" title="Knit one, read two"> Knit one, read two

(This post got written weeks ago but I somehow managed to forget to push the button to actually publish it!)

Two weeks have passed since my exams and I find myself wondering what happened to all that time I used to spend studying. Actually, it is not that hard to figure out, studying has been pretty much replaced by wedding planning and worrying about exams has been replaced by worrying about the wedding. Not that there is anything to worry about, everything is well in hand but it seems I can’t help myself.

There has been a reasonable amount of knitting going on though, even if I haven’t managed to do all the things that I promised myself I would do with the free time that I thought I would have. I also haven’t managed to photograph any of the knitting so you’ll need to make do with words for the time being.

My wedding shawl is completely finished and is far and away the most beautiful thing I have ever knitted. In fact, I think it is quite probably the most beautiful thing I will ever knit. It is currently wrapped in tissue paper in a nice box waiting for the wedding but it is very difficult to resist the temptation to take it out and wear it everywhere. In fact, after I had finished blocking it and removed all the pins, I put it on and spent at least 40 minutes dancing round the flat wearing it. Given half a chance, I would never have taken it off. The Knitwitches 100% silk laceweight was absolutely perfect; the colour (undyed) is a good match for my wedding dress; adding some extra width means the size is exactly what I wanted and the (small) mistakes that I made are pretty much invisible, even to me. At the moment, I’m torn between dying it after the wedding to a colour that I’ll be able to wear more often and leaving it as it is to become an heirloom. I think it will be dyed though, since I’m unlikely to use it as a christening shawl and I can’t face the thought of it sitting in a box for a couple of decades just in case a future daughter or grand-daughter would like to wear it at their wedding.

I also finished the first of my Leyburn socks. It looks really good, the pattern is a good match for the yarn and it has absolutely helped confirm that I just don’t like knitting socks. I keep thinking that so many other people like knitting socks that I must be missing something but no matter how many times I try, I just don’t get it. I will knit the second one of the pair (eventually) but next time I suggest that I might try sock knitting again I’d appreciate being reminded of this post!

Jumper knitting however, I love. My Sahara is progressing nicely now that I’ve tried it on and reassured myself that it will fit and will not look like a circus tent and I’ve just cast on for a Vino cardigan.

The shawl is finally finished! Well, the knitting anyway. I still need to weave in the ends and block it.

Unfortunately, thanks to the exams being only 3 days away now, I don’t have time to take better pictures or do anything else with it. I’m really, really pleased with how well it has worked though so expect lots more details next week.

The end of the work on my wedding shawl that is. I’m now more than half-finished with the border so there really isn’t much left to do. Here it is, not-terribly-artistically draped across the sofa:

and a close-up of one of the corners with the border attached:

Not bad for two months’ knitting. I can’t wait it to see it with the pattern properly blocked!

I’m studying at home today (2 weeks till my exams!) and since it is a really miserable wet day here in London, I wanted to wear something snuggly. What better than my new Katarina cardigan?

This brooch doesn’t sit very well with it so I’ll need to get myself a proper shawl pin but it works well enough for taking pictures.

I’ll probably usually wear it open like in this picture but it is nice to know that it can look a bit dressier.

Finally, a silly action shot that was supposed to show off the shape of the sleeves better. I’m not sure it does at this size but you can see a larger version by clicking on it.

Some notes:

• RYC Cashcotton sheds. It is great yarn to work with and knits into a beautiful soft, warm fabric but it’s nearly as bad as having a dog in the house for leaving hair everywhere. This also means that if you have sensitive sinuses, you might find this an uncomfortable yarn to knit or even wear.
• The shawl collar needs a really stretchy cast-off method in order to sit nicely. I don’t have any recommendations because I think I’m going to go back and re-do mine.
• If you are going to extend the length of the sleeves, you need to keep doing the increases. Otherwise, they end up with a slightly dented bell-shape.

Apologies to everyone who subscribes to the RSS feed for this blog and was recently spammed with what appeared to be 90-odd new posts only to discover that they were actually old posts. Also, apologies to anyone whose links were broken by the recent disappearance and re-appearance of this blog.

The 10-year old PC running our webserver died last week and, true to my usual nature, I managed to make things a lot worse before I managed to make them better. (Trying to recover files from a dead server should not result in having to re-install the operating system on your desktop PC but somehow I managed it that way.) Also true to form, there were no backups to recover from and it was only after recovering most of the blog via cached versions from internet search engines that I discovered that I probably could get the files off the dead server.

Lessons learned from this experience:

1. Backups, backups, backups;
2. Do not attempt complicated technical procedures while off sick from work. If your body isn’t up to being in the office, your brain is probably not at its best either;
3. Sometimes it is just better to pay people to do this sort of stuff for you.

So, everything is now back up and running, although not quite exactly the way it was so I’m afraid any old links are probably still broken.

Normal posting should resume shortly with lots of knitting project updates to come!