I mentioned knitting being done in those past days, right? Well, here is the current status of the result of knitting:



That is "Vodka Lemonade" by Thea Colman, a cardigan with raglan sleeves, knit from the top down. I'm using Margit's naturally-dyed "Understatement" yarn, and the colourway is called "Honigtopf" (honeypot).

I'm already looking forward to wearing this thing, both the feel and the texture are just so nice! There will, however, be need for something additional, small, for my needles for the upcoming travel to Méry, where I won't want to lug along a half-finished cardigan...

(There's still a very few spaces left, by the way - so if you want to join in at the Weekend Weaving Workshop, you still can!)

My current holiday knitting has finally been finished! Now winter can come (it was a scarf).

It is actually already blocked and the (two) ends are sewn in, so it really is finished and not just in the "finished but not completely so" stage that a lot of my knits spend a while in.

And because knitting progress is much nicer in pics... here you go:



This is what came off the needles - and the tiny ball of yarn is what was left. I modified it a tiny bit by leaving out one of the repeats of the middle section, though in retrospective I could have done that and still have one or two repeats of the last section - this way, I have three of the last section. Also good.

This scarf was supposed to measure about 150-160 cm in length after blocking, with about 20 cm of width.

Well...



Mine turned out more than 2 m long, and significantly wider than 20 cm. So I now have a really long, really wide scarf.

 
(I also realised that blocking a plain straight edge is better done from the middle outwards than from one side... made a huge difference. One day I will learn how to block, I'm sure.)



It is a really nice scarf/stole, and it was nice to knit as well. The pattern is Siren Song by Louise Zass-Bangham, yarn was my handspun.



One happy knitter.

There has been holiday knitting, and there has been non-holiday knitting.

The difference between those categories, by the way, is that holiday knitting has to be

a) easy enough to be worked on trains, buses, and planes, so no utterly elaborate lace or other things that require me to look into instructions all the time,

b) a large enough project to make sure it will last the whole of the holidays, yet

c) small enough (or divisible into small enough parts) for me to take along.

Non-holiday knitting does not need to be any of this. Now an almost-finished cardi definitely does not fall under holiday knitting, so Cushing Isle stayed at home, where it has seen some more action now. So much action, in fact, that both sleeves are now finished and have been blocked.



As you can see, I'm still not the Queen of Blocking Things To The Same Size On The First Try... they did get to be similarly sized, though, eventually, and now they are waiting to be seamed up. Then they will be waiting for the button bands to be finished (I'm still picking up stitches for that), and then, eventually again, there will be a new cardi in my wardrobe.

Which is nice - because there's the next project already waiting!

There's been some knitting in the past weeks - not insane amounts, mind you, but a little bit.

The Cushing Isle Sweater went on a little hiatus while we were on our paddling trip - I had almost finished the first sleeve, and I did not want to run out of knitting while on holidays, which would have been a distinct possibility... so something else needed to take over for a bit.

Enter Siren Song, a pattern for a scarf which needs an appropriate amount of yarn to make something out of the hand-spun mix I still had hanging out here, all 458 m of it:



And that was about all I managed to knit during the paddling trip. (It's more than it looks like, though, since the scarf is knit lengthwise...)

So now that we are back, the cardigan is back on top of my knitting list, and by now the first sleeve is finished and the second one is underway.



I've also done a little testing to make sure the buttonholes will fit the buttons I have for it, and I'm all excited to get this one all done and finished... also because there's another lovely pattern lined up and waiting to be knit: Vodka Lemonade.

There might have been a little accident this weekend where I happened to mix up left and right. I might have turned right into Margit's room instead of left into mine, and while getting my bearings, I might accidentally have picked up enough yarn for me to knit said Vodka Lemonade cardi.

Might.



(The colourway is called "Honigtopf", honey pot. How fitting.)

There's been a hype (or something sort of like a hype) for knitting on big needles for a while, even extending to knitting huge, extra-thick blankets or rugs out of wool top (though why anyone would want such a dust-gathering blatant invitation to a moth infestation that is heavy and cannot be washed, totally eludes me). Now personally, I'm more a fan of small needles and small stitches, though I will make exceptions for nice lace patterns.

This, however, is pretty cool: A garden fence knitted in a lace pattern.

That, for me, would actually be a reason to take up fence poles (or curtain poles), dub them "knitting needles" and have a go. Luckily, we already have a fence, so there's no ral temptation for me... but if you are a knitter with a garden and in need of a new fence, maybe it's something for your next project?

Some interesting things I stumbled across:

There's a "Jumpers and Jazz" festival in Warwick that includes a men's knitting circle. How cool is that?

More cool knitting - there's a guy offering scarf knitting via a stationary cycle matched up with a knitting machine in a train station (German article with picture and video link). That seems to be somewhere in Belgium... but maybe there will be more Cyclo-Knitters in the future, who knows?

Not interested in knitting? Here is an article about factories - to be more precise, it's a book review, but it makes for an interesting read on its own.

I have finished making my way up again on the first side of the Cushing Isle front part, and now I'm about to fix the mistake selvedge on the armhole side. Thankfully, it's not as many rows to fix, and not as many decreases.



While it was theoretically absolutely clear to me what I had to do, it turned out to be more of a brainbendy thing to do than I had expected, and there are a few irregularities where the repeat at the edge is only half there due to the stitch count. Plus I sometimes had to go a few rows down with the decrease stitch, too, in order to make the proper cable crossing.

So the result is not perfect, but it's okay for me, and since this all takes place right at the button band edge (which is looming ever nearer in the future)I figure nobody will notice after blocking and finishing.

So. Next steps: Sleeve knitting, blocking of the fronts, and figuring out the button band details. I'm not sure yet if I'm not going to add an extra button, and whether the buttonholes as described are what I will actually use, so there's a bit of testing in my near future...