The knitting gods have finally smiled on me....

..... and I seem to be getting somewhere with eldest childs hoody. After a disasterous attempt to graft the original front and the extended rib section together I decided to take a different approach. Well I actually cried and swore a bit and then chucked the ribbed bit in the bin. I decided to just knit down from the original front bit and re-do the ribbed section. It's working great and can't believe I didn't do it in the first place.

Added to the fact that the lousy weather has left us stormbound on our rock in the Atlantic this means that I might actually manage to get the hoody finished before we are due to leave said rock on Monday. However, this entire experience has taught me something very important. In future I will try and adapt the pattern to knit in the round and then the front and the back should hopefully be the same length!!!

My knitting is screaming.....

Eldest child's hoody had a problem and I had to operate. The front was a good 2" shorter than the back.

See, it's a huge difference and there was no hiding my mistake.

I have no idea how it happened as I was a good little knitter and I counted my rows and I wrote my notes. Obviously I messed up somewhere and my poor knitting had to suffer the consequences. So I prepared the hoody for surgery:

I threaded a knitpicks cable through the stitches at the top of the ribbing and then another one through the stitches 4 rows up.

And then I did the most painful thing known to knitting man and woman. I cut.

And I even took pictures for you all to see. I swear I could hear my knitting screaming. Or maybe that was me! But it's done and I now have a cable supporting the end of the front of the hoody and the ribbing on another cable ready to be added to. I went wrong a few times and I think some stitches are from different rows but I am fairly confident I can tidy it all up and make it good.

I feel I owe it to my poor knitting :o( Wish me luck!

Magazine Review: Yarn Forward - May Issue - 12

Yet again Shannon Oakey and the team at Yarn Forward have produced a quality magazine that actually takes me longer than 5 minutes to get through. Although I wouldn't knit them all I found all the patterns to be really eye-catching and I love the fact that the sizes go up to 50" on all the garments. At least two of them, 'Louisa' and 'Diamonds' had me running to the Internet to price up the yarn. That doesn't happen very often!

The features were excellent and a great read over a cup of tea. I had a personal interest in the Terry Pratchett interview, 'Knitting for Knights', as I am an avid Terry Pratchett fan and knitted one of the squares (albeit a very very basic one) included in the afghan that is talked about. I was also really interested in the 'Knit and Make Money' feature as this is something that I am looking to pursue.

The regulars such as 'Book Reviews', 'Knitting on the Net' and 'Tales from a Yarn Shop' were at their usual high standard and the photography was pretty darn luscious as usual. In short an excellent magazine for any standard of knitter

Two Sleeves At Once

I finished the front of the eldest childs hoody last night and blocked it as well!! As I was making a start on the sleeves I decided to be brave and do two at a time on one long circular. So I hooked up a 120cm cable to the knitpro novas and voila:

They are coming along really well I am hoping to have the increases finished by the time I watch Lost tonight so it's just basic stocking stitch as I can't do anything more complicated than that while watching Jack and Sawyer ;o)

The Mother's Day socks were well received and the spare is eagerly anticipated. I am glad she liked them and in the winter of Aviemore they will definately be nice and warm. The niece and nephew visited today and seemed rather impressed with Bob the chick. This cemented the intention to make them one each for Easter but I am thinking of working with some different colours or maybe making some patterned eggs. Not sure which yet. But at least now I know what knitting projects I will be taking away with me next week.

I also picked up the lastest copy of the Debbie Bliss magazine and it's lovely. I will review it at later date but I want to have second read of it first :o)