Neckband.

Check.
Side seam?

Check. Inside all woven in and accounted for?

Check. Other side seam?

Erm, well… the sleeve is in, it’s nearly done!
Sweater all finished and complete before the next one is started?

Oops.

So for the past few days I’ve been working almost exclusively on the Lace and Cables Sweater. I was definitely getting to the stage where I was sick of looking at it, so I just wanted it done.
Yesterday morning I was up to here on the front.

Last night I stayed up pretty late, but by this morning I had this.

A nice pile of finished pieces, ready to be blocked before seaming. Hooray! And those pieces are now pinned out on my bedroom floor, drying.
I enjoyed knitting it, but I always get tired of whatever I’m knitting before I finish it.
I did start something else through the week though, because project monogamy is just totally beyond me.

Socks for my mum for Mother’s Day. I’m using some yummy, yummy Koigu in P604, and the Anastasia pattern. So far, so good, and I took my mum to the doctors this morning, and she admired the sock while I was working on it. (She doesn’t know it’s intended for her) Let’s hope that means that she actually does like them!
And finally, in Twinkie news, she’s still not happy about the diet regime she’s been on since coming home from Lara’s.
Today, she has taken matters into her own paws.

She’s stealing potatoes from the potato bin.
I did something to my back while doing canteen duty yesterday, and it’s aching, so I think I’m going to bed with my knitting now.

Happy Blogiversary to me!!
The blog is four years old today, who’d have thunk it? (Certainly not David, who didn’t want to build me a blog, because he didn’t think I’d use it.)
To celebrate, let’s have a finished project!
Hyrna Herborgar. Done, knitted, finished, blocked and photographed.

It grew admirably after a bath. I was a little worried that it looked awfully small when I’d finished it, but by now, you think I’d have more faith in the magic of blocking.

Both of those pictures are pretty, but some of the detail is lost, so here are better pictures of the shawl itself.



I love, love, love it.
It’s not a hard pattern to follow, despite the sketchy translation, although it does get a little difficult once you lose that defined centre line.
Specs:
Pattern: Hyrna Herborgar from Three Cornered and Long Shawls (Purchased here)
Yarn: Fibreworks Merino/Possum 2ply in Pink Correa, purchased from Yarns Online
Needles: Addi Lace 3.5mm
As mentioned, the pattern wasn’t too difficult. The chart is fairly straightforward, and while the instructions are sketchy, they’re plenty to get by on.
Love the yarn! The possum adds a lovely softness and warmth to the yarn, but the guard hairs tend to drop out all over the place. The yarn is a little heavier than a traditional laceweight, but it’s not quite a fingering weight, so it’s a nice compromise. It’d be nice if you were just starting out with lace and didn’t want to go straight to the skinny stuff.
There’s 670 metres to a skein, and I only used just over half the skein, so the shawl itself doesn’t use a lot of yarn.
I love the way the colours come up, too. Not enough variegation to distract from the pattern, more like a shaded solid.
Final verdict? Five stars!

And so, finally, the Monkey socks are done!

Em’s happy with them.
Specs:
Pattern: Cookie A’s Monkey socks from Knitty Winter 2006.
Yarn: Sterling Silver and Silk by Kraemer Yarns, purchased at Stitch Cafe in Valley Village in Los Angeles, and hand dyed by them.
Needles: 2.25mm Pony Pearl DPNS
Love the pattern! Super easy to memorise, and fast to work. The socks did take me over a month to do, but I didn’t work on them very much at all. Em picked the yarn while we were in the USA, and I chose the pattern for two reasons, first because it looks nice in variegated yarns, and second because David calls Emily the Wild Monkey, so it seemed appropriate.
The yarn was really, really nice to work with. It’s soft, but seems sturdy, and the silver sparkle is pretty! I’m not sure how it will hold up to washing and wear, but I’ll let you know. I think it might be the same yarn that’s available as “Ginger” at Live 2 Knit in Australia, and if it is, I highly recommend it!
And now I have a confession to make. While I was in Hawaii, I bought some…

Fun Fur. Yes, I bought novelty yarn. And I paid an exorbitant amount of money for it, I have no idea what I was thinking. But I did buy it with a purpose.

It’s going to be a Hedgehog. I couldn’t resist.
Does buying Fun Fur and actually knitting with it get me kicked out of the Cool Knitters Club?
Hang on, was I ever in the Cool Knitters Club?!?

Long overdue knitting updates!
The past week or two have been so full on, I just don’t feel like I’ve got much knitting done, but after taking pictures, maybe I’m wrong!
Hyrna Herborgar.

Finished! But not yet blocked. Hopefully tomorrow will be nice and I’ll have time to pin her out. It came out smaller than I was expecting, but we’ll see what happens after the magical blocking process happens.
Monkey socks. We haven’t seen these in a while, have we?

Coming along nicely. Second sock is almost done. I do have some fit concerns, though. It seems too wide to me, but Emily is insisting that they fit just fine.
Personally, I think that they fit me better!
I need to finish these up, because I want to knit some socks for my Mum for Mother’s Day. That’s what, 5 weeks or so away?
The Wollongong SnB exhibition is happening before then, too, and I haven’t done any knitting for that yet!
And finally, the Lace and Cable Sweater.

The interminable sleeves are done! Why are arms so long? For a while it felt like I was knitting sleeves for a long armed monkey.
Now I’m onto the front with that nice deep rib band. Yay, 1×1 rib! 18cm of it!
So tell me, with my distaste for 1×1 rib, why on earth have I earmarked this for my next sweater project?

I’m an idiot, obviously. (It’s for Em, and I’ve already showed her, so I can’t back out now)