Summer Mystery Shawlette

I mentioned the Wendy Johnson Summer Mystery Shawlette the other week and how I'd finished knitting it, but needed to do the blocking thing.  Well, I did that yesterday and here it is:

I used Posh Yarn Martha fingering/sock weight yarn in a colourway called Cheerfulness Breaks In.  The main shade is a tomatoey red, with bits of toffee, purpley red and bronze and it took 72g.  It was a skein that I bought online, received in the post and thought "hmm, not so sure about this", wound it into a ball and thought it looked better in the ball than the skein, knitted it up and decided that I really like it after all! 

I also gave my Shale Baby Blanket a bit of an iron and that's now been put away in my bag of knits for Romanian orphans and street kids.

The blanket's folded into 4 in the picture.  The pattern's written for aran/worsted weight yarn, but I used DK acrylic and I think I added an extra two pattern repeats to the width.  I'm tempted to make another one of these using thicker yarn, but I don't really need any more blankets at home.

Deco's coming along, albeit slowly.  I still haven't shaken off this cold and I keep making mistakes in my knitting.  I'm nearing the end of the second sleeve cap, but I've had to tink back a couple of times because I wasn't happy with the way the stitches were lying, so thought it might be a better idea to put it to one side until my head's less fuzzy and I can concentrate. 

I also had to rip back the heel of a toe-up sock I'm making because I decided I needed more rows in the foot as it felt a bit tight when I tried it on.  I'm using Wendy Happy bamboo yarn and I'd forgotten that I tend to knit a bit more tightly with this yarn (no idea why - maybe because it's quite slippy and I'm using a metal-tipped circular) so need more rows than usual.  I decided to rip back to just after the increases for the gusset and add the extra rows just before the heel.  It'll give me a bit more 'lift' at the front of the ankle.  I've also changed my mind about the heel flap.  Usually, I do a slip-stitch heel, but this time round I think I'll do linen stitch instead, just for a change.

With  all this tinking and ripping, I was a bit fed up, so I browsed a bit on Ravelry and had a look at examples of the Baby Surprise Jacket.  It's a pattern I've made four or five times now, but while I was looking, one BSJ that had been knitted using two yarns alternated every two rows caught my eye in particular and gave me an idea of using up my left over half balls of acrylic DK and so I cast on for some simple garter stitchery.  I'm about three-quarters done on this so I'll show you photos soon.

I'm trying to resist casting on something new now.  I want to make Jared Flood's Rock Island (can you tell I love his designs?) and have the yarn for it, plus I've earmarked a skein of Fyberspates sock yarn to make a Pimpelliesse scarf (garter stitch with a simple lace edging), plus the rest of my queue on Ravelry.  I want to get Deco finished or at least further along before I do that though.

And I haven't touched my Granny Stripe blanket in weeks either.

Oh well - more knitting and crochet and less time playing silly games on Facebook would help (those games steal time!).

Hubby's taking a week off work from tomorrow, so I may not get the chance to blog next week as I've got a lot on too.  A parenting workshop on Tuesday morning and an open event Tuesday evening at the school DD1 will be starting at in September.  Open afternoon/evening at DD2's school on Wednesday, plus DD1's school concert that evening and then DD1 has her induction day at High School on Thursday (but I'm hoping hubby will take her to that).  That's on top of the usual 'stuff' of running the house, two children, two dogs, four chickens and one husband!