It came.

It came! It came! My invitation to Ravelry. My user name is knittheknits (surprise, surprise), though there's not a great deal there at the moment.

It's like a big knitters' party happening all day and all night. I've been racketting (technical term) around, looking at everything. There is so much there that I am quite overwhelmed. I've managed to get some of my books on there (after a little bit of fiddling about with Library Thing); I've put on a couple of projects but I'm not really very computer savvy (and I've got a very slow, almost treacle-like connection), so it's not as fast as it might be.

However, it's great fun, though I do think it might cut down on the actual knitting time. That's unless I can learn to operate the keyboard with my feet (like Wendy doesn't).

The Kauni jumper is just addictive - I want so much to see how the colours are coming out that I knit and knit and don't bother going to bed. I actually woke up at 6.30am this morning (and let me tell you, I am so not a morning person) wanting to leap out of bed and knit. I know, sad, isn't it?

Ava asked if the yarn had a name. I believe it is Kauni Effektgarn, in the EQ (rainbow) colourway. It's a "fingering/4 ply" weight yarn . 100% wool. The recommended needle size is 3mm (the loose woman over here is using 2.75mm). 100g is about 400m (though the balls I got are 150g each).

I suppose you want some eye candy? Here you go:



The welt and the diagonal stripes and almost one repeat of the pattern.

The private side:



Neat, or what?

Close up of progress so far:



The basic idea of this jumper is that you begin the pattern with two balls of yarn (much like fair isle) but because you start at different points in the colour sequence, there never comes a point where the colours from the two balls coincide. This is the theory. However, you do need to keep your eye on things. There was a point where I could see that within a very short space of time I was going to have a dark blue coming from both balls. So, since it is my knitting and I am the boss, I snipped the green yarn, joined on another ball (also where the yarn was green) and carried merrily on. So far, the two balls show no sign of doing the same thing again but my hawk-like eye is on it.

I used a spit-splice to join this yarn. It's quite "hairy" (technical term), so the spit splice seems to be the perfect method. I sometimes don't bother with getting rid of half the plies - I just spit and then splice. (Do I hear the whoop, whoop, whoop of the Knitting Police racing up behind me?)

Oh, and Lixie? You know when you said you didn't think it could get any better because cake came in the package with the yarn? Well it can. Astrid tells me the cake is fat free.