Before writing a new blog post I like to re-read the one from the previous week. This gives me a sense of what I’ve actually accomplished in the intervening 7 days – and it’s often a surprise!
For example, last week I had just made the first of nine Persian granny squares for my Persian Tiles Blanket, designed by Jane Crowfoot. By Friday evening I had these…!
The other eight are nearly complete! In her talk at Wool-in Garden City, Jane Crowfoot recommended taking a ‘production line’ approach when making several motifs that are the same and I can see why – it really is a lot quicker and easier to do, and you don’t have to keep changing yarn colour or hook size so often either! The double treble stitches that cross over and attach onto stitches three rounds in are quite tricky and the number of times I have to restart those is quite amusing!
After posting photos of the sleeves of my adult Honeybun cardigan blocking last Tuesday, there has been a lot of work and change with this design. I realised, after I’d seamed the sleeves and started to pin them to the body, that I’d forgotten to include the main underarm cast-off from the body into the sleeve shaping. This meant I wouldn’t be able to successfully seam the sleeves to the body at all, and the whole sleeve cap for both sleeves would need to be ripped out. It also meant I had to completely recalculate the sleeve cap decreases and the shoulder shaping.
It was a bit galling having to go backwards quite so much, but at least I only needed to undo about an inch of the sleeve seam in order to get the stitches back on the needle.
From there I was able to reknit both sleeve caps and seam the sleeves to the body.
Having popped to Yarn O’clock on Saturday afternoon to get a 120cm 2.5mm needle, I picked up stitches all around the body for the button band – somewhere around 900 sts. By Sunday evening I had worked the 14-row button band, calculating the position of the buttonholes to my satisfaction and included an extra bit of shaping near the neck from my Caramel Slice design. I cast off almost half of the stitches and got my lovely wife Sue to try it on. It’s not her style of thing at all, but she will model almost anything to help me out! Once it was on an actual person I could see the extra neck shaping did not work in this design. It was an increase worked every other row, starting in the row after the pick-up…
So, guess what? The button band got ripped back to the pick-up (no way I was going to pick up all those stitches from scratch again if I could help it) and off we went again. I’m now back on the cast-off for the second time, without the extra neck shaping. It looks much better and I really do think that by tonight it will be finished.
Then I just have to weave in the rest of the ends, calculate the button band pick-ups and buttonholes for the other 19 sizes and check the pattern through. Oh, and choose, buy and sew on the buttons. I think I might wash and block the whole completed cardigan as well. I’ve booked the pattern in with my tech editor – fingers crossed it will be ready for Wonderwool Wales in April!
There isn’t a lot else I have to show you this week – although I have updated my “Where I’ll Be” page, so do have a look at that.
My sister-in-law has been visiting for the past few days and, as well as all of us having fun and laughter here, she and Sue greatly enjoyed the snooker semi-final at Llandudno. I stayed home and knitted – snooker isn’t really my thing and it’s good for them to have some proper ‘sister-time’ too.
I’ve got quite a range of other designs coming up soon – hopefully I will be able to tease you with a few sneak peeks at some swatches for new ideas next week. Hint – there will be slip stitches and cables involved in some of them, as well as lace and brioche in others!
Until then, take care and stay warm. K x
