Gimme an S!

Finally.....

... another stumpy sock!

Rip we must

Oh poor baby yoda - the force was not strong in that one.

Twenty four rounds into the sleeve I realised that I had dropped a stitch about eight rounds before. Now I suck at picking up dropped stitches at the best of times, and quite frankly, the idea of trying to sort this out on four needles sent me straight to the gin bottle (which was empty, it being one of those days). So I decided I would have to rip the sleeve out and start again, and then I thought, oh what the hell, I'm going to rip back the entire thing. Because there were other problems, which I had been ignoring in the hopes that they would self-repair. For one thing, I had discovered that my tension on dpns is waaaaaaaay tighter than on straight needles:

As well as the difference in tension there, you can also see that when I bound of the shoulders, and knitted the neckband, I managed to leave a gaping great hole - or rather, two gaping great holes, one on each side. So it's back to the beginning. I'm still going to knit a baby yoda cardy with this wool, I'm just not going to make the same mistakes again (instead I'll make a whole lot of new exciting ones!).

In the interim (and to further delay any work on the v boring neckwarmer or the cursed sock) I started a second baby yoda - again (of course) not exactly as the pattern was written. Here is one front...

And I'm halfway up the other. Instead of garter stitch at the bottom I did six rows of scallop stitch; then I've continued the scallop stitch up the side; I've decreased much more than the pattern called for; and I've continued the scallop stitch into a band that will (hopefully) go around the back of the neck. And if I have to frog this one, I promise I will stick to the pattern next time!

After the baby yodas I want to do some thing like this gorgeous tank top. And then I'm starting to feel almost brave enough to knit an adult sized garment for myself. Almost brave enough... (Also I've just lost a whole heap of weight, and if I lose another few kilos it won't be half as daunting an idea as it was six months ago!)

It's a Knit Ranger day today - and I'm dying of jealousy. I want to be there, but my partner works every Sunday (and every Saturday) so I'm a solo Mum at the weekends, and there is no way I could take my feral children to a cafe to watch adults knit! One weekend soon I intend to hire a babysitter and head on over.

And that's me for today :)

There's a little piece of me in everything I knit

And I'm not talking about any airy-fairy, 'because I knit so much love in', piece of me - I mean this literally. I've just been sitting here pulling vast quantities of my hair out of the Baby Yoda cardigan. Does anyone else have this problem? Scientists would be able to identify every thing I've ever knitted because my hair constantly gets caught in my knitting. I thought it would improve after I had my hair cut recently, but no, I'm still knitting everything with a combination of wool and hair...

The Baby Yoda cardigan is still a way off becoming a finished object, despite being teeny tiny. For some reason - I can't remember why - I decided to try and do the Baby Yoda with as little seaming as possible. I don't know why because I don't mind seaming... it was just a passing thought that I foolishly acted on. So having knit the back and fronts as one piece, and joined the shoulders with a three needle cast-off, I have to do the sleeves on dpns.
Why would I do that to myself? I've only just learnt to manage dpns without stabbing myself (I sit there muttering 'it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye', sounding like my grandmother) and I am soooooo very sloooooow at knitting with them.
So the Baby Yoda cardigan is now in the second sock zone - a strange twilight place where very little happens. Don't anybody hold their breath...

Sock? What sock? I know nothing about any sock...

Tena kotou katoa. Ko Rachel tenei. Kei te pehea kotou?

It's the end of Maori Language Week so I thought I should throw a little Maori in there. Sadly that's about the limit of my reo skills. I would love to speak more. I did a year of Maori at university but we never learnt anything useful, like how to say, 'Would you like to buy my children for medical experimentation?' or 'double point needles are indeed the devil's work'. Actually, everything we did learn sounded like pass signs for cold war spies: 'The morepork calls at night'; 'the orcas are swimming in the distance'. Not so handy when you want to chat or blog, but come the revolution I'll be fine!

So knitting... I decided to go with the Baby Yoda cardigan - with a few modifications. (Because I can't just knit a pattern the way it's written, can I? Oh no, I've got to tinker and tutu and increase the chances of it all going horribly wrong. It does make it more interesting though!) I'm knitting it in Shepherd's Colour 4 Me wool which is nice and soft - a blue/pink/yellow/white variegated colourway, since Grant & Kate don't know the sex of their baby yet. I remember when I was pregnant and people would invariably ask 'Do you know what you're having?'. I took to answering very seriously: 'a baby, I hope'.

The colours in the photo aren't quite right - it's not as orange (where did the orange come from????) and much more pastel.

I've also begun a neckwarmer for my partner. This is the first time he's ever expressed any desire for a hand-knitted anything, so even though I'm totally over neckwarmers (this will be the fourth) I've said I'll do it. I probably won't bother photographing it or even mentioning it again - the instructions are it has to be black, and it can't have any lace, or pattern, or anything even remotely interesting. So it's 2 x 1 rib and it's very, very boring. Why does it have to be black and boring? Because he wants to wear it playing golf (when a scarf would be get in the way of his swing) and he doesn't want anyone to laugh at him on the golf course. Now on the surface that sounds reasonable doesn't it? But what you have to understand is that we are talking about the man who wears orange, yellow, red and green plaid trousers to golf in summer (which he had his mother make because he couldn't, unsurprisingly, find any in the shops). And he teams these trousers with a turquoise, purple and white Hawaiian print shirt. And he's worried people might laugh at a neckwarmer?????

Does the boyfriend curse still work after ten years and two children?