Feeling knitty

Some days I feel knitty, and some days I feel stitchy, and some days I find myself havering between the two.

I really admire people who take a craft and stick to it, and progress in an orderly fashion through a series of projects, and don't have any guilty secrets hiding unfinished in remote cupboards, which tumble out unannounced to nudge one insistently. This usually happens when I am in search of some essential little crafty item that I have tidied away so carefully and logically that it involves a fingertip search of the entire house to locate it - and then that neglected work in progress wags its metaphorical finger at me, and quite takes the shine off my enthusiasm for the new endeavour on which I have embarked with such vigour and determination.

However, the upside of all these projects on the go, is that if I need the satisfying emotional uplift of completion, I can usually find a selection of  half-finished numbers to polish off, and thus boost my productivity to a seemingly impressive rate.

Yesterday I was feeling very knitty, and after the traumas of the weekend, I feel quite reconciled to the possibilities of my granny cardi (of which more later),  and found that it goes quite well with this fetching little shawl, which I knitted last December. It had such a festive air, and I was so pleased with it, and its scallop edging, which happened by accident ... it hadn't quite found its spiritual home in the permutations of my wardrobe, but now I can rest easy.

And I even have another very pretty (and very thrifty) knit to show you, and can smile complacently at my capacity to finish what I start, whilst not mentioning the Owls jumper in the cupboard.

So here is one more baby blanket, a knitty one this time, all ready and waiting to greet the army of babies marching towards me over the summer. The pattern is a wonderful one, easy to knit, and designed to use up all those little leftover bits of sock yarn you have in your stash, or if you are me, part of the ball waiting for a sibling to emerge for the orphan sock snuggled up to it. The border is Skein Queen Plushness, and the stripes are all sorts of sock yarn including Skein Queen, Regia, Trekking and Colinette, and the pattern is the Zig and Zag Pram Blanket from the Skein Queen.

There was, of course, the matter of the ends ... 42 colour changes makes a lot of ends. And I know there are sensible people out there who sew in the ends as they go, and I admire you most sincerely, and vow to emulate you every time. But somehow I am held back by the thought that, and I have previous on this, the thought that there might be a bit of frogging and tinking on the horizon, and how would I find those ends so securely sewn in? I did knit a few stitches with old and new yarn, and caught in the ends, but took a belt and braces attitude and firmly sewed them in, all 90 of them (I may be exaggerating here, I didn't count).

And, the good thing about ends, is that if you feel a little weak about participating fully in family life, namely pot washing and table clearing, you can sit industriously on the sofa sewing, whilst directing other family members in the other tasks which you are far too busily engaged to do.

As regards to the granny cardi, I have to say that the washing machine came to my rescue. After much consultation and advice from the lovely ladies of the Skein Queenery group on Ravelry, and more sage opinions from my dear readers, it would seem that, being constitutionally unsuited to frogging on a garment-wide scale, knitted shoulder pads are the way to go (instructions courtesy of EmmaCo here).  But then I had a little brainwave - I noticed that as a result of blocking flat, the sleeves had knife creases which seemed to be worsening the situation (the only time that I have seen knife creases in our crumpled house, I must say), and after a quick spin in the suds, I just hung the cardi above the Aga with the sleeves arranged flat across the body, and somehow it did all come out in the wash, and settled into very retro puff sleeves. And what do I see on the Brora website but a jumper with short puff sleeves ... have I just become all the go by accident?