks unless you like wearing them slouch style shuttering down your ankles as the rib has absolutely no stretch no matter how much I tightened the needles. With my arthritic grip the yarn was too silky for me to get an even tension but as I still have another ball of this yarn (in a different colour) then using it up in this way is better than wasting it as it would never have been finished as a pair of socks. I used a Sirdar pattern for this but I abandoned the broken rib pattern and just knitted it in stocking stitch as all of my efforts didn't show in pattern and the dropped stitches were a bugger to pick up in pattern.

Today has been another abysmal day. It has lashed it down with rain for most of the day which plays havoc with my osteoarthritis. I wish that I could win the lottery and move to somewhere warmer.My old bones don't like all this wet cold weather.

I must go back and get my blood checked again as I have done nothing but sleep all week. I am normally a person who exists on 4 or 5 hours per night sleep so I know something is wrong when I want to go to bed at 10.30pm and sleep until 7 am. I think that the mask from my sleep apnoea machine isn't fitting tightly enough and leaking as I feel as tired as I used to feel before I had the CPAP machine. It's either that I have too much carbon dioxide in my blood stream again or my iron tablets are not working and I am anaemic. I can't absorb ferrous sulphate tablets for some reason and yet the doctor keeps on prescribing them for me. This is not a new problem and I have to be prescribed iron in a different form or have iron injections but trying to convince the doctor of this is nigh on impossible. I know my body and know how it responds to certain things but they always know better. Annoying isn't it? Maybe if my iron levels are still very low he will believe me this time and prescribe something different.

Tomorrow I am meeting up with Sylvia and Kath to go to the Stitch and Craft show at Manchester Central (used to be G-Mex)I hope that it is better than last year as I was really disappointed at the large amount of card craft work and the very small amount of wool stalls there. Let's hope for better things this year. I don't plan on spending a great deal on wool but last year there was a very good book stall there and I bought a couple of crochet books. I could probably have got them cheaper online but there is nothing like a good browse in a book is there? I just wish more book shops sold knitting and crochet books as their selection is usually pitiful and it forces me to shop online.

Whilst at the show I will call in on the Bolton Knitting Noras Naked Knitting stall and perhaps get Sylvia to take my photo there with the stall as any photographic evidence of my involvement with the calendar is woefully small. Once the You Tube videos have been erased I will be left with just 1 photo, one group photo plus hopefully one calendar shot. Good job that I didn't buy a scrap book isn't it?