Frisian Frillies

It is done... My time of knitting a long black stole is over... And here she is (drum roll...) Back to knitting my stockinette sock nr 2 and then on with a new one, from the Sock Knitting group: the Kort door de Bocht-sock...

And the decision has been made. Gulp... The feathers will be frogged and I am lengthening the stole. When I saw this the decision was easy. Tonight will be the night. I've still got a bit of rose left in the bottle, and together with some Japanese nuts that will ease the pain of all that hard work being undone. But hey, I had also made a mistake in the feathers, which will now be taken out too, yeah! Nothing to show for my diaper efforts. I spent a lot of time making a proper template in cardboard, which saves a lot of time when you have to draw out the shape on multiple layers of fabric, and reading and re-reading the instructions until (a glass of rose later) I finally got what she meant. I'm trying out the Wee Weka AIOs in the S/M size. It is slightly bigger than the Jobbes pattern I've been using, so baby S's butt should be sufficiently covered this way. And guess what? I thought I had loads of fabric for diapers. Uhm? Where? I do have some jungle fleece which I...

While I was taking in the laundry, I had this crazy thought. As I now know that there is not going to be a second half of the stole, and I still have a few balls of yarn left, why not frog back to the flower bit, reknit whatever I frogged in the first place and then end up with a longer stole? I'm going to ponder this thought very carefully tonight, while I'm sewing diapers and washing the floor, no hurried decisions here... and I'm going to "try on" the stole to see if I really think it could do with some lengthening... Wonder if there are more people who went for the shorter option who are now regretting that!

Yeah, piccies of my stole! While I was pinning it out on the bed, wee H was goofing around and when she lay down for a second, I noticed she is about as tall as the stole is long ;-) As you can see, I only have a short bit of 'flower' pattern. I had knitted about the whole length of the pattern, but the stole turned out to be too long, so I frogged back to the point indicated by Melanie. V happy now. It's wide, but very 'chique'... Tonight, I'm starting on clue 6! I've also decided not to continue with the house blanket. Because I chose acrylic yarn and not the Rowan indicated, my swatching already indicated it was going to be a bit wider... But, after only 15 cm, it is about 2 meters wide instead of just over a meter (???) and I've already knitted up one whole ball of 300 grams :-S As I have 3 (I could always get more, but prefer not to, weight-wise), I decided to change it for a different pattern, which is easier to extend/shorten than the one from the...

Clue 5 is done, Harry Potter is finished, so to tide me over until Friday, I've cast on 286 stitches (gulp) for a baby blanket for baby S. I found some cool extremely cheap acrylic yarn at a local store, so instead of knitting it in super expensive Rowan, I thought I'd try this first. Piccies to follow!

Finally, a picture of all my hard work! I finished clue 2 today and pinned down the stole on the bed. Wow... Impressed... Time for apple pie, and clue 3!

O my, this is getting so addictive... I'm halfway chart C (clue 2) and am desperately trying to avoid pictures on the Net to see how it's turning out, as I'm still a bit behind the rest of the 'gang'. I love my yarn, nice and shiny and not too thin, quick knit (whenever I find the time...) and great texture... Hopefully I'll have it done tonight and then tomorrow I'll pin it to the bed and take a picture. *proud*

Couldn't help myself. Sat knitting into the wee hours, but I've got chart A done! After the first swatch, I changed to needles 3.5 and that was perfect. As I expected, there is NO WAY I can get the beads onto the yarn, so this stole will be beadless. Ach well, makes the knitting so much faster... Tonight on with chart B and hopefully a nice picture by the weekend! Then, and only then, am I 'allowed' to download the next part... Oh, I'm so hard on myself :-)

On the way back from the bead store, having bought two tubes of beads cause I couldn't make up my mind, I decided not to use any beads. I realised that my yarn is very probably (no, surely!) too thick to put beads on, but hey, they are nice beads and I can always do something creative with them. I might still change my mind, I'll see tomorrow if I can actually feed them onto the yarn (that tip about binliner ties, good one!). Busy though tomorrow (accountant is coming to visit, hooray), and I'm also busy brainstorming about the IPT book with my friend C.W. And of course, I need to work, and look after two kids (hopefully the weather will be nice again, I'm all for that playing outside thing). And do the house work... But somewhere between half 10 and half 11, I should be able to squeeze some knitting in ;-)))

I've started swatching, yes... How exciting! I decided, after a cup of coffee and a chat with Renske and some fondling of wool :-), not to go for laceweight, but to make a stole with a bit more 'bite' from black cotton viscose by Drops. Georgeous, shiny, jummy! Unfortunately, baby S had a fever yesterday and his teeth were really bothering him, so instead of finishing my swatch, I sat on the sofa cuddling a baby (which is also nice...), watching more babies being born on the BBC's 'Fight for life'. Fascinating! Then you realise all the things that can go wrong at birth, brrr... Sam is fine now, this afternoon we're going to the baby centre to have him weighed and measured (and he's getting a shot as well, I think...) and then it's off to get the proper beads for the stole. I now know which ones I want, so we should be able to find them... Wish me luck! Piccies on later...