Have buttons, will travel

So, my February Lady Sweater finally has buttons. Actually, it's had buttons for a week, it's just taken until today to be able to get Mr H to take a photo of me wearing it.

I'm really pleased with it (have I mentioned that already, I think I have but I mean really pleased with it!). It was fun to knit and I love that it's all done in one piece - I hate seaming and I'm not particularly good at it either and I don't really go in for the old 'practice makes perfect', my ironing contradicts that.

The sweater took me exactly 10 balls of Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran. There are a few less rows of garter stitch at the bottom than there should be as I ran out of yarn and wasn't about to go and buy another ball for the sake of a few rows. If I'd done one less pattern repeats on the body or the sleeves I'm sure it would have worked out fine but I can't predict the future. (FYI, I did 25 repeats on the body and 18 on the sleeves).

I also have a photo of my sock yarn blanket, although it's not a particularly good one. It's coming along very slowly, as I've said, due to an actual lack of sock yarn. It will be even slower now that I have frogged my Froot Loop socks due to a mistake I couldn't fix or ignore, grr.

I know it looks a bit of a mess at the moment but I'm sure that it will start to look better as it grows. I will be raiding my mum's leftover sock yarn when I'm in the UK next week, ohh, actually, it's this week I go, very exciting, apart from the bit where I have to spend two weeks in a youth hostel in York, I'm not really looking forward to that. Oh how I wish I was rich and could afford to stay in a hotel for two weeks. I am cursing not doing the London workshop, which then leads me to curse my old boss, but let's not think about him or I might scream!

Need buttons

I finished the knitting on my February Lady Sweater. Best. Sweater. Ever. I love it, love it! I've never been so happy with something I knitted. All I need now is some pretty buttons to finish it off, that and for it to get chilly so I can actually wear it! I'm not sure what colour to go for, I was thinking green, brown or maybe even mother of pearl if I can get away with it. It requires quite large buttons so I will have to make sure I choose wisely, I don't want to ruin it.

I have already started my Christmas knitting! I cast on my first gift last night. I can't disclose any information though as it's a gift for my mum and I know she does read my blog from time to time so no news on that project until after Christmas. I know it seems like Christmas is ages away but I don't want a repeat of last year when I was up first thing Christmas morning grafting sock toes! Plus, I only completed half the gifts I planned on last year so some family members ended up gift-less (I figure it's OK as they live in Germany and I didn't see them anyway). I'm already over halfway through my first gift so I think everyone on my list will get their gift this year...

Mr H and I spent the day in Lausanne yesterday, I'm afraid I didn't take any pictures though. I can't believe we were there for four hours and I failed to find any of the yarn shops. I know they exist there as I went there with my mum around Christmas time and we found two without even looking. Maybe it's a sign that I need to be knitting from my stash and not buying new yarn. I do have in the region of ten miles of yarn in my stash. I find that quite satisfying.

The World's stupidest needles

Progress on the sleeves of my February Lady Sweater has been rather slow as I was knitting them on stupidly long double pointed needles. I mean, who even needs 30cm (12inch) DPNs? I only had them because I bought them from a charity shop. Surely if you need DPNs that long you just use a circular needle instead? I finally managed to find myself some short circulars to get on with the sleeves today and progress has suddenly increased tenfold so now I just have one and a half sleeves to knit and I'm done, yay! I can't wait! I love the needles too, their Lang needles but are made by Addi, making them a little cheaper than standard Addi needles but they are exactly the same. I've never really knit with Addi needles before until the past couple of days and I have really fallen in love with them, they are so smooth and comfortable to work with, definitely worth the extra money over any other brands, especially since I really can't get on with bamboo circulars, I always find that they snag where the needles join the cable.

Yesterday I cast on a leftover sock yarn blanket. I'm knitting it in a logcabin style, making it up as I go along. I'm thinking this will be a very long-term project with no visible end date. Unfortunately I made the initial piece rather small, so I'm hoping it won't look strange but it is meant to be all higgeldy-piggeldy and kind of like a scrap patchwork blanket. I will post pictures when I have made a little more progress.

Progress Update

My February Lady Sweater is coming along nicely. I have gotten used to the gull lace stitch pattern and have managed to get on without making any mistake, which is a relief as I had to do the first repeat twice due to mistakes and figured it was going to be a very long project if I had to do each repeat twice.

I'm really enjoying knitting this, now that I've got the hang of the lace pattern I'm finding it a breeze but the kind of breeze that I still have to think about, which I haven't had in a knitting project for a long time. I needed something a little more challenging, which this is but not so much it hurts. Hopefully this will prepare me for a bit more lace knitting that I have planned, although I'm not sure how much knitting time I'm going to have over the next few months for reasons I can't go into at the moment.

There are more socks I want to knit now, Opal have a new range of their Hundertwasser sock yarn and I love it. I will try to restrain myself for a bit but I'm sure it won't be long before I'm over at Tricolaine raiding Annelis' stock!

Go Murray!

So, I've spent the evening watching the tennis and knitting. Very relaxing. The knitting did help to keep me relaxed through the tense Murray match, I was very glad to see him win. Maybe I should go out onto the streets of Geneva and make lots of noise like all the football fans. The Spanish fans were so noisy last night. Apparently the fanzone was packed so I'm glad we gave it a miss, I'm still not feeling 100%.

The doctor has got me on steroids for my Crohn's to try to help the inflammation. I'm getting better each day and have actually managed to get out and do some things, which is a relief to both me and Mr H, although, to be honest, it's kind of too hot to do too much other than strolling in the shade and drinking iced coffee. The good thing about having been ill though is that I've managed to give up smoking again (yes, I failed last time, which was probably obvious by my silence on the subject). Haven't had a cigarette in 9 days and tomorrow is the first day of the public smoking ban in Switzerland.

The February Lady Sweater is coming on slowly. I've not done any knitting since last weekend until tonight so there's not been much to report. I did receive a lovely gift from my mum (it took a week and a half to get here after a detour via Ecuador!). She sent me a copy of the book Tea Cozies and I want to knit all of them! It is such a lovely book and is beautifully photographed, I can't wait to start on a project. My mum wants me to knit her some from the shop and will be sending over some yarn for me when I tell her which ones I will do, very exciting!