Knit knit knit

Is all I appear to be fit for today as the summer cold that has been circulating through the office air conditioning has finally caught up with me so today has been spent dozing, reading (more on that later) and playing with Kauni along with my constant companions!

Kauni is still behaving very nicely and as always the advantage of a sweater knit in the round is that you can try it on as you go...

On the good side I am now past the armholes

and the front neck shaping

but on the down side it means I must now come face to face with the fact that I have to take a pair of scissors to my knitting. At the rate I'm going I anticipate the deed (at least for one of the armholes) taking place over the weekend or possibly early next week. Suitable amounts of alcohol and ice cream will be brought in for the purpose.

I'm still entranced by the pretty colour changes - the colour repeats are not always the same length so I've not actually had a true band repeat yet which is fantastic.

There has been much discussion across the bloggysphere about the merits and challenges of getting matching sleeves. For the moment I think I will probably go with deliberately mis-matched sleeves - the only way I can think of to get truly matching sleeves would be to knit them seperately as a giant tube with two steeks and the seam and sew them in - otherwise if you didn't start in quite the right place - and there are no clear colour changes - I just know I'd end up slightly out and it would bug me far more than being deliberately different - let me know what you think.

As I said, the rest of my time has been spent playing with new books - the new Rowan is out as are the new RYC books and I have acquired both Accessories and Travel. Whilst all three have the usual batch of comedy projects, there are a few things to add to my "must knit" list including a gorgeous wrap top in the Accessories book made from RYC wool silk DK - yum!

I have to go cough now - try not to catch the bug through the internet!

PS News from Peggy - she likes the sheep

Baaaa

C'est finit- well almost

Oooo it's been a while since I got a chance to say hello to the bloggisphere - "hello!" - life has been manic and when not being manic I have been knitting in a crazy effort to complete baby E's blanket before he is old enough to drive himself over to see me and I am pleased to report success in that quarter.

(pre-blocking)

I wanted to have the blanket finished by August and as of 10pm last night it was blocking on a towel on the spare bedroom floor. This blanket did take slightly longer than the first - partly becuase I wasn't knitting so intently (16 days is a bit crazy) and partly because it was the second blanket and I knew what it was going to look like.

Incidentally the fact that I knew what it was going to look like and what modifications I was going to make (the modifications that saw me rip out an entire side of the border last time) did not preclude me from making a mess of the triangle edge on the top border and having to pull it out and re-do it - knitterly overconfidence take your bow!!

(blocked)
I'm told (admittedly by encouraging female relations) that you forget the pain of childbirth because you have the baby to look at and if that is true (and I have my suspicions) then it is analagous to the production of this blanket. I still do enjoy knitting this pattern but doing two so close together has brought on a touch of the second sock syndrome and I had had enough of the border triangles by the time I finished the 132nd (bearing in mind the 28 I had to rip out). However, the finished product is beautiful if I say so myself and once it has popped through the washing machine and is all blocked out I realise why I am making this. It is perhaps strange that I never spend any time with the finished blankets - the last one came off the blocking towels and was in the recipient's hands within 2 hours, this one will go out in tomorrow's post. One of these days there will be an alphabet blanket that stays with me but not for a little while (hopefully enough time for me to summon up the urge to knit another one).

The thing is that seeing the finished blanket I want to make one for Baby 3 (due in October) becuase it is the nicest gift that I can think to make to give to him/her, not through lack of inspiration (thanks Ravelry) but because it ticks every box, it's machine washable, interesting to knit, big enough to snuggle under and goes with just about every decor .... I'd better go order some more Baby Cashmerino!!

The almost is Peggy's sheep which Mary correctly identified from my last post oh so long ago.

This is the anatomy of a sheep:

to whit - one back, one tummy, one head, four feet, four ears (front and back x 2) and a little tail. I made valiant efforts to sew up Peggy the sheep last night while the blanket was washing but I only got this far:

I have sewn up the ears and the tail on the way to work this morning and I hope to finish tonight after I get home from knitting and then there can be two parcels in the post tomorrow - economy of post office effort.

All this finishing means that an old friend who has been sat in the corner of the sofa watching me is coming back into play - roll on colour!