Done and Posted

I parcelled Mavis up today and sent her off. I had another look at the neckline in bright light and still couldn't find the end, so I decided that this was a sign that I shouldn't do any more to it. Thank you very much, Zippiknits, for your encouraging comment too. It was just what I needed. The yarn softened up even more in the blocking and I began to wonder how much wear Silk Garden stands up to - should I knit elbow pads?

I had to buy an extra ball to finish off the scarf (having started it in order to finish up left-over yarn, ho hum), which I got from Jannette as usual, and I noticed that she has this - black and grey Kauni. How cool is that? You could knit words in it. If you drew up the charts.

And here is a prettier picture of the Scaruffle, as promised. It's very dainty, and I keep picking it up to play with it. For those who are new to the party, it's the Scaruffle from The Knitter's Book of Yarn, and it must be the easiest thing ever, if you can just master knitting with air (Kidsilk Haze) and barrage balloons (8.5mm needles). One of my uncles did Highland dancing when he was in the Army (he was a bandsman), and they were taught to dance in their Army boots so that when they put on dancing shoes they simply flew into the air. I think a similar effect takes place here. Knitting with matchsticks would be easy afterwards.

I've started Chrissy in the Organic (that's the colour, not the method of production) All Seasons Cotton but it's not really worth photographing. Imagine some string on an Addi circ and you've got it. I had the usual dither about what size to knit: the largest size is to fit a 40" bust, but it measures 60 inches. I don't think I actually want it too oversized, although I want it quite oversized, which is no help at all. The other ASC sweater I knitted grew with washing but it grew sideways - one expects cotton to stretch lengthwise but this has 40% microfibre so it grows sideways instead. I'm doing the ribbing at the moment, which has some curious pickup-stitch -between-needles, slip-stitch sort of tomfoolery at the ends, so I'm curious to see what that's in aid of.

Chrissy is intended to be totally thoughtless knitting, so I will need something a little more challenging to do as well. I got a an email at the weekend telling me about this sale and decided that it would be too great a shame to pass up the duck egg blue cashmere at this extraordinary price. I didn't really buy it; I just put it on my credit card and that doesn't count, does it? Not another bleeding scarf, I hear you say - I can hear you smiting you forehead too - but this one is going to be for me. You wouldn't deny me a duck egg blue cashmere scarf, would you? My very favourite colour? If all else fails, it will just be a single rib, but I'm secretly hoping I might manage to do a Drifting Pleats - be still, my beating heart.

Snails

I don't have any immediate plans for knitting mittens, but I can't get these out of my mind.
They're from the Knitter's Book of Yarn. I love the snails. I keep thinking they would be cute round the hem of a child's cardigan but a little girl might not like snails. Then again she might.

Dis 'n' Dat

Well, that was a long silence, wasn't it? There hasn't been a huge amount to say, as I have been busy knitting Mavis and then ripping it out and then knitting it again and then ripping another bit out.
I seem to have been more than usually dopey, and have managed to get more stitches on the front half than on the back half, although you can see in the photo that they're evenly matched at the hem. The obvious answer is that I decreased too much on the back but a close examination doesn't support this.
And every time I measure it, it's a different size. The chevron stitch section is impossible to measure anyway because it stretches in every direction, and the rest of it grows quite often. I think this yarn will relax a bit when it's soaked and dried anyway (I'm not going to pin it out rigorously so I am avoiding using the b-word) so at the moment I do seriously believe (as opposed to wildly hoping) that it will be the right size. There's a jigsaw of the chevrons in the sidebar.

The Kidsilk Sampler Scarf is inching along. The olive yarn did indeed turn out to be olive in the morning light, although at the curry end of the olive spectrum. I have now changed to a deep dark chocolate shade and intend to introduce that extravagantly bright green that Rowan calls Jelly next. Many thanks for all the comments about needles. Knitpicks don't ship to the UK, Gretchen, but Get Knitted import some of them and I want to try them out. I keep getting side-tracked by the multi-coloured wooden ones, of course - oh look, pretty. The facts that this yarn is much easier to knit in daylight (for me, anyway) and that fine-pointed metal needles are required, are sort of pushing this project and its companion further into the year.

What companion project, you ask? I ordered a copy of this from Amazon and it arrived yesterday. For those of you in too much of a hurry to click on the link, it is Clara Parkes' Knitter's Book of Yarn. It has a pattern for a Scaruffle, a sort of ruffly, frothy scarf which can be knitted with Kidsilk Haze and which I think would suit stripes very well. My impression of the book so far is that the content is very good, although I think she has been let down a bit by the photography and design. The photographs are pretty, but they don't always yield the information which a potential knitter needs and wants. Like a lot of knitting books nowadays, its appearance suggests that it is aimed at beginners, although the content will be of interest to advanced knitters too. One thing that really baffles me is that scattered throughout the book there are sumptuous, whole-page photos of a single skein or an artful ball of exotic fiber, with no caption to indicate what the h*ll it is. Or am I missing something? Is there a list somewhere at the back? I can't find one.

This obviously isn't a reason for refraining from buying the book: it contains a lot of well-organized information and some lovely patterns by named designers, from small and simple to a Norah Gaughan cardigan. It's a book which you will read when you first get it and continue to refer to frequently afterwards. I think it could reasonably be called a treasure trove.

I went to HK Handknit's closing down sale this week, with my friend Jean. I bought a book of Louisa Harding's patterns for children; I like her patterns but they aren't usually the sort of thing I would wear so it was nice to find her patterns for little girls. If they had had any blue Auricania I would have bought it, but they didn't so I couldn't. As Jean said, it's not as if either of us needed any more yarn.