Two finished projects in one week! #1 The mighty tunic!

Cable tunic- reverse

That's Caitlin's cardigan and my tunic finished, blocked and photographed all in

Cable tunic - front

one week, this morning was a beautifully sunny if windy and cold day, idea for bringing out the cable detail on all three of my projects.  It required balancing a camera on an ironing board and using the timer but I got there and am quite pleased with the results.

The purple tunic as you can see is really quite long, comes down to just above my knees and is ideal for wearing with leggings or thick tights and boots, I've got a sleeveless vest on here but it looks good over a long-sleeved one too.  It's quite heavy so it hangs well and is beautifully warm and soft, not at all itchy.

Would I do it again, well, yes, it is beautiful but it is a long project and as it's created in one piece it gets very heavy towards the end.  However, I really valued the lack of seams when...

Knitting wars

Well, I'm currently wrestling with three knitting projects as well as thinking about my and Caitlin's entries for the competition for the Quilters' Guild Regional Day next weekend.  I'm teaching a group of Young Quilters, this time we're making reverse applique t shirts but I think I'm there with what I need to do for them.  The theme is Anything Goes, so Caitlin is making a TARDIS from a dress I bought for a night out in November last year, it's a size 16 and I'm now down to a 12, despite my best efforts over the summer holidays, and although I have taken it in it's still too big.  I'm hoping to make a dress for one of Caitlin's dolls from my scrap basket, which for some reason never seems to go down, and I can't bear to throw any out.

My cardigan, though mine will be purple

The two projects I'm working on just now are a lacework cardigan (Meier cardigan) and a cabled tunic.  Both are from delicious Interweave books, the tunic from The Art of Seamless Knitting and the cardigan from Metropolitan Knits, it's the one on the cover.  Both are knitted in the round which I like, minimising on seams to sew up.  Well, the tunic has caused me no end of trouble, I originally cast it on using Wensleydale Longwool Sheepshop Aran which I spent a small fortune (for me) on at the just wonderful baa ram ewe in Harrogate when we were down in York on holiday.    I did my tension swatch and it is a fine aran so I had to come down a long way on needle size, but when I began to knit I couldn't see it at all and after a bit of toing and froing with advice from friends online I bit the bullet and ripped it out, sob!  It was then a trip into Dundee to get two huge 400g balls of Wendy Aran with wool which is a nice oatmeal colour, and it's doing fine, though as usually I have to go down about half a mm on the needles because I knit loose.  However, to knit the ribbing for the cardigan I needed a 3.5mm cable needle, now, these apparently don't exist so I needed to go up to 3.75mm and guess what I was knitting the tunic on...  Slipped the tunic onto double pins while I did the ribbing, which was completed last night while watching The Hobbit on DVD, much better viewing the second time round I must admit.  We can't wait until December for part 2 to come out!

Drops 123-21

I was knitting this pair of alpaca gloves in Alpaca Loft's beautiful off white wool, from an Drops Design, a Scandinavian online company who provide the most wonderful free patterns.  However, although I only have a finger and thumb to do on one glove I've stopped, just not inspired at the moment, though I will go back to it when I've got a bit further on with the big projects.

With the cabling for the tunic I photocopied the pattern and colour coded the different instructions, it has made it much easier to follow.