FO: Sideways knit boucle top

Sorry for the rotten pics, but my resident cameraman was out last night.





Sideways knit on the KX395 in one piece, sleeves and neck insert added by hand.

Red hats and Ughs in the cupboard

These charity hats were knitted on the KX385 in the back garden on Saturday, after a bit of swearing whilst the cast on messed me about. It's leftover James C Brett marble chunky, and it turns out that the convertible mast is too tight for aran weight, so I just ran it over the top of the discs and that seemed to work. Used the free pattern I came up with a few weeks back (see Free Stuff, above).

My sleep has been disturbed lately - I never seem to "nod off". Mind you, I have been reading a history of my old school ("The Lion and the Stars") whose chapters relate to each headmaster, so they're quite long. The book was written in 1990 so is not up-to-date, but nevertheless, the history and anecdotes were quite fascinating. I'm also contemplating changing my car, and have been very disappointed as to the part-ex value my 9 year old Ka has been given.

Tried converting the "tuck away tote" crochet pattern for DK - basically worked a disc until it was about the right size, then made a shortened version of the mesh bag part. Alas, DK acrylic is really too bulky to tuck away properly, so not really a success. Have started another one with a variegated crochet cotton I picked up when I bought plain cotton for the Blusa queen cardigan back in 2009. Talking of which, I have yet to wear that cardigan. The sleeves are waaaay too long, and the pattern was written for a pert teenager, so the extended fronts I added to compensate for adult boobage have never been as good. Am seriously thinking about unpicking most of it, and adding more motifs (and shortening the wrist ruffles so they don't end up in my dinner). I do have almost a complete extra ball of the yarn. I really must learn to think instead of blindly following a pattern to the bitter end, and presuming it'll all work out in the end. Because mostly? It really doesn't!

I have a few disasters like that lurking in my cupboards. The less said about the patchwork cabled cardigan the better - a year to make, and then it dropped/stretched so much I could probably use it as a sleeping bag. So much work involved, I can't bear to throw it out, even though I'll never wear it. Somehow a hole got torn in it (right near the bottom, natch) as if to add insult to injury.

Most of the imperfect sweaters, if wearable, go in the charity bag.

Have you got any disasters lurking in YOUR cupboards?

NLI Knitathon, 9th June 2012

I did a 5 hour stint at the Next Level International charity knit-a-thon this weekend. I knitted 16 6" squares on my trusty KX395 and also helped sew up blankets with my linker. The hall was quite cold - yeah, I usually get really hot machine-knitting, so didn't think to bring a cardigan, and because I was in the other half's car, I didn't have my emergency fleece to turn to. Maybe if it had been warmer I wouldn't have knitted quite so many, ha!


A 6" square ready to be cast off.


The hot pink and the royal blue ones are mine! :)

Many thanks to Mary for organising such a lovely day, and many thanks to Linda for the scrummy gingerbread biscuits too! Diet? What diet?!