My Other Knitting

The current WIP that you won't have seen so much of is a cardigan: the Bailey's Irish Cream by BabyCocktails / Thea Colman. I love Thea's sense of style, and design aesthetic, but the fact that I mostly live in a temperate, semi-urban environment has prevented me casting anything on until this, an elegant lace panelled cardigan with stocking stitch back and sleeves. It's a stash-busting project, using the yarn originally bought to knit the March Colourwork Sweater of Elizabeth Zimmermann's Almanac repurposed with only 2 additional balls to complete it.

More significantly, I'm hoping it will be a work-appropriate cardigan: it's relatively light and feminine, and doesn't, in my opinion, wear its handknit status on its sleeve. Not that handknits aren't work-appropriate, but in my new 'smart officewear' dress code, there's a fine line. (As distraction from the poor light in these photos - the true colour is between the two - here are the flowers I was kindly given by the lovely people in my old office)

Sadly, I'm finding it a slow knit. As usual, I'm having to add two inches of length to the body (taking it to 15 1/2”), and the rows are loooonnng. Plus I keep picking it up, and putting it down, and losing the chart...

In fact, I started this before Unwind Brighton, and was making good progress on it there, until I realised that I'd crossed half of the cables in the first repeat of the lace chart (on one front) in the wrong direction. Queue mammoth fixing session: we sat on the beach while I knit 8 stitches, dropped down the next 8 by 16 rows and recrossed, and then knit them back up, knit 8 stitches, and repeat.

Having got it under control, I'm hopeful it will now progress relatively steadily, though fear that as an increasingly unportable knit for me at this time of year, it won't be quick!