My knitting got derailed when I went away on a short holiday in May. I stopped working on the Noro Blossom blanket - because it was nearing completion and I had to work out what to do next. I took my bus knitting with me, a sock yarn sweater that I have not written about, and I have not touched it either since I came back.
I have been knitting on the standard blankets the whole time. I finished blanket #148 and started #149. In a way it is comforting to do just knitting that you don't have to think about, but now I do want to use my brain as well, and I have gone back to the Noro Blossom blanket.
But I will write about blanket #149. This is in pale pastel colours, in double knitting weight, the kind of blanket that I knit time and time again and that is pleasurable each time. There is nothing much to say about it. (The holes that you can see in the picture will disappear when the ends are fastened.)
The first charity shop that I unravelled is a recent purchase. I wanted a pale woollen 4 ply yarn, and this seemed to fit the bill. It appears to be machine knitted with a label saying Sheila Duggie. The off white yarn is a bit too thin, slightly unevenly spun with a fleck of the same colour. I think it is wool, it behaves and it feels like wool. I like the flower decoration and the stitch around the shoulders. I could not work out how it was put together. The neckband and the ribbing around the bottom and the wrists had been knitted together, but I could not find an end to start unravelling, so I had to resort to cutting. Otherwise it was no trouble at all.
The second garment was a baby cardigan knitted in a very nice pale blue yarn, probably a wool blend. I bought it for one of my Cabbage Patch dolls which came without clothes. Although loosely knitted this was not so easy to unravel either because the ends had been very thoroughly fastened.
And this is one of the vintage yarns used - Patons Fuzzy Wuzzy - an angora wool blend probably from the 1970s.
It has been so long since my last entry that I have finished knitting blanket #148 and I have started crocheting the edging. It is the next dark blanket, very similar to blanket #142, because a lot of the yarns are the same, but it is brighter with more and brighter reds and some bright blues. This one is knitted in aran weight too. I used the dark grey angora in this one too, and some random coloured navy mohair, and it makes it so soft. (The colours in the pictures are too light.)
The next Kaffe Fassett jumper in turn to be unravelled was the Lattice patten from Glorious Knitting. It is knitted exactly as in the book. The problem with this kind of regular pattern is that all the yarns are the same lengths and there are a limited number of them. The yarns are nice anyway, Rowan Spun Tweed and Fine Tweed and some fine chenille. I like chenille yarns, but the thicker ones are inflexible to knit with.
The second garment was a Per Una zip front cardigan from the time when they did 100% wool clothes. I bought this several years ago aiming it for a bus knitted blanket, but then I had second thoughts. I thought it was shetland yarn but it is not. The yarn came out quite well anyway, after washing. The fronts were cut so I discarded them. I have so much yarn now that I no longer have patience to deal with a lot of short ends in indifferent yarns. I threw away the thick yarn in the collar and cuffs, too. I could have split it, but I did not have a mind to.
