Decision making

For the last few days, the only thing I've knitted has been a sock. This is 72 sts on a 2.5mm Addi lace needle in a 4+2 garter rib pattern, using the hand dyed sock yarn left over from my Mystic Meadows shawl.

I've been trying to find the perfect sweater project since I finished two sweaters nearly at the same time recently. I've been looking through books and magazines and Ravelry, and I think I've narrowed it down to two. This could change at any time though. The next thing is to swatch and see if I like the fabric in the yarns I'm thinking of using, one is handspun alpaca and the other is a wool rich DK.

Other than that, I've been playing with a peg loom I made. This is just the trial version of it, I've got a lovely piece of oak for the real thing, but I wanted to try out the spacing of the pegs first.

I started out with strips of the carded fibre that has a lot of noils and neps which makes a lovely squishy fabric, and then I lightly spun some of the same and tried that. I think I might try felting the result. It could be a good way to use up some of the not so good fibre I have. I fancy trying to make a rug at some point.

I managed to get a mirror shot of the Cabled Spiral sweater, the colour is a little yellowed, but it shows the fit pretty well. This is a very cosy garment, the Sirdar Salsa (merino and acrylic) is very soft and not at all itchy.

I'm still here

It's been a while I know, but progress has been made. My Rosemary sweater is finished, and so is the Cabled Spiral sweater. I'm happy with them both. I added some rows of single crochet rib to the neckline of the Rosemary sweater and overlapped them in the middle in an effort to stop the gaping. This worked well and it sits nicely. The colour is more accurate in the first picture, a dark olive green.

This picture is of the almost complete Cabled Spiral. Now it has a slightly longer neckband and is ready for blocking. The pattern is written for a polo neck, but I always find them too warm, so I've shortened it, hopefully without spoiling the finished look. Modifications I made: added more garter ridges on the hem to counteract the tendency to roll. Also, I did just a little waist shaping, just visible in the picture.

This is a blocking picture of the yoke, the colour is more accurate in the whole sweater picture.

Now I have to decide what to make next. I only have one sock going at the moment and I just discovered an error in it which I'm hoping I can fix without ripping out more than 2". It is knitted with the green hand dyed sock yarn left over from Mystic Meadows, and I'm using a garter rib pattern.