I finished a pair of socks on Thursday which had been my only knitting project for the previous two weeks; they’re my dad’s birthday present and his birthday is on the 22nd, so I didn’t really have time to work on anything else.
They’re basic top-down socks in a 3×1 rib with a plain knit row every sixth row and each rib section offset by two stitches from the one before, giving an interesting texture which looks like more of a brickwork pattern when stretched. I used just under 100g of Yarn Yard Bonny in brick red (which is what suggested the brick pattern to me). I was quite impressed that I managed to knit a pair of men’s socks in two weeks!
Since then, though, I’ve spent the weekend dithering about what to knit now. Having spent the last few weeks of 2012 knitting Christmas presents, and then finishing up WIPs, and then started this year with a birthday present, I’m overwhelmed by choice. At first, I cast on for a pair of Glasgow School Mitts in some lovely purply merino T gave me for Christmas, but it seemed ridiculous to be knitting fingerless gloves when we have several inches of snow and the weather isn’t forecast to get above freezing at all in the next five days. So I thought maybe I’d knit some new flip-top mittens to go with the fleece-lined Boden mac I bought just before Christmas (I got the grey with pink and orange flowers), as my purple striped Podsters don’t really go with it at all, and then spent most of yesterday evening swithering between more Podsters and Broad Street Mittens with a flip thumb. I cast on Broad Streets first, then decided to do Podsters with bits of the Broad Street pattern added, and then realised that the Podster pattern has been substantially updated anyway so only really needs a bit of tweaking here and there anyway.
And then I thought I’d start the next of the A to Z of shawls, and cast on for Juno Regina in purple merino/cashmere/silk laceweight. Which was fine until I dropped a stitch in the second repeat of Chart B and had to unravel the whole thing, and thought that maybe I didn’t want to knit something where a large chunk of the instructions read ‘repeat these two rows for 42 inches’ anyway. So I wound a skein of saffron-yellow Yarn Yard Crannog for the Japanese Garden Shawl, and then decided I wasn’t really sure I wanted to knit that at all.
Still, at least I got quite a bit of my first mitten knitted.
Given that I seemed to be having a dropping-stitches day, it was probably just as well to stick to basic rib and stocking stitch rather than attempting lace. But I’m still not sure what I want my next big project(s) to be. I am generally less than inspired by the choice of shawl patterns beginning with J, and indeed K, which does make me wonder whether I really want to carry on with the A to Z challenge (it was a lovely idea, but when there are lots of patterns I definitely want to knit, why waste time knitting things I feel meh about?). And I’m wondering about a cardigan – possibly Pilkington in my Skein Queen Voluptuous – but I’m not sure that late January isn’t too late to start knitting woolly cardigans really. Though it definitely feels too early for summery things!
Oh well. Mittens it is, then.
Does the Pilkington have a long-sleeved version? I’m not sure that the half-sleeves is a brilliant idea for a woolly cardigan.
I don’t think I have enough yarn for a long-sleeved cardigan, she only had two skeins of each colour. And I’d probably wear the half-sleeved version over a long-sleeved top on the kind of days when a long-sleeved woolly would be too much anyway.
I got the first interesting bit and all the boring bit of the Juno Regina done… then I dropped two stiitches, failed at sorting it, and the whole lot has been sitting untouched for more than a year… Must Sort.
It is a lovely pattern. Maybe I’ll try again when I’m feeling a bit more alert.
I am part-way through a top-down seamless cardigan on 6mm needles, and at the speed I’m going I should be finished by next weekend if I knit every evening. If I can – I am usually very slow with full-sized items – then you can.
Well, it would probably help if I didn’t tend to go for thinner yarns and smaller needles!
It’s true! I’m knitting a Modern Garden – chunky yarn on 10mm needles – at the moment and it is SO FAST after all those 4ply sweaters I’ve had in progress for years on end.