Sad to say, it took a week's holiday off work (and then not until Thursday) for me to destress enough and do some actual machine knitting. We did manage to catch up with relatives and see Shakespeare's birthplace, something that's been on my bucket list for ages. It's tiny and a bit disappointing when compared with the other properties, ie Mary Arden's and Anne Hathaway's cottages. Luckily we have a ticket which allows us entrance to all three until the end of September this year. It was further complicated by a coach load of French students who were determined to take ridiculous selfies in front of displays of text in the small museum that precedes the historic property. Ugh, I do wish mobile phones could be banned in certain areas - take selfies in the garden, by all means, when you're not under people's noses, but not when other paying customers are trying to squint past you and look at things!
First up was the Christine shawl. This is my second attempt - my first was frogged when I ran out of yarn. My copy of the pattern has no indication of yardage or yarn weight. Anyway, I spied some terracotta coloured yarn, picked up some months ago for a donation. It had been doubled and made into yarn cakes, and came with the single yarn on a cone, which declared that it was Atkinson Sienna. It is a "wiggly" yarn, like a boucle but with no slubs, and seemed to be about a 3ply so I thought it would be perfect for this project. All went well until I was about 150 rows from the end. The shawl is loosely based on one of Bill King's designs, where you knit a "mock rib" of 3 needles in work, 1 out, and use short row shaping three times to make a turn that sits around the neck. It starts and ends with 240 rows of straight knitting. Yes, the last yarn cake had clearly had a visit from moths, or at least one end had, because it snapped repeatedly. Even though I wound off the first layer, the damage continued. In the end I was tying on the snapped yarn and letting the knots fall where they may. I would usually tie on at the ends but this went on for quite some time! Anyway, I managed to cast off (the remainder of the yarn is now in the bin!) and after weaving in the ends I deliberately washed the shawl at 60 degrees C. The yarn develops a slight haze but it was partly to felt it and hopefully give it some strength. By some stroke of luck, it worked - no holes appeared in the wash! The shawl is waiting on a press before it gets a photo shoot.
Second up was a simple baby blanket on the Passap, another "let's just knit something, ANYTHING, to get rid of some stash" project. The loose instructions are here. I cast on across the whole bed of the E6000 using cast on 6 (slip cast on in 4 rows) and knitted 8 rows at ss5 in stocking stitch. The yarn is two ends of acrylic that makes roughly a 3 ply. I used a simple diamond tuck stitch pattern (1008 tech 130) which is in the pattern book. All went well for about 450 rows, and then I got repeated error 200, which indicates a dirty sensor. Oh, my word. I knew the machine needed some cleaning - I was genuinely surprised just HOW MUCH black fluff Miss Swiss can pack away before she gets grumpy. It took two attempts to clean - the front lock consists of plates that move up and down, depending on what you are doing, and there's no easy way to clean them out other than painstakingly going at them with either a toothbrush OR carefully with a dental pick. I managed to restart the pattern, albeit in the wrong place, and completed roughly 600 rows, followed by a further 9 rows stocking stitch and a very loose row. Took it off on waste yarn and latch tooled it away from the machine. The blanket turned out really well - I need to either apply an edge, or just kill it and be done with it (so another reason to get the iron out, but never on Sundays as there are other things to be ironed too, and that equates to housework for me!). Edit to add: in the end, I added a simple 3x3 cable braid to the cast on edge, to hide some loopiness. I couldn't face adding it all the way around and indeed it wasn't necessary anyway!
I must say that the E6000 manual is very badly written - even though I vaguely remember how to reset the pattern, it's not at all easy to find that in the manual and both the contents and index page could have done with serious expansion. I almost feel as if someone should have written a book to explain the manual. Resetting the patterning is something one will need to know when knitting a round neck or v neck front, so not exactly a small matter!
So I finally got my mojo back and am wondering what I can make next. I also swatched two cones of kingfisher blue yarn and established that one of them is definitely too dense for the SK840 and for this sweater that is on my bucket list. What a pity I'm nose to the grind again tomorrow, next day off is May Day. Boo hiss! If I could only turn my creative interests into a profitable side hustle... :)
Current mood: 
sick
happy
and 
- determined to get to grips with my Passap this year, and trying to think of things to get me up to speed...
annoyed
strangely thirsty!