Oops, nearly three weeks since I blogged.
The firest week I had no knitting to blog about. With mym in hospital I spent the evenings on the phone, cookng, eating, clearing up, showering and thn bed. Lasst week there was a little bit of knitting but no time to blog!
Mum spent a week in acute care and then a week in a respiratory ward, in a side room with her own bathroo, . The staff were wonderful. She had an ultrasound and CT scans and a gastroscopy, and will need further scans and a colonoscopy when she is a bit stronger, She needed four units of blood, so they need to find out where/why she is/was blleding. So far they don't know, all the scans and the gastroscopy are clear, well apart from a chest infection and a blood clot on her lungs. Of course they can't understand why she didn't feel pain, but this woman has constant pain from osteoarthritis in her shoulders, and a badly healed fractured back and stomach complaints, so no wonder. She's a poor patient, thinks she should be back to normal two days after getting out of hospital!
So knitting.
Remember a few months ago I knitted an open cardigan in Summer Tweed? I absolutely loathe kntiting with this stuff but really like my Quuick Sands cardigan, it's softened up and is really comfortable next to skin. Weeellll. This caridgan was a disaster. KYou increase all the way down the fronts, so that they are very wide at the bottom and hang down, longer than the rest of the cardigan. They hung down far too low for my liking and I couldn't wear it whilst knitting, various accessories were trapped in the excess fabric at my sides! it also didn't soften up AT ALL. It's like wearing rough string! Furthermore when I laid the cardigan down to dry I didn't just cross the fronts, I TUGGED them, One side stretched out more than the other - by about five inches!
It's unwearable. But before chucking I asked MrC to machine wash and tumble dry, First attempt wasn't too successful. He didn't dry it (tained not to dry handknits!!). The cardigan was the same size and still rough. Next time was a lot better. Not only was it tumble dried, but I'd asked him to pull the shorter front whilst wet and see if he could even out the difference in front lengths. I've not tried it on, but the ends are now pretty even and it's softened up a lot. More like the Quick Sands now. Hopefully a success!
Meanwhile, i started another one in RYC Cotton Jeans. I've had this in my stash for years. I prefer cooler colours, but hey, it's there, for immediate casting onm deep stash.
I have 11 balls. I've had three attempts at the yoke and frogged two, so my actual knitting yardage os 9 balls, though I'm only on number four . i'm slipping the frist stich for a neater edge (it's just worked in plain stocking stich_ and increasing every sixth row, not every other row, so that my fronts won't hang down as much (I hope!), I must try to take photos. I really want to get this done by the end of the month or first week in August. That's why I've gone for a thicker yarn. I briefly thought I could knit a fine 4ply in a mattr of weeks...
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