Circle jacket progresses

As per usual I am crocheting the sleeves before I finish off the body of the circle jacket. I don't like crocheting sleeves at the end as it is more weight to heave around whilst I am making them plus I am not sure if I have enough wool and so might need to nip up to Bury market on Wednesday for another ball to finish it off. I will have a better idea once the sleeves are finished. I think that I might have to run a strengthening thread across the shoulders as when I try it on it feels like it is falling off all the time. When it is all completed I will have a better idea of how the collar sits. I read on Ravelry that a few people have had difficulties with keeping the jacket on their shoulders with the weight of the collar.It might need reinforcing with a piece of narrow ribbon as we used to use to stop shoulder seams drooping years ago. No-one does that anymore. It was quite a normal thing to do when I was a girl to strengthen the shoulder seams and cardigan button bands with petersham ribbon to stop them stretching out of shape.

I popped up to the local shops today for some food shopping. I didn't go out at the weekend so essentials like milk and bread had run out. I always glance, usually in vain, in the local charity shops in case someone has donated wool. Today I was in luck I got 12 x 40 grams Lindsey brushed chunky for the princely sum of 50p a ball. Yes I know that I am going to Woolfest at the weekend but they won't have any bargains to equal that there.

I not only did the sleeve of the baby cardigan that I had set myself a task to do last night but I also almost finished the second sleeve so only have the bands to knit and the sewing up to do. Then of course there is the second cardigan to knit. I will use another pattern for that one as I was not over fond of this pattern. It was one of those where it writes lines of pattern and then you have to decipher the bits in brackets whether or not you actually do that bit or another bit depending on what size you am doing. I have done that before but not when there are 3 separate bits of instructions before the actual pattern repeat starts. Patterns never used to be this complicated. I should have photocopied it and crossed out all the bits not relevant to the size I was knitting before I started.

I have put a new link to Jam and Jerusalems blog as she has been having some trouble with the old blog and as it seems to have vanished overnight without a trace she has made a new one now. I have ammended the link on the right hand side of my page. She has got a free pattern for a cute crochet chick and an adorable knitted sheep on her blog.

I have fallen out with my sock

I have fallen out with knitting the lacy socks. I have been beset with problems. The pattern has driven me nuts and stye on my eye hasn't helped my patience. Last night I managed to drop a stitch and on a ladder lace pattern that isn't a good thing. It laddered down about 10 rows before I could catch it so there was a lot of &*$" going on in my house. I have managed to latch it up but it's less than perfect. The one saving grace is that it is under the foot otherwise I would have had to unrip it stitch by stitch and row by row. There is going to be an awful lot of cosmetic darning done on this sock before it reaches my niece. I have got the second sock syndrome and I haven't even finished the first!

The photos today are of my charity shop stash that I bought the other day. I have 600 grams in each of the lilac/purple shades although the lilac has quite a few half balls in the bag. Where are the other halves? I wonder what projects were started and then discarded before it reached Cancer Research? The white fleck wool was another mystery. There appeared to be 5 x 100 gram balls but on closer inspection one of the balls changed colour a quarter way through the ball. I rewound it to check and now have about 80 grams of wool flecked with orange, green and blue and 420 grams with just green and blue. Strange. There was no knot to designate where the colours changed from one colour to another. Weird happenings in the balling dept? Perhaps the lady throwing the orange bits in had gone on a tea break?

The wool appears to be either acrylic or acrylic mix but I got 1,700 grams for £10 so I am well pleased. I don't know what I will turn it into as yet but the fleck will come in handy for making something for baby Charlie. I have found 500 grams of 4ply pale blue in my stash and was searching through my vast collection of patterns but there were hardly any 4ply ones and the ones that were 4ply were either crocheted or for girls. I can see a bit of Internet searching going on today although most of the patterns are US and they tend to use thicker wool for their babies. I like to see a brand new baby in finer things. If anyone has any links to any nice boy's fine garments especially a beanie please let me know.

I have a Debbie Bliss book but when I came to look closely most of the patterns are in Aran thickness. For a new baby hat? Erika Knight has one 4ply cardigan in her book but it is plain but then the book is called Simple Knits. I looked in the Itty Bitty Hat book and the smallest hat in there is too large and in worsted (double knit). I suppose I could pop it on smaller needles and use 4ply and see what happens.

I am trying not to put these socks down as they will get pushed to the back of the drawer if I do. The lure of Charlie knitting is beckoning as that would be far more exciting. I have found a crochet pattern that could be boyish ( well for a very young baby) so I will start on that. You can't keep me away from my crochet for long or I get fidgety!

I love my Knit Picks Needles

The sun is shining. My back feels so much better than yesterday so all is well in my world. I have quite a few photos of finished articles and new sock wool still to post but today is all about my new needles. I had heard about Knit Picks needles on several sock blogs and how sockers loved them so I asked , well more like sweet talked and coaxed, Vicky to order me a set when she next ordered from Get Knitted.com. Vicky being the good friend and trouper that she is promptly ordered for me. I really must learn how to order online. But then again maybe not as I would order far too much and have the screaming hab dabs when the credit card bill came.

Anyway I digress as per usual. I got the Knit Picks needles on Sunday and was going to use them when I started my niece Vicky's socks (2 Vicky's it's very confusing at times) but of course I could not wait to try them out so swopped the long term ever lingering Tiger socks onto them and am so impressed with the speed at which I can knit on them. I had managed to knit an inch or so on the second sock at the Knit Out using the bamboo US1 needles and on Sunday evening I progressed so fast on the Knit Picks that I actually turned the heel. Wow. They are though a tad slippy though and last night at the Knit Out in Salford I lost a stitch off the end of one needle and as the lighting in the pub is very dim I had to stop knitting as I could not see to latch up the slipped stitch. I am using the size US2 and not the US1 as when I tried the needles through my gauge they are slightly smaller than the same size in bamboo. I had already read on someones blog that they are slightly finer than the wood or bamboo which is why I tried a needle through the gauge first. I have done more inches of knitting per hour on the sock in the last 2 days than I have in the months they have been on the needles. I can't wait to start Vicky's socks now.

I have started crocheting a smaller version of the Sweet Pea shawl for Perran. I chained 20 sts less and that gave me 18 repeats instead of the 20 as the book. I have also dropped down to a size 4.50mm hook instead of the 5mm I would usually use. I know the book says 5.50mm hook but I tend to crochet slightly loosely so always drop a hook size for most things. I think that this will be a better manageable size for her.

The middle photo is some treasure trove that I found in the local charity shop. I always look and am rarely lucky but yesterday I found 2oo grams James C Brett Marble chunky, 200 grams of Patons Symphony and 400 grams of Patons Fab DK in a mix of colours all for £5 so I have plenty of hat yarn ready for my next hilarious attempts to make myself a wearable hat.

The electricians have just turned up to put a light and some plug sockets in my garage so I have to stop Buster from menacing them. He is not the best dog in the world where tradesmen are concerned. he takes it all very personally when they need to come into the house.

I think I came back from the Biobank with more than I went in with. I hardly ever get a cold and yet today I am sneezing like mad and my nose and eyes are running. There were a lot of people getting tested at the same time as me so there were probably a lot of germs lingering about. I can't take any cold remedies other than honey and lemon as the pain killers I am on have paracetamol in them and over the counter cold remedies contain it and so would overdose me. I have had flu jabs over the last 5 years and so rarely catch anything. I can't remember the last time that I had a bad cold. I have had two freshly squeezed oranges and will eat some more fruit today in an effort to boost up my Vit C levels.

I met my neighbour Jean today. She had a similar back op 6 weeks ago to the one planned for me and says she has never felt better. She is walking quite well and has hardly any pain now. Her X rays show that the bone fragments are knitting together nicely and everything is well. I feel more hopeful of the outcome of mine now although my op is more involved than hers it still shows me that things can only get better.