knitting neels

Although my similarity to Superwoman begins and ends with a desire to fly (and I think her desire is followed by actual flight)… we all have to admit fallibility from time to time. I have some sort of stomach bug. Tragically grave though my condition may seem, I have the suspicion that it’s my body’s way of telling me to just rest up for a while. Oh, woe! 😀

Thermal is helping out and being tragically grave with me

Two inches to go! That means only about four or five more repeats until the placket! I can do this! I’m increasingly paranoid about this project. I woke up on Tuesday night clutched by the fear that I was actually knitting it on 2.5mm needles instead of 3mm. Slippers. Dressing gown. Needle gauge. Lights on. Down stairs. Seize knitting… phew… 3mm. Back to bed. Unrest regarding one’s sanity.

And the beret!

Hon hon hon! Vair air my onions?

I have to admit that I am a little disappointed with the emerging colour. It is too grey and purple. I was hoping for more of the blue stuff. I thought yesterday that maybe I could felt it a little to improve its condition. Then I realised that for all felting’s wonder, it simply cannot change the colour of a project, scrub as I might. I was thinking of giving it to a friend of mine in college, but I haven’t known her for very long and I’m not sure that she is the beret-wearing type. I mean it’s easy to tell if they’re prone to carrying around bags of onions and baguettes. Maybe she’s discreet about her onion-carrying. Maybe I should ask her. (I realise that although my first instinct would be to ask her if she enjoys carrying onions – possibly with a baguette, but not essential – it would probably be more beneficial to our friendship to just ask if she’d like a beret to wear).

I came across a great site the other night called Knitting Fool. It has a huge catalogue of stitch patterns (most of which, unfortunately, lack pictures) as well as some very useful jumper and cardigan pattern generators. The bit I like the best is the percentage breakdown for a set-in sleeve. My quest for a decent set-in sleeve explanation has become a bit of a holy grail lately. I know EZ talks about a set-in sleeve in the round in Knitting Workshop but the details are pretty scanty and I don’t really like the look of it. I know that if I sat down with it, I’d be able to come up with a solution eventually, but I’d be held back by two things. Firstly, it strikes me as being a knitting technique that came from sewing, and I’ve only ever cut out and sewed one pair of set in sleeves. They came out ok but it was more of a fluke than a result of my excellent seamstress skillzzz. Secondly, set-in sleeves are the weirdest looking things and the logic of proportion behind their construction was always a mystery to me. This, however, has been a great help. I hope it bloody works!

I’m planning on trekking out to This is Knit tomorrow morning for some pattern yak with Lisa. I’m planning on picking up Lucy Neatby’s Cool Socks Warm Feet while I’m there. I had a look through it before and decided not to buy it. I have been thinking about it, though, and much as I love knitting the same type of sock over and over, I think I need to learn new things. I imagine learning new sock techniques will be like learning french irregular verbs: it seems like a chore, but it needs to be done, and it turns out to be really useful and even a bit of fun in the end. Whether or not it encourages my onion-carrying remains to be seen 😀