FO: Helena Cardigan for Isobel

I finished this ages ago but have only just got round to blogging it.

This is my Helena cardigan made for my niece Isobel in Artesano Superwash Soft Merino DK in Navy from Pack Lane Wools.  I made the 12 month size and that took 4 50g balls. 

 

This is my first proper item of clothing that I've knitted so I was quite worried about the sizing and how it would all work together.  This is a top down pattern with no sewing as the sleeves are knitted in the round.  It took me about 3 weeks to make and I'm pretty pleased with it.  The yarn was lovely to work with, very good stitch definition but it did make my fingers blue when working with it for a few hours.  Lovely pattern, very easy to follow and I only made a few mistakes with the lace pattern when I miscounted, I ended up using stitch markers at the end of each repeat so it would be obvious if I'd gone wrong.

Unravel 2011

Today I went to Unravel, a knitting festival in Farnham.  I wanted to find some yarn to make my first cardigan, I wanted it to be just right and I find it hard to get the right colour on the internet (I also like squishing skeins).  I've decided that my first adult sized peice of clothing will be a February Lady Sweater.  It's a free pattern from Ravelry, thousands of people have made it so I have high hopes of being able to make it without many mistakes.

So I spent a very pleasant hour or so browsing all the stalls in the Farnham Maltings and squished many skeins.  I narrowed my search down to Fyberspates, so many lovely colours and I've already made a scarf for my Mum at Christmas using their sport-weight navy yarn, so I knew it was lovely to work with.  Jenny on the stall noticed me umming and ahhing over two colours, blue teal and water, she came over to help me.  I decided on blue teal as it was the brighter of the two and before I had time to change my mind I'd bought 5 skeins.

It really is lovely, squishable yarn and I can't wait to get started.  This photo makes it look very blue, but it really is more turquoise.

You may spot a sneaky purple skein on the left, that was chosen for a special project which I'll tell you all about later.

New Years Resolution - Starting Cycling Again

One of my new year's resolutions was to start cycling to the train station again after a long and snowy winter break.  The snow started in November in Reading and I promptly stopped cycling the 4 miles there and back to our local train station as soon as it got a little icy.  I have visions of myself skidding round a corner on ice unable to release my feet and leaving parts of my knees on the tarmac behind me :-)  I had already stopped running, pretty much after my 10k race in October, so that meant I was doing no exercise at all.  This is bad and usually means by weight shoots up as I carry on eating the doughnuts and cake needed to fuel my non-existent activities.  But this winter it didn't, I didn't consciously eat less or change my diet but my weight stayed about the same regardless of my slobiness.

 

As the snow melted and the icy mornings became few and far between I knew I had to crawl onto my bike again otherwise I never would.  The first few days were very difficult, the hills seemed bigger and even the flat sections seemed arduous.  After about a week of solid cycling (the weather couldn't make up it's mind whether it was warm or freezing so this meant a few weeks of cycling one or two days only), I was back into my old gears of the previous winter.  Now, after cycling consistently for four weeks, I am probably back to my old self.  This bodes well for my next new year's resolution of starting to run regularly again in March (when the clocks go forwards) which I suspect will be tougher and bit more of a shock than this has been.

WIP: Dead simple lace toe-up socks