…but I’ve still been knitting!
Week 16 – 15th to 21st April
- Projects cast-on = 0
- Projects finished = 0
- Days knit = 3
- Hours knitting = 6 hours
Week 17 – 22nd to 28th April
- Projects cast-on = 1
- Projects finished = 1
- Days knit = 5
- Hours knitting = hours
Week 18 – 29th to 5th May
- Projects cast-on = 0
- Projects finished = 0
- Days knit = 7
- Hours knitting = 21 hours
Despite not blogging about my progress I continued to monitor my weekly stats as each blog was written in draft but not posted! Life got in the way, lots (and lots) of work and Bank Holiday fun with friends and family.
Diagonal Drift
Over the last three weeks I finished my Diagonal Drift scarf and to say I’m chuffed with it is an understatement!
It was such a great pattern to work on I’d be happy to make another. Week 16 into week 17 saw me continue into garter stitch hell with all those pesky knit stitches but look at the results!
After finishing the final panel I then had to tackle an I-cord bind off which was a first for me but it gives a great finish. The scarf needs a little blocking to smooth out the panels which I’ll get to over the next few weeks.
The biggest challenge with this project will now be learning how to wear it… not sure I’ve cracked it yet……
The Bubble Sweater!
Buoyed by the success of finishing the scarf I quickly cast on my next project which is another Stephen West design – his Bubble Sweater. Mark chose the pattern and chose the colours, I’m making this in West Yorkshire Spinners new wool ‘Colour Lab‘. Colour Lab is 100% wool and British which tick two boxes for me as a knitter, it’s really squishy and is knitting up well.
It’s fair to say this is one of my most challenging projects to date and I started with gusto – a twisted rib which gets folded over to make a double thick collar.
It was a little fiddly knitting a live stitch with a stitch from the cast-on edge but the finished result is great.
The next step on the pattern is the bubble stitch itself which is an odd thing for a knitter to do – drop a stitch off the needle and unravel it! Bravery was needed but I did it and it started out looking great…. until I realised I’d made a mistake…. how did that happen?!
The design has two different coloured bubbles which should sit either side of each other but in this photo I’ve tried to show the error. The top photo shows the top of each bubble almost in-line with each other, whereas the bottom picture shows it correctly aligned.
After spending most of Saturday and Sunday working on this I was gutted dear reader… I went to bed and left the jumper in the naughty corner.
Monday and Tuesday saw me patiently ripping the whole thing back to the collar and then it hit me – LIFELINES! I thread the stitches from the first row onto some scrap yarn using a tapestry needle which secured it all up and I was finally back to beginning of the body.
I’ve no idea what I did on the first attempt but after cracking on with it and giving it a second go it’s now looking perfect! When I spotted my error I was at the same spot I’m at now, so whilst I lost a week by ripping back and doing it again, I’m glad I did so it looks as it should!
Well that’s it for this week, I’m ploughing on with the jumper and will hopefully split for the sleeves today, then it’s knit all the way to the bottom!
Happy crafting…
knit365 