Start-itis? Oh yes indeed!

Well, I rectified the jumper with the long arm today, just needs ends sewing in and two buttons or press-studs added - otherwise the neck will be too big. Might decorate it with ribbons, not sure. I also finished up the white aran top - again, just some ends and some sewing to do. I should've made a bigger size though - it's a little tight. Another thing to persuade me to lose weight! Two weeks into the year, and I've lost nowt, dunno what I'm doing wrong!

Made this hat but on the chunky machine tonight, for no other reason than I wanted to try it out. So, another thing to sew up. Plus there's the Rowan waistcoat thing, which is waaay too thick to go on the Hague linker, and must be sewn up by hand. I've also bought a zip and a cushion pad for the pink cushion - I should have probably sewed the zip in first, trying to figure out how to do it now the sides are already sewn up. Doh!

Have spent the last two weeks almost entirely machine knitting - made some serious inroads into my OCN coursework, and started to get the hang of double bed jacquard on the Silver Reed machine. DBJ is basically a kind of fairisle, but it's knitted in rib, and the floats are hidden inside the fabric. To do it by hand you'd slip the colours you didn't want, and knit the colours you did - it'd be quite complicated though. Discovered I have an RJ1 carriage, which allows me to do bird's eye backing instead of striped backing, so that's the next thing to try out.

One good thing about staying in and knitting, means I'm not tempted by the sales - January is practically a six week month for me, money-wise, so am trying to be frugal. Plus the weather last weekend was foul!

It's getting late now so I think I'll take some sewing downstairs and make a start, go keep t'other half company. Pictures to follow in the week I expect.