While-ago FO

I forgot that I hadn't posted about Mother Hand's cardigan. Here we are, a scant two months after Mother's Day and it's already finished! (Heavy on the irony). I finally sewed on the buttons last weekend when Mr Z was rewinding the shawl yarn. They're nice horn ones that I got from Brimstone buttons at Wonderwool.

 Sans flash.

Pattern: Shapely Boyfriend Cardigan by Stephanie Japel along with a charted motif based on Sarah Lund's jumper from The Killing. Mother Hand and I are having a Scandinavian holiday this summer, so it seemed apt.
Yarn: Laal Bear, from deep stash. It's been in a hatbox for so long it smells of Lush now, instead of sheep. It took just over 5 skeins of cream and just under 1 skein of brown.
Needle: 5mm
Mods: I knitted it in the round from the neck down and steeked up the front. I started in one size and increased to the next size up after the waist shaping.

Avec flash.

I really hope it is a good fit. In the end, I just oversewed the colourwork edges with the ends when I was weaving them in; the crochet reinforcement held where it was just over the cream rows, so hopefully it will hold. We're off for a little spa break with gin tasting and afternoon tea this week, so I will hopefully be able to add some pictures of her in it to this post after I get back.

Weekend WIP

I've been working on this bee shawl for Naomi for the past week and a half.

It's a kit I bought from Wonderwool. It's knitting up really soft and with just the right amount of sparkle (which you can't really see in the picture).

Naomi is a colleague who loves bees. She announced her intention to leave at the end of this school year, so I got started asap. Well, she hasn't yet found another job, so I guess I have a bit longer to finish, but since it has a 500+ stitch picot beaded bind off and exam marking starts in 10 days, I'm still knitting as fast as I can.

I had to take a brief hiatus last weekend when I had a catastrophic ball collapse. It took Mr Z the best part of two days to untangle the skein. Now I'm up to row 110ish, which is around 350 stitches of moss stitch per row, 16 times. Sigh. It is slow going. The pattern calls this moss stitch but then instructs me to purl every stitch on the wrong side. That's not moss stitch, in my book, so I am knitting the purls and purling the knits, which means it is going even slower than it needs to. After that, though, it's only three more sections until the bind off. I'm feeling determined.

Weekend WIPs

Technically this should be a FO post, but I need to weave in some ends and get it blocked before I will declare it FO'd.

Bonus toes in this one.

I bought this yarn at Wonderwool in 2017 and fully intended to knit them into this Spice Market for myself, but then decided to knit it as a gift for Mother Z, a decision I regret only more keenly since Fivemoons didn't have any mini moon sets on her stall this year - I can only assume she's not creating them anymore, which is sad if true. The colours are just lovely and blend very subtly. I am also a big fan of this pattern. It is written for six colours but I made it work for five without too much trouble - I think it is probably 12 rows shorter than it should be, but it's not exactly noticeable. I went up a needle size from the last time I knitted it so it should block out to have a nice drape.

Damn me and my altruism. I knew there was a reason I only ever knitted anything for myself.

I dived straight into my next shawl project this evening, a Bee Happy which will be a gift for Naomi, a colleague who's probably leaving at the end of the year. I wanted to get right on with Volt but I'm afraid that when exam season hits there will be no time to finish a shawl and I don't need a DK jumper for summer anyway (though I did wind the yarn for it today).

Once I've finished the shawl, I will be over halfway to my best ever yarn total for a year (2016: 8,163m) and it will only be halfway through the year. I might have finally found my knitting mojo again.

Sunday Selfie

I have been looking through my pictures and GoPro footage from Alabama and came across this accidental capture. I spent a lot of time shouting GOPRO TAKE A PHOTO at the GoPro, with limited success, so in the end I set it to image burst and took a dozen or so each time. This was a side capture and quite blurry but it was good early morning light and I was filled with pancakes and therefore extra cheery.