I always remember starting this cardigan with a slight mental grimace! It was Easter Sunday in 2015 and I was sitting in the lounge with the boys and Rich after a long solitary walk to the Butter Cross (a local possibly ancient site). I had walked alone as I was trying to lose a little weight and was doing a fast-paced 10,000 steps a day... I had my phone out and was on Instagram when a beautiful cardigan appeared in my feed. It was from Susan Crawford's knitting blog and she had seen it in an exhibition - the bog post is here - well, what a cardigan! I had the urge to go to my Jamieson's Spindrift breadbin and choose colours. I had everything in stock. Now what pattern to follow, what stitch counts?
I chose Ursula of course, it's colourwork, same sort of yarn weight and naturally, I'd start with a sleeve to be sure of my gauge (which doesn't seem to change much when I'm knitting with the Spindrift). Tubular cast on and I was off! Later that night I woke with a burning pain in my stomach, went downstairs to make a hot water bottle and then ended up being sick. The next day was truly awful, I hate sickness bugs! The whole family got it and so the cardigan always reminds me of the Easter vomiting bug.
It's Ravelled here, all the info you might need/want to know. It remains my most worn cardigan and it makes me smile every time I see it.
I was recently asked if I would like to be on the Fruity Knitting podcast as one of their Knitters of the World. I had a think and then I decided to try as I really enjoy that segment of the podcast.
Filming my little part was so difficult, I'm not very good at that type of thing and have no idea how Andrea and Andrew do it. If you go back to the first episode Andrea is pretty perfect in that one too so perhaps it's something she has naturally (if that makes sens?). I forget what I'm saying halfway through a sentence and will gesticulate wildly at Rich (my partner) as if he will somehow manage to figure out what word I'm looking for.
My first run-through in front of the camera consisted of about half an hour of wasted attempts which were all deleted! I then got a good run but watched it back and realised that I was out of focus for the entire thing. The next run was in focus but once uploaded to the computer I saw that the footage was very grainy (my camera is over 10 years old). Scrap that!
Next I enlisted the help of Rich who set up the Go-Pro and then left me to it. I was fine until I picked up my colourwork cardigan (which I never blogged about but I will do after I post this!). As I was explaining the origins of said cardigan I suddenly froze up and couldn't think of a word to say. I just held the cardigan up silently for about 20 seconds before I frustratedly switched off the camera. I was a little flustered after that but got back into the flow and finished the video.
Andrea did a beautiful job editing my footage, I was so nervous to watch it and absolutely delighted with what she had done with it.
Fruity Knitting is quite a special podcast, it's very high quality, fun and informative and filled with genuinely interesting guests. Also, Andrea's knitting is extremely good, she makes things like intarsia look do-able and she's happy to share when things don't work out and show us her solutions.
I''ve had a rubbish couple of weeks with RSI in my right wrist. A combination of factors including two large-scale commissioned paintings, so it's not just knitting which is to blame.
Oliver is now at that delightful age (3) where tantrums seem to happen at the drop of a hat, and he's so heavy to lug away from a situation - he also does the 'go limp' thing which doesn't help. I remember James's tantrums, they were very different, same age, same pushing the boundaries, same noise level.. James just had different techniques! Ol will hit and bite... I'm hoping the worst of this will have passed by the time he starts nursery in September and the 'we do NOT bite/hit message will have well and truly sunk in!'.
I currently have 5 WIPs (and a dress that has been cut in half and needs ribbing to turn it into a cardigan/skirt), so 7 WIPs if I count the dress re-jig. This is about 4 too many for my liking! They're getting me down a little and I had planned on spending March finishing things but then the wrist pain hit and I knew I had to give it a rest. It's not been all bad news though, I hunted out some of my old jigsaws and have been enjoying working on those with James (who seems to have inherited my love of jigsaws to my mum's delight!).
