Understanding

Yes, I think Beelzebub and I have come to an understanding. I have told him (her?) that s/he is very welcome to stay in the shed but not in the house. I came home this afternoon to find this:



Beelzebub, lurking in the shed, sated with rabbit. "Are you feeding it?" they asked me. Of course I'm not, but since my garden is rabbitopolis...Let's just say it's a happy hunting ground. No hunter worth his salt could possibly go hungry in my garden.

In knitting news, I have started the shaping for the front of the Kimono Jacket. The garment is made in two pieces from cuff to centre back. The two halves are then grafted together. (I predict wine and chocolate in copious amounts.) The fronts have a deep v-neck, which is shaped with short rows.

I just love short row shaping - it's so neat. Oftentimes the stitches are wrapped (see this article in Knitty if you have no idea what I'm on about) but in this case, we don't do that. No, we knit to the right spot, turn, do a yarn over and carry on. When it comes to knitting on the band, we knit the yo together with the following stitch, which is a slightly different technique but should do the trick (which is to close up any holes that might be present.)

Here's a close-up of the yos:



Also note the bonny beaded safety pin. Once, long ago, I threaded beads onto very many safety pins, threaded the whole lot onto thin elastic and made a fancy bracelet, or two. Instructions are here, if you are bothered. Or, if you have more money than sense (or a well-developed "hip and zen" sense of altruism) you can buy one here.


Lace knitting has not completely stopped:



I've gone "round the bend" on the Garden Shawl again. The border is knitted in garter stitch lace, patterned only every other row. Each time you come up to the body of the shawl, you take the last stitch of the border with the next live stitch of the body of the shawl. That's all very well but you do need to ease the border round the corners. Normally, each 14 row repeat of the border takes up 7 live stitches from the body of the shawl. However, the corner section consists of 17 live stitches and has three 14 row repeats. Obviously, you need to work some rows without taking up a live stitch from the body of the shawl.

This all sounds as clear as mud - even to me, and I've just done it - but I think you can see what I mean here:



So, I'm still knitting, still blogging, still coping with a killer cat - is there no end to my talents?