THE CARDIGAN

Here it is on its very handsome new owner:

Lawrence loves it, so that means I'm happy too. We had a lovely lunch with his family today.

Let me just apologise once again for taking sooo long to get it finished, and give it to its recipient.

I actually finished it in its raglan version back in August, but decided the shoulders just weren't working. so when we got back from the States I took it back to the armholes, leaving the sleeves intact, and re-worked ordinary shoulders, which I feel work better.

FO: Rainbow Blanket

The Blanket's finished!

It's not blocked yet, or it would have straighter edges. It's not blocked because there's a major problem: IT'S NOT SQUARE! This is more than a glaring error.

I realised this was going to happen about half-way, but checked the pattern a million times and can't see that I've done anything wrong. The other projects on Ravelry are all square, so I've asked ravelers where I've gone wrong, and will report back.

DH says that I'm being rectanglist and should just embrace the rectangle. Let's see what the good people on Rav suggest.

Bear with me while I get this sorted, and hopefully I'll have some correct photos to show you.

My other problem is with Blogger: sometimes when I upload an image to a post the image rotates itself (e.g. below), and sometimes it doesn't. There's nowhere on the uploading page to change the properties ... aagghh!

At this point I should probably mention that it's one of my favourite things I've ever made. It was super easy, super fast and as any knitter would know, the colour changes really kept me going.

Easy, because although it looks really complicated, but it's not; that's the beauty of it. You just carry the yarn up the side as you swap the main colour and contrast colour every two rows. That's right, no intarsia or fair isle, it's really just slipped stitches which create the chain effect.

Fast, I'm not sure why because the cotton doesn't slip off the needles (in my case bamboo) like wool does. Although I had a break of several weeks waiting for the Ecru (main colour) to arrive, in total the knitting took about 10 days - not bad.

I absolutely love the colour work. Each colour moves on to the next in a subtle way (although I love the way the designer, Erika Flory chose to not go straight from yellow through to green, but in a way the colour moves back and forth before ending (for e.g., see the orange-peach-red-pink stretch). I hope this makes sense; I'm not sure I've articulated my thoughts very well here!

The other thing which I think really makes this project, is the designer's ingenius use of off-white for the main colour, which connects all of the colour links and borders the whole piece. Many would have just used a glaring bright white, but the Ecru is far more subtle.

Back view (still quite pretty):

Back detail:

I did make one mistake, though not according to the pattern, and it wouldn't have affected the shape of the blanket. If you look at other versions of the blanket, on each block of a separate colour, there are only three bands (separated by the chain pattern in the main colour) rather than four in my case; in other words, I changed colour four rows after other people did in their versions). This instruction was not in the pattern as far as I can see. I noticed this after I was about a quarter of the way through, and didn't want to go back. I also prefer the way I have done it, although the other versions look great too; both ways look good. Having checked and counted several times, I don't believe this would have afffected the length of the blanket, though please feel free to tell me otherwise.

Meanwhile, onto other things: when I finished the blanket last night I swatched for the Cardigan, the pattern for which I've also added to Ravelry with the aid of a helpful Sirdar pattern moderator. Again, sorry for the sideways view (I'll try to fix that). I'm just about to cast on.

Last night for dinner I made DH andmyself a nice summery Salad Niçoise (a favourite in my family) - yummy!:

New Commission

Look at these beautiful cherries:

This week's news is that a relative of DH's, Laurence, (I'd call him a family friend; he's lovely) has asked me to make him a cardigan. I'm thrilled!

After hunting high and low, I think I've found the right pattern. He wants one exactly like that worn by Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady. I didn't know the film (though I know the play) so had to search for a photo.

This is the nearest cardigan pattern I could find. I hope Laurence likes it. Check out the cheesy photos of the early 90's models! I plan to make my version classier but I'm not doing a contemporary version; this is going to be a classic shape (like all the best things in life).

He would like a camel cardigan, so I have found the yarn below:

What do you think? Is it camel-ish enough? It's an 80% merino, 20% kid mohair mix and feels divine. It should knit up nicely. I've got the leather elbow patches and leather buttons and am ready to go.

I'll keep you posted on progress, but can't cast on yet as I have to finish the Rainbow Chain Carriage Blanket (I'm on the home stretch now, and loving those colour changes). I'm afraid I'm one of those boring knitters who tends to finish one project before moving on to another.

While I was buying the yarn I couldn't help but check out what else was in John Lewis (a place I'm not usually too fond of, but the Oxford Street store has a better selection of yarn than Peter Jones).

I cam away with some Noro Silk Garden...

Destined for the pattern below (apologies but I can't seem to rotate this image):

And some chunky tweed for a log cabin blanket that was actually on sale (I had the acqua already):