3 Sleeve Island

It’s been a few busy weeks. I’ve been away for a romantic lunch and night in Red Hill:

I’ve been yarn shopping(!) I made it to Little Woollie’s yarn store on the way to Red Hill, then went to the Coburg yarn market the following day!

I’ve been sick again 😦 I’ve celebrated birthdays (there’s another one this afternoon)

and I’ve been knitting madly on my Bendigo Sheep Show sweater! I’m now further along since these photos from last weekend, I have half a sleeve to go!

I should have this version of Wool & Honey finished in the next couple of days before blocking and photos next weekend.

Meanwhile this week, the extra yarn from Louie & Lola has arrived for my Fragmentation Cardigan. I have just 2 half sleeves on this to go. It’s going to be very satisfying finishing these 2 sweaters at about the same time. A new sweater cast-on beckons in July.

Playing Chicken

This past week I’ve been playing ‘yarn chicken’ with my Fragmentation cardigan.

I started getting concerned whilst knitting on my first sleeve. With the button bands and a second sleeve still to knit, I was getting anxious by how much yarn I had left. So I strategised, I went ahead and knit the button bands, and then the second sleeve to match the (so far) length of the first sleeve… and after all that, I had just 23 grams of yarn left in the grey. Not enough to finish the sleeves in grey.

My options were:

To make long colourful ribbed cuffs with the remaining advent yarn, then not have enough yarn to make the matching hood. I also wasn’t sure I wanted to have colourful cuffs like Stephen West’s sample.

Or… to email the lovely Karina at Louie & Lola yarns (the yarn dyer of the Advent yarn) and hope that she could help. Which is exactly what I did. I’m so relieved to say Karina got back to me right away and offered to do a custom dye for me, so I asked for 2 skeins (to make it worth her while) and I’ll also have enough for the trim in the matching hood.

So whilst I wait for the additional yarn to arrive, I’ve placed the cardigan aside to get cracking on my Bendigo Sweater… I’d been so obsessively knitting my cardigan, I lost sight of the fact that the Bendigo Sheep Show is just 5 weeks away!

So now I’m playing ‘time chicken’ as well, eep!

Last weekend I presented my sister with her mitts, I think she loves them. It was a proud Knitter moment.

It’s a long weekend here and the weather is terrible, so I hope to get lots of knitting done in between socialising.