Plan B

So I was knitting merrily away on the sleeves for my next short-sleeved lace top, just about to finish the second one, when I looked at my remaining yarn. Suddenly the ball from which I was knitting started to look very small, there wasn't nearly enough yarn remaining to knit the yoke and saddle shoulder, let alone the picot bind-off.

Hence, Plan B. My short-sleeved lace top is now going to be a sleeveless (or at leat cap-sleeved) lace top, instead of joining the sleeves together with the body to create the yoke I've crocheted a provisional cast on in place of each sleeve and knit across that. Once the yoke and shoulders are finished (assuming I don't run out of yarn) I'll undo the provisional cast on and knit the picot hem down from that point.



That's the plan at any rate.

Two off, two on

Two off..

Mystery Stole 3 is done and blocked! The last few rows were very hard work (indeed I had to go and lie down in a darkened room at one point) but it's worth it. The Fiddlesticks silk/wool blocks out like a charm and dries very quickly, I will definitely be playing with this stuff again.



I used thick, strong Guterman thread drawn taut in place of blocking wires to keep my straight edges straight and my pointy bits pointy and my lovely bright coloured headed pins to make sure there were no nasty surprises when I got into bed later on that day!

The stole is still a little on the short side (I knit the truncated version) and I do have some yarn left over. After a little break I'm going to knit a rectangular insert in the cat's paw pattern (from Clue 4) using a provisional cast-on. If the yarn stretches to at least one full repeat then I will put in two lifelines separated by one row at the end of Clue 4, unravel that row and put the stitches on needles and then finally graft everything back together. There's a bit more grafting involved than if I opened up the stole first and knit on from the resulting live stitches but this way I can see if there's enough yarn remaining to make it worthwhile first.

I've toyed with the idea of doing something similar with the Breeze socks which were also completed over the weekend. However, due to the way the pattern has worked I couldn't do anything other than knit more rounds of 1x1 rib (and where's the fun in that?). It's a shame because I've got quite a bit of the yarn left but at least I'll know for next time.



two on..

This is my gauge swatch for the Wensleydale Longwool sweater. Knit up on 3mm needles it creates a very light, drapy fabric. Washing and blocking has evened out the stitches (which were a little on the wonky side) beautifully.



I've finally cast on the Anna socks from Rowan 40. These should whip up (despite being knee length) as they're knit on 3.25mm needles from very squishy yarn.



The pattern is very easy to memorise, especially as every other round is a plain knit round. The gauge looks pretty good at the moment, I'm going to knit about 4 or 5 inches and then have a try on to judge whether or not I need to go down a needle size for the ankle and foot.

Scrumping

Although, technically speaking, it's not actually scrumping when the apples are growing by the road side. We've taken to carrying receptacles for fruit picking on our walks at the moment as you never know what you'll find. This time it was a tree laden with red and green apples, ripe and edible (if a little thick skinned and sharp). The trunk of the tree was inaccessible due to nettles and close growing branches so we could only pick those we could reach on the outside but we still got a fair haul (about 2 kg).



We managed to get a few of the higher growing ones with the aid of a big stick which the boyfriend had picked up with the idea of pulling down some of the branches. He soon discovered, however, that my strategy of one of us using it to knock apples off the branches whilst the other stood well back and watched where they fell was much more effective!

Once home we looked through the new issue of Good Food which had arrived on Saturday morning and found a host of apple recipes including one for apple streusel (for which we happened to have all the ingredients).



It definitely getting more autumnal (although we've had great weather this Bank Holiday weekend). Even before we found the apples I'd already seen my first ripe conker and the corn in the field across the river has been harvested this weekend. I've therefore started swatching for my first autumn sweater to be knit from the Wensleydale Longwool which I picked up at I Knit London on our yarn crawl earlier this month.

I'm planning a top-down raglan with round neck, striped and knit in the round with tubular cast-off edgings. I'm quite excited as this will be the first adult size sweater that I've designed for myself. I'm also nervous but so long as I take all the correct measurements it should work out. It's taken a little time to pick the needle size (the ball band doesn't help you out with gauge alas) but I'm getting a nice looking fabric with 3mm needles and it should look even better once blocked.