Getting over the finishing line

is just so hard to do.

Ages ago, I made a jacket thingie (technical term) using Colinette "Giotto" in the Sahara colourway. I really wasn't happy with the way it turned out - it was just far too floppy (technical term). The fabric had no body and consequently the whole garment was totally shapeless. It was thrust to the back of the cupboard and left there.

When I came across it again I thought I'd better rip it out and start again. I used to shudder and cringe at the thought of ripping out a whole garment. No longer. I was never going to wear the thing and actually, it's the knitting that counts. If I were stuck on a desert island, I'd rip back my jumper and knit it again (and again, and again).

What to make with the re-cycled yarn? A little jacket, pattern for which was in an Italian knitting magazine. This used a different ribbon yarn (now discontinued) but I thought I could get away with using the Giotto. The yarn needs to be used double and that also helps with the terrible difference in dye lots that is characteristic (or so I've found) of Colinette yarns. It is also knitted in a cross-over pattern, which also helps.

Here's a close-up of the pattern:



The fabric, as you can imagine, has the body of Mr Universe.

I've finished the knitting and all that remains in the putting together.

I joined the shoulder seams:



The next thing to do is attach the sleeves. It's quite tricky - I started and it looked dreadful, so that was pulled out. I'm paralysed at the moment. I'm hoping to have another go later on today.

I took up the Romance Shawl (from Fiddlesticks) again. I'd sort-of-started, using some white 2-ply baby wool, just to see how the pattern would turn out. It turned out rather nice and when I found it again, I decided to continue with it. This is in spite of the fact that the shawl requires two colours (there is a ingenious double hem, which uses a second colour). I haven't decided yet if I will leave the body of the shawl white and use some yarn from stash for the contrast, or it I will dye the shawl one colour and a skein of the same yarn in a contrast colour. This will partly depend on how much yarn I have to play with. I started with seven balls of white yarn. I've knitted 145 rows - which means I'm almost ready to start the "Cupid's Arrows" bit, but as the shawl starts with two stitches at the centre back and has four increases per row, it's very difficult (at least for me) to assess how far I've got and how much I've got left. I'm sure some maths wizard somewhere could do an elaborate sum and work out the percentage done, the amount of yarn used, the number of stitches knitted and all the rest of it. Good luck to them. I'll just carry on knitting until I run out of yarn and cross the "I'm going to run out of yarn" bridge when I get to it.

Here's a picture of progress so far (as best as I get given the scrunched up (technical term) nature of lace knitting in general, and this lot in particular:



I took up Marie's suggestion of using a kilt pin to fasten the Kimono Jacket - works brilliantly, thanks for that. I wanted to embellish the pin with beads but will have to fabricate some way of doing that because, of course, you can't just put beads on there - it's a closed circuit, so to speak.

I also found Library Thing and I think I've gone to heaven. I have entered some of my knitting books and the rest will follow shortly. I love it. There will be links and stuff in the sidebar when I get my head round it - in the meantime, pop over there and have a look. It's wonderful.

Saturday Field includes one of the horses (I knew you'd be excited):