Wandering Around Talking To Rainbows

My socially distant hobby of choice at the moment is knitting. I've always got at least a couple of knitting projects on the go at any one time so it seemed an ideal focus point for my crafting. If I get bored of one project there's always another couple of projects to work on instead.

My first finished object is a sleeveless light cotton sweater - what used to be called a tank top when I was a kid, but the US usage of that term seems to dominate now - they're pretty much my ideal office wear and pretty hard to track down in the shops. I've also really struggled to find satisfying patterns for them in order to knit my own, but over the last few years I've reached a point where I feel comfortable amending patterns to my own specifications - if only at the level of changing necklines and removing sleeves. This is the happiest I've been with a pattern adaptation I've made in this way, it's proved to be exactly what I wanted. Once I've finished another couple of projects I'm going to treat myself to some more of this wool in a different colour and make another one, mostly in the round next time. (Alternatively, I have some similar wool, that is part of a project that I've had on needles since 2008 - I was overly ambitious for my first jumper project - that involves lace and which I'm realistically never going to finish. I could just frog that jumper and make another jumper like this with it. I have one finished sleeve. It's gorgeous but even the thought of starting the expanse of lace on the front and back of it makes me want to cry.)

After the success of my last patchwork cushion cover, I decided to make another one in blue. (Looking at that photo, it's funny some of the squares look a bit squee wiff but over time on the cushion they've straightend out. That's kinda cool.) Partly because I'd obviously had the idea before and found two randomly knitted squares in a project bag with some odd balls of wool. It's coming along quite well at the moment. I spent some quality time last week sewing squares together so that I had a better idea of what still needed done. All the big square are done now, it's just small ones left. I'm about 75% done? It also seems considerably smaller than the purple one. The patter says 4mm needles and that's what I've been using, though I note from Ravelry that I made the purple one with 4.5mm needles which would account for some of the difference but not all of it. We'll see how it looks once it's been washed and blocked.

My other current project is nordic style jumper with a fair-isle yoke. I had to do yarn substitution on it and the yarn substitute turned out to be far from ideal. (Rowan frost? Do not recommend. Lovely to touch, beautiful to look at, awful to knit with, worse if you need to pull it back at all.) I started it back in 2018 and half-way through realised I didn't have enough wool. Also that the sleeves are far too long. (They'd be a reasonable length if they were to shoulder length rather than have a good couple of inches of yoke at the top.) The whole process had been too frustrating at that point - I seem to remember crashing and burning on a couple of tops I was knitting in a row about that time - so I put it a way and worked on some cross-stich instead, intending to return to it in the Autumn. I pulled it out again this week, and I think I know how to fix the sleeves. I'd originally planned to just pull the sleeves back to the rib, but I realised that actually the cuffs will barely accomodate my tiny hands so there's no way they'll manage a wider part of my arms. So I've pulled one back to the start and made a wee spreadsheet to work out what my increases should be for a shorter sleeve - also I reckon a wee thumb cast on might help make things a bit stretchier.

My living room is currently a disaster of knitting project bags, patterns, odd balls of wool and other knitting accoutrements, I should probably sort that out so I can actually see what I'm doing!