Weekend WIPs

I have been productive on the old knitting front of late. I think this is partly due to listing things I want to work on in the British Banter forum on Ravelry. Last month I achieved my goal and was drawn as the winner, receiving a new pattern to help me work down my queue (which now stands at six pages). Here's what I'm working on this month.



I swatched for this wrap top over a year ago. Shame. The pattern was passed on to me by Jill at knitting group who won it and the yarn required for it from a magazine, but she didn't care for the pattern so I bought this gorgeous blue alpaca (Artesano, sadly discontinued now, although I do keep coming across frayed bits in the skeins which might explain why) and then waited around for a long time before knitting it. The positive is, it now counts as a stash project.

It knitted up quite quickly - just a couple of weeks. Now I need to pick up around the armholes and all the way around the neckband and then do the picot cast off. I'm not thrilled. I already decided to skip knitting the 2 38" ties for it and will instead be adding ribbon, or a button. Or maybe some snaps, because in spite of careful measuring I don't think it is big enough. Why do I never remember that the correct bust size is never going to be the correct hip size?




I cast this on last September, knit an inch, then didn't touch it again until February. After that it went quite fast (who knew that actually knitting on something made a project go faster?)

This is in the scaredy pile. I need to sew in the other button band, but I am scared to iron it flat because my iron is a bit grubby (having been a gift for my 18th birthday) and I don't want to mark it. I am scared to sew the snaps on and discover that it doesn't fit, or that the button bands which I modified and have turned out longer than the rest of the cardigan look stupid, because that would require a lot of ripping back and cutting stitching. Jenny from Knatterers pointed out I could just block the rest of the cardigan to the same length. This is perfectly logical. I am scared it won't work.




This is my current favourite project to work on. It is a camisole I'm working in the Texere 4 ply linen I got at Wonderwool.It is very interesting construction, but the largest size is considerably smaller than I, so I am planning some mods. I am doggedly slogging through the 1x1 ribbing for the second strap; then I will finish the other points of the star. At this point the top may also enter the scaredy pile as I worry that my planned mods won't work and what I should REALLY have done is continue knitting in the round and increasing until the centre motif was wide enough and adjusted the decreases thereafter to fit. Yes, I could rip it back. No, I'm not going to - then I'd just worry about running out of yarn. I am pretty sure it will work.




I began this shawl from a kit in 2010. I put it away because it was so time-consuming to add a row, and I have to count every row. Now I am sorry I didn't finish it sooner. I have been trying to add two rows a day to it but that has fallen off over the last week. I blame the linen top. Still, if I am industrious I might finish it in time for my summer holiday. It's double stranded laceweight and it's very warm. It will be just the thing for the misty Pacific coast mornings.

The rabbit is super-impressed by all this; you can tell.