FO: Sideways fairisle with magicolour

Only a lunatic knits a fairisle sweater during a heatwave. Oh well, I am that lunatic then!

Current mood: happy

Fun with fairisle

Well, I had a fun weekend playing with the patterning on the KH965i, the Cog being employed elsewhere for the day. I've long hankered over making a sideways-knitted fairisle sweater, and having managed to acquire a simple Wendy Phillips pattern, the creative urge just overtook me on Saturday.  All went well for a while, but the patterning mechanism starting to make a noise akin to a washing machine with rocks in (ok I'm guessing here, but it wasn't good!). I took the back parts off a few times but couldn't see anything amiss. Eventually I oiled both drum pivots, and the rotating black bar, and it seems a lot better. There WAS a bit of fluff back there but nothing out of the ordinary. 

The sweater in question has patterned bands, I'm in love with it already, despite black not really being my colour. I'm using pink and blue Magicolour for the fairisle. One more sleeve and cuff to go and then just sewing up. I over-complicated programming the pattern for the welts - it's much easier just to start from row 17 than it is to try and extricate the pattern if you only need one repeat. Still, I'm pleasantly surprised at how easy the machine is to program. The manual is still terrible though! 

If I make this sweater again, I might flip the pattern at the centre neck to make it more symmetrical, and posibbly pick a pattern with less long floats or use the ladder back technique. What with carrying the unused colour up the side, there was already enough going on. I fancy doing this for a Christmas sweater, though I'm tempted to swap to a V neck. I'm not a great wearer of round necks. I had a few false starts - a mispatterned band, and a sleeve that was 25 stitches too narrow. Oops. 

Pictures to follow shortly! 

Oh, and the KHC / two colour tuck problem I had in the last post seems to have evaporated. Performance anxiety perhaps? Who knows!

The circular cardigan is in time out. I cannot seem to keep my increases in order, one would think it would be easy. I seem to be tinking more than knitting on it. Ugh. 

In non-crafting news, we paid to stream the Black Sabbath charity concert this weekend, having failed to get tickets. £25 (£33 after other charges - yeah, there's always someone making a quick buck) and you get zero toilet queues and a better choice of food and drink. What's not to like? The Cog streamed the first half (that we missed) yesterday. I wonder whether Oasis thought about streaming their concerts? Could be quite a money-spinner!

Current mood: enthralled

Busy doing nothing...

Apologies for the dearth of posts lately... The change to GMT always affects my ability to do more than tread water - it being dark when I finish at 4.30pm, it's all I can do to cook and keep the house sanitary of an evening. So far my sleep is ok, but I seem to get tired earlier. Though handknitting is happening - it's a much "cosier" activity in front of the tv, don't you think? I think I need to drastically reduce the contents of the knitting room. I seem to have amassed a lot of books and patterns that I'll probably never get around to using, many of them from estate donations. This has a two-fold effect - I can't locate the patterns I DO wish to knit (the Posh Frock cardigan that seems to hide a lot is currently missing again), and then I end up getting sidetracked looking at other patterns and disheartened when I can't find something that matches up with either the yarn I want to use or the mental image of what I want to produce. I've got a large green ringbinder full of self-published patterns that I "might want" to make at some point, but clearly I don't want to enough! I think I may scan the "maybes" and donate the rest to TWAM. Consequently, after an hour of sensory overload and a bit of tidying up / sorting, nothing much gets done! Ugh!

I was recently lucky enough to buy a hardly-used Brother KH965 which had been upgraded to the KH965i (it means it has a port I can connect to DAK). For various reasons, it's been haunting the living room ever since, whilst I found the time to dig out the KH950i acquired in 2009, steal its spongebar and check that that machine is complete enough to be donated or sold on. Surprisingly, the KH950i is MUCH heavier than the KH965i. As the main difference between the two is the lack of a mylar sheet reader, I can only assume they fashioned the reader out of a house brick! As the KH950i arrived ignomiously smashed, wrapped only in a refuse sack (yes, the seller was at fault, not the delivery company), it's lucky it's working at all. It's been a great little machine and I hope to find it a loving new home. In the meantime, the new addition was put through its paces with a little patterned "air knitting" and all is well, so I will assume the rest of it is fine too for now. Of course, now I want to get it set up, despite having done a bunch of swatches on the 260K machine which is currently up, because I found a bunch of garter stitch patterned jumpers. Argh! Oh, for a proper workroom where I could have more than two machines up at once! 

Asides from the crafting, xmas preparations are underway here. I jacked in the netball, because it didn't turn into a social thing in the end - more a being run ragged by thirty-somethings who learned not to throw the ball to me because I'm slower and rubbish - and am looking for something else to expand my social circle. Last night it was a very wet hike around the local area, which is apparently rich in history - I learnt none of it, alas - I think the lead walker's notes dissolved! I guess most of us were grateful to keep moving and warm. Today we awoke to falling snow. I may try joining a local choir next. After all my failed attempts to meet new local like-minded people, I'm beginning to think it's not meant to be. I feel somewhat bereft that my almost-sister-in-law moved away, but we rarely saw them anyway. Oh well! Perhaps I need to accept my lot, and hibernate in GMT. 

Current mood: lethargic