jekni

John is away down the coast with our friend John. They seem to be doing a heap of walking on the beach with the dogs, drinking whisky and watching war movies.

We here at home are sitting kniiting in armchairs with cats on our laps, drinking sloe gin and tokay (not together - eeek!) and watching movies with hot actors - Jeremy Northam, Kenneth Branagh, Mathew MacFadyen, Toby Stephens, Colin Firth.

Wonder who is having more fun?

Bloody hell!!! I've just had to frog back over 6,000 stitches - the whole of this week's work on the sweater - because of a mistake I didn't see earlier. A really bad mistake which would have looked truly awful if I hadn't fixed it. That's my consolation, anal-retentive accountant type that I am. Still hoping to get it in the post before the end of the month - will have to work harder [g].

Tonight I finished the split-the-front-and-back-tube-at-the-underarm stage. And have commenced sleeve number one. Pictures to follow soon (I'm getting better with the iPhone!)

My beautiful set of interchangeable circulars arrived today. Luvverly! Although the tortoiseshell-coloured casein knitting needles I had ordered were not correct - they had sent the ivory-coloured ones which just look like cream-coloured plastic. They have the beautiful smoothness of casein but aren't what I ordered. An email to the shop brought forth a phone-call 1/2 hour later. Janette apologised profusely and promised to put the correct needles in the mail today, express-post.

As it was their fault there would be no postage cost, so Janette kindly asked me if there was anything else I wanted! Dangerous, that. I requested a set of 3.75mm tips and a 100cm cable to fill a couple of gaps in the new set. As well as another two sets of the casein needles, 35cm length in 4.50mm and 5.00mm sizes. Shiny new toys to play with! Feel my icon is particularly apropos right now - hate BAS time, wish it were over.

Oh poop! Double poop! Got about 10cm up from the start of the sweater and measured the width. 60cm instead of 63cm! Have now frogged out the stocking stitch part down to the rib, increased by 6 stitches front and back and coming back up now. Bugger!

I've put the bumblebee on hold for a short while as I produce jumpers for the girls.

The first one, for Alix, is striped in white and space-dyed pink/purple (the yarn I used for her zip-up jacket) and the second, for Sami, is white and the same space-dyed blue/green Mum used for her zip-up jacket. The other difference is that Alix's is completely knitted whereas Sami's will have knitted cuffs and bands but crocheted body as per the pattern she found. Alix's has a basket-weave pattern in the white stripes for interest.

I've actually made up the pattern for Alix's jumper using a kids' pattern from my Creative Needles set and working out the increases on the fly. I'm almost finished - have about 10 rows of the second sleeve to do and then sew it up. I'll post a picture of it as soon as possible.

If any of the crafty crowd out there would like to give me some critique of my roughly written down pattern( it's here )

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I'm not sure if it make sense and would appreciate some comments. Is there somewhere to publish knitting patterns? Wouldn't mind sharing this one as it looks very pretty.