(I think I've won!!)
Yes, yesterday morning at about 8am, I finished the border of my Myrtille shawl. I only have to graft the edge and then block it. A challenge in itself no doubt, but I have finished. "Ouf!" as the French would say (Make that "Phew!" in English). I am doubly proud because I finished within my self imposed deadline of the end of the Tour de France (and I, for one, did not need any form of performance enhancers other than copious amounts of chocolate and tea).
As a complete aside, I think I am doing pretty well on my family front too. My father, who seems to think that he's never going to learn to knit, has instead offered to give 10p per hat that I receive to Age Concern. Personally I'd give money to see him knit but I am not going to hold my breath. Thank you Daddy!
And here's to my lovely husband too. It was my birthday a few weeks ago and he went, again, beyond the call of duty. He actually sound down in front of my rather substantial knitting library with the Amazon website in front of him and searched to find knitting books that I didn't already have. Eventually he found two books that I didn't have:
The Best of Vogue Knitting Magazine book and
Toys to knit by Tracy Chapman.
I've wanted both of those books for a while so I am very pleased. Both with the books and the husband :)
My mother pointed out, quite rightly, that myrtille is not myrtle. Polly noted that as well. Apparently the French word 'Myrtille' can either be a blueberry or a bilberry (depending on where you are from) whereas a Myrtle in French is 'Myrte'. Ah well, the stole remains the 'Myrtille stole' in my book.
And it's nearly finished. No pics yet, but I am working along the final short edge and hope to be done tonight and get to block it tomorrow.
In the meantime, here's my Flighty. Yes, nearly 3 years after I started her on, she's done. Some of you may remember that I originally cast on the version with eyelets (the same as the one as the model is wearing in this post) but the eyelets were very unfortunately placed so I ended up giving it to Kristine as a store sample for Knit Happens. Then I spent ages working out what colours I wanted to knit this one in.
My choice of colours turned out to be less than perfect. When I held the balls of yarn next to each other, they looked great but once knitted up, you can't really tell the difference between the light pink and the being yarn. Oh well. And I have to say that I don't like Flighty very much after all. The straps are too low, the front V bit curls up (you can't tell in the picture but trust me on this one).
But hey ho, she's done and can go into the FO box and be ignored from now on. Even though I don't love her as much as I undoubtedly should, I thought I'd share a few of the details:
I managed to attach the straps quite well, I was originally a bit worried that the seam might show through but that hasn't actually been a problem.
And I am quite pleased with the buttons that I used. They are Rowan buttons and are really rather lovely.
And the colour of the buttons is just perfect.
Oh and by the way, guess where I am going next Sunday?
That's right, to the Innocent Village Fete. Apparently Rowan are going to be there so the husband thinks that my buying 2 tickets was all a ploy to get to do more knitting. But I really think that it sounds like a fun day out. If you are going, let me know and we can arrange to meet at the Rowan tent/ bit if you fancy.
Just so that no one thinks that there has been any kind of lull in the hat production, here are some more of the hats that have been making their way to London.
These are from the lovely Hilda who lives in the village where the Knitting Retreat is.
Hilda is a fantastic knitter and each one of her hats is decorated differently - ribbon, beads, pompoms, tassles, there's all sorts. And they are all gorgeous. Thank you Hilda!
And then these are the rest of the hats from Sally. Aren't they all really pretty?
So far I think that I have about 140 hats. I think that there are about another 100 or so pledged so I am aiming for a total of 300 hats. So that's likely to be a lot of hat knitting for me once I am done with the knitting shawl. So poor Joy (who I finally got around to ordering, possibly with another kit...) will just have to wait a little.
I have started a new job and so between that and my Myrtle shawl, I haven't really been thinking of the blog much recently. Oh and I am on Ravelry now and have been slightly distracted about that too... Regular blogging should resume here soon.
It hit me after the following conversation on Messenger with my friend Jacqui a few weeks ago:
Amelia: Hey, how are you?
Jacqui: Fine, you?
Amelia: OK. Should be doing a bit more knitting on your shawl but I keep getting distracted by my Rowanette Exchange gift that I am working on.
Jacqui: Not to worry. I can't believe that it's only 5 weeks and 3 days until my wedding.
Cue: Amelia has a complete meltdown. At this point I had only done 18 repeats of the 40 needed on the shawl.
We are now 3 weeks and 4 days from the wedding and I am pleased to say that I have finished the body and am now working away on the border. Which sounds great but I must point out that I have not been working for the last few weeks as I am between jobs, hence the good progress. All of which would mean that I am getting there except that I am off to Budapest for the weekend, start my new job on Monday and will be at lots of meetings and travelling solidly for the next week and a half. But. I. HAVE. to. Get. The. Shawl. Finished.
So, to encourage myself and give me a proverbial kick you-know-where, I decided, with a bit of a shove from Jacqueline, to join the Tour de France knitalong. I am obviously in the 'Maillot vert' category which is the Sprinter category (ironic considering how unfit I actually am) - the aim is to finish by the end of the Tour which is on the 29th of July. Seeing as the wedding is on the 3rd of August, I think that's just perfect.
So I am officially renaming this shawl the 'Myrtille Leaf Shawl', myrtille being the French name for myrtle (Tarte aux Myrtilles was a favourite when I grew up in Switzerland). Which me luck and please remind me that I am sprinter if you think that I am slowing down!
Every year Polly organises a Rowanette Exchange where we all knit a surprise gift for someone and, in turn, have something knitted for us (but not by the person who knitted for us). Every year there is a theme - there has been an 'Edgy Exchange' all about trying new edgings, an 'Extremities Exchange' with lots of hats, gloves and socks and a 'Home and Hearth Exchange'.
This year the theme was 'Seasons' which meant that the participants could say what season they preferred to have something knitted for. My recipient was Isobel (do go and say hello) who had said that she liked Autumn best and the colours that one associates with Autumn such as browns, greens, dark roses, oranges.
So I found this:
Fleece Artist's Sea Wool in the colour called Vintage. Which I bought from Get Knitted.
It looked, on screen, like it was the right colour, but you never know do you? Here's a close up of some of the colour, just because I can.
And here's a picture of the yarn once I had wound it. At that point, I knew I was on to a winner. (There's always that point when you look at a hank of yarn and cross your fingers that it will look nice once it's wound into a ball and, more importantly, wound into a ball).
I made the Bordello sock pattern which comes with the yarn. I had another pattern in mind at the time but somehow it didn't really seem right when the yarn arrived. Unfortunately, being me, I managed to get the pattern wrong, interchanging a ssk and a k2tog at either end of the pattern repeat so it's not quite right. Ho humm.
Either way, I think that the pattern on the leg of the sock is lovely.
And I can't even begin to say how much I love the way that the yarn doesn't pool (well it does a tad, but it really is hardly noticeable). And I particularly love the way the yarn stripes on the sole of the foot. I am seriously thinking that I need a pair of stocking stitch socks in this yarn. And the heel looks rather nice too.
And here's one more shot of the socks, just because I think that the colours are gorgeous. I really think that I may need some of these in my life too...
Remember the Debbie Bliss ski sweater that I knitted? Well I washed her.
And then I blocked her and tried her on. There is no picture of this bit as at that point I had a nervous breakdown. It was all way too long. Like a lot way too long. In the sleeves and in the body. I have no idea why as I think that my tension is right. I could go away and work it out but I don't want to as I don't particularly care whether this is my fault or Debbie's fault - either way, I have a sweater that is substantially too big for me.
Now, there was quite simply NO WAY that I was frogging it (after all that fairisle, are you kidding?) and there was also NO WAY that I was going to throw it behind the sofa and pretend that I had never knitted it - I'd put way too much effort in it for that.
So the only other option was to work out how to shorten the sleeves and body. I had a sneaky suspicion that might not be easy and I was right. The sweater has a large chunk of ribbing on the body and cuffs and then carries on in stocking stitch. Unfortunately, as soon as the stocking stitch starts, so does the sleeve shaping and I really couldn't afford to lose that. So there was only one thing for it: grafting the ribbing. Argh.
I put it off for days. Actually, make that I put it off for weeks. I have been between jobs for a bit and therefore have had all the time in the world to myself and yet still I procrastinated. I really didn't fancy it. Would you have?
But then I found this tutorial. Not just a tutorial on grafting but a tutorial on grafting ribbing. I love this blog.
So first things first, I thought I'd knit a swatch with both stocking stitch and ribbing in cotton dk so that I could practice my grafting. Especially seeing as I'd never done any. And seeing as I am quite convinced that cutting any form of knitting with scissors is just wrong (and no, I have never tried steeking and don't currently intend to).
Cutting the knitting was very very painful. But once you've done it, you have no choice but to continue and hope that it doesn't all unravel horribly.
I did a bit of the grafting and found that in stocking stitch it wasn't all that hard.
You can even spot where I got a bit cocky and tried to do a few purl stitches.
So then it was on to the ribbing grafting. Which is a lot harder. Mostly because you have to really think about how the yarn enters and exits each stitch, especially where you go from a knit to a purl and vice versa. So quite a challenge really. But I got there.
Then it was time to move on to the actual sweater. A lot more scary because if I got this wrong, I had no idea how I would go about sorting it out. I measured, counted stitches and checked and double checked about 4 times before cutting anything. Here are the sleeves ready to get the snip.
As you can see from the sleeves, I had a fair amount of ribbing to take out (yes everything between the 2 white lines, about 20 rows or 7cm).
This is the grafted bit post surgery. Bear with me for a shot of the final thing, tomorrow the husband will be taking pics of me wearing it. I think that it was worth the effort even if it does look a little less good with less ribbing.
Half way through I realised that I hadn't taken into account how hard it would be to graft on such a dark navy blue yarn. That certainly added a whole level of complexity that I hadn't seen coming.