tragedy!

Those of you who follow my lovely glitzing girl's journal will know that she is currently working in the North, and we are a sad bi-national household. This week and next, however, are her vacation, so she is down in Dublin for two whole weeks, and O, it's so great. Our living room on Saturday night was pretty much a perfect image of what our lives are like together:






living one, two, three

That's us, look! Three lots of knitting (one on needles, one blocking, one semi-abandoned), a bottle of wine (empty), a packet of biscuits (empty), a vase of flowers (bought for me), two Macs (overused), many newspapers (mostly read), many mobiles (two UK, two Irish, two German if they happened to be around) and various bags and bits of outerwear. The flat is on the market at the moment, so it is all extremely superficial mess: in fact, as soon as I have posted I should tidy a bit. But that's our life together, right there. Isn't it brilliant?

***

The blocking on the gold sofa is the fairy knitting, which I haven't finished but decided on a (slightly drunken) whim to block anyway. Since last I posted, I have no new projects of which to boast, but the fairy knitting goes from strength to strength. I've finished shaping the armholes, and have only about four or five repeats of the pattern to do before I can shape the back of the neck and shoulders. However, the blocking has revealed a TRAGEDY:






fairy tragedy!


Somewhere over the past eight months that I've been knitting, I've completely changed my gauge: the back piece that I'm knitting at the moment is much, much looser than the front. The front piece (on the right), has been pinned out very taut and stretched, whilst the back (on the left) has been blocked very casually, just by smoothing the fabric out. And yet, it is still a good inch and a half taller than the front. Oh dear. Oh dear. The back is much nice fabric, but this means that I will have to knit the front all over again. The completion date goes back another six months.

Sigh.

cold enough

Hullo Blogspot! Goodness, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for the absence: I left my camera in London at the beginning of February, and have only just got it back.

In the meantime, there's good news and bad news: 7000 words of my thesis and two job interviews - hurray! - but it hasn't left much time for knitting. All I have to show for myself is another four inches of fairy knitting:





Past the waist and onto the increases: another two inches and I'll be making the sleeves! Perhaps by autumn ... ?

The only other thing I've worked on, the cannibal's sack sweater-dress, has come to a sad halt:




cannibal's sack sweater dress



front and back lace details



I still love the idea: the abbreviated raglan sleeves are great, the lace leaves are lovely, the colour matches my green eyeshadow and it's flattering from certain angles. But at that gauge, it's too bulky, and the yarn is too heathery and too busy: it needs to be so much sleeker. All the fashion mags are talking about this season's sack-shaped dresses, but my sack sweater-dress isn't going to see the light of day.

So the poor yarn will be ripped again, perhaps destined for Knitty's French Market bag. If I still fancy a sleeveless, non-sack sweater-dress by the autumn, I'll perhaps try something similar on 4mm needles.

Right now, though, despite the fact that Ireland has chosen to celebrate St Patrick's Day with a new ice-age, my thoughts are turning to summer. My denim Sirdar is probably going to be something like this:




A light, breezy summer cardigan for pulling over cotton dresses. It's based on one I've seen in Benetton, which actually has horizontally knitted sleeves, but I'm not going to bother with that. Lace around the bottom, stocking stitch everywhere else, raglan sleeves, a deep v-neck, and an i-cord drawstring at the waist. Roll on summer!

on the road

Three things, just before I leave to drive my lovely girl up to Northern Ireland, dear friends: one complaint, one finished object, and one work in progress.

First, just to get it over with, the complaint. I bought 500g of Sirdar Indigo Denim DK at the Knitting and Stitching Show in November, for the much reduced price of €12.99. Score! I have knitted the front and back of a long tunic, but my tension is all wrong and I've gone off the idea anyway. (No doubt you'll hear when I've come up with a new plan: at the moment, I'm tentatively considering a pleated empire-line cardigan like this.) But that is not my complaint, oh no. This is my complaint:




sirdar, you suck



Why yes, that's ten large round pieces of polystyrene, one for each 50g of yarn. Why, Sirdar, why? Most yarn seems to get on perfectly well without it. It's not even one of those things which are dreadful for the environment but have a practical purpose: how can I squash my knitting in my handbag to do on the bus if the yarn comes on a piece of polystyrene the size of a can of baked beans?

***

Second, the finished object. The beret that I mentioned in my last post has been finished, and it is very cute and silly. Particularly silly, alas, is the very top:




the reason they called it the ... nipple beret



Yes, that's right folks: I knitted a nipple. I meant it to have a little tuft of i-cord on top of it, but I changed needles too late and it came out rather more suggestive than I intended. Oh dear.

Still, it won't stop me wearing the beret:






nipple beret



It's knitted with one 50g skein of the Natural Dye Studio's alpaca/merino sock yarn. It is a made-up garter rib, with decreases made up as I went along and occasional reference to le slouch. As it's sold in pairs, I have another skein, with which I intend to make a skinny garter rib scarf.

Lastly, my work in progress. As I mentioned, I am taking my lovely girl up to Northern Ireland tomorrow, and going to London on Saturday to see some friends. Instead of beginning my chunky cannibal's sweater dress, therefore, I'm reverting to my travel knitting for the next week or so. You know how Travel Scrabble is smaller than normal Scrabble, and Travel Connect 4 smaller than normal Connect 4? Well, my Travel Knitting is similarly diminutive:







diminutive knit



It is knitted in the finest yarn I've ever seen: I don't even know what it's called, but as far as I can work out, it's 1-ply. (Is that lace-weight, or is lace-weight usually 2-ply?) It's pure wool, Russian, and cost me £3.70 for 200g from Ebay. I started designing a fitted lace top to do whenever I ran out of other projects, using the lace patterns from knitting-and.com as a starting point.

The first photo is a close up of the blocked fabric - isn't it gorgeous, though? In the second photo, from left to right, is the finished, blocked front piece, the ongoing back piece on the 2mm circular needles, a biro and a 10-cent piece for scale, and the first 100g ball, of which less than a quarter has been used. 200g was probably unnecessary: I think I'm going to get the whole thing out of that first 100g ball. Since July, I've knitted the front and five inches of the back. I anticipate finishing it some time before the end of 2007, but that might be ambitious - though you never know, I could probably knock two months off the total time by making the sleeves 3/4 instead of 7/8. Either way, I have plenty of time to find the perfect peach satin slip to wear under it.

I bloody hope it fits.