Cough, splutter, cough… Welcome to another week of Yarn Along with Ginny and Friends. Go and check out the blog here to see what everyone is knitting and reading this week.

If you haven’t picked up on it already, I’ve had a dreadful cold this week. Well it actually began last week and then took a few days to take hold.

When I was well enough, I finally got down to finishing off my sleeves on the Hooray cardigan and now it’s all finished, hooray! I’d like to give special thanks to Louisa from the Richmond Knitters for suggesting that I knit the reverse stocking stitch sleeves, inside-out, so that I could just knit the sleeves rather than purling the whole way. Brilliant! I love my knitting group and the people in it. More often than not, I get excellent tips from these guys that I would not have come up with on my own.

These photos were taken when I was still a tad unwell, so please forgive the non-smiles and non-head shots, I find it hard to smile in photos at the best of times! My kind photographer said it was him, but I know it was me, and I asked ‘Do I really look like this, how can you be married to me?!’

I am very happy with the outcome. I did end up sewing up the last extra buttonhole I added, then to make it a little less obvious, I transferred that button to the other side of the band to cover said hole. I think the deception works.

My only reservation, and there’s always one; is the shaping around the cables at the bottom of the fronts. It doesn’t sit flat, and I wasn’t really sure why. I popped over to Ravelry to see a whole lot of other people encountered the same thing, so it’s not just me. I saw that one knitter dealt with it, by re-knitting and re-shaping somehow. I didn’t recognise or find this fault in other people’s projects, until I saw it in mine, then I could see it everywhere. I’m a touch disappointed, but not devastated. I still think it’s extremely wearable despite an odd lumpy part around the waist, the cables kind of disguise it. I would like to point out the lumpiness wasn’t visible until after the 8cm of knitted on band was complete. There was no way I was pulling out all my knitting for a slight glitch, that I have no hope of actually fixing anyway (let’s be honest). I haven’t blocked this garment yet, and if this, by some miracle fixes the problem, then I take it all back Veera and your record is intact.

My Hooray Cardigan has been my very first successful ‘Use It Or Lose It’ project. Of the 20 balls of Anny Blatt I had, I’ve used 15. I guess I’ll be losing the last 5 balls to a charity knitter, my job is done here.

I did finish reading Stephanie Pearl McPhee’s book, you know the one with the really long title. I didn’t mind it. I felt like I could relate to parts of it (not that you need to relate to a book to enjoy it, but it helps); funnily enough, one of the last chapters was about how she felt she looked in photos, compared to her ‘prettiness’ in real life, oh the irony. The departure from telling knitting tales, led to a number of parenting stories or stories about her family life. I guess most people are parents right?

I started reading a sample on my Kindle for Rachel Herron’s ‘Pack up the Moon’. I was at the second last page of the sample and was just about to dismiss it as my next read, when, all of a sudden, the author made geographical references to San Francisco, so I’m a little torn as to whether or not to give it a try. The author is a knitter after all, perhaps her character and newly re-acquainted given-up-for-adoption-daughter head down to Imaginknit for some bonding over a bit of yarn shopping? You never know right?