SHIFTY

Posting now, 6 months after completion as I'd forgotten to blog about it at the time.

I generally find myself avoiding massively popular patterns, not sure why (must be my inner teenager, resisting the popular). I couldn't avoid casting this one on though, it's a lovely design.
If you aren't familiar with the pattern, it's by Andrea Mowry and utilises the same 'blip' technique (sort of stranded knitting/slipped stitches) as her previously released cowl and shawl patterns. She's a good egg, if you sign up to her newsletter you generally get a discount on newly released patterns, which of course I took full advantage of here. There are endless colour combinations to be had, I wanted a fairly soft colour palette and needed to use up some Rowan Alpaca Classic I had bought for a cardigan I never knit. The Alpaca Classic is very lightweight, fuzzy and soft and is a sort of caramel colour, I held my counter colours doubled to make up the correct thickness (mostly used Scheepjes Our Tribe).

It was quite slow-going at points, not like whizzing round doing stocking stitch, definitely worth it though. I think I went up a needle size or two after seeing quite a few people's projects had turned out tiny, I like a loose fit (like Shaun Ryder). Another thing which was annoying me was the beginning/end of round 'jog' in the centre of the back. I used tips by Dayana Knits (on this blog post) and once I had weaved in the ends this helped a little too. After separating the arms/body I moved the beginning of the round to one of the underarms so it runs up the side instead.

It was a real pleasure to knit this one was. Sometimes it's nice to follow the crowd!

Autumn

It has been a lovely summer here, the usual UK sort of summer, alternate weeks of heat and a good amount of rain. I started the summer excited about meeting my university offer conditions, happy I had finished my access course and a little anxious as Rich's work was very quiet (he's self-employed). Rich ended the summer with work (phew!), I ended the Summer querying my bloated stomach, taking a pregnancy test to rule it out and finding that yes, I was very pregnant indeed.
We had just returned from a lovely family holiday in Wales, late afternoon and I suddenly had a very worried feeling about possibly being pregnant so I nipped across the road to the pharmacy before it closed for the day. Of course I rang my mum immediately and she came over, palpated my stomach (she's an ex-midwife) and guessed I was about 14 weeks along. I then had the entire weekend to stew over the facts and debate it at length with Rich.

Monday came and I hoped to access a dating scan to confirm what stage I was at, however the doctor I visited could only give me the option of being referred to abortion services or the midwife, from whom I could gain access to the desired dating scan. I chose the midwife and booked a private scan for the following day (good thing I did as the NHS midwife referral took a further 3 weeks). The scan confirmed the pregnancy to be 14 weeks (my mum's fundal height memory is very good!) and having seen the little one all curled up, perfectly formed and moving about simply solidified my initial feelings. I believe that I am very much pro-choice, but our situation simply didn't justify it, to abort a foetus for convenience and because it doesn't fit in with my plans? No. Rich's only caveat was that whatever I decided, I wasn't to resent the baby (little did he know that by this stage I had begun to feel tiny movements and was feeling very protective over the tiny baby).
One thing I've learnt during my life so far is that some of the very best things happen when they're unplanned, the best days/nights out, the best walks, the best beaches have always been ones we've accidentally stumbled across. I'm not sure a person can ever 100% plan their life out in any case, there will always be twists and turns and bumps in the road.

Welsh sea-glass including a marble! I was very excited about the marble... I will write a little about knitting next time, my knitting went completely to pot after finding out my news. I cast on a couple of things and stopped working on both my Christmas dress and the colourwork cardigan I was knitting for my first term at university. I've picked it back up though! I'm heading very much into finishing mode, including the Christmas dress which won't fit this year in any case, but which is getting finished!