I've been too busy to find much time to knit this past week (and commuting / lunchtime knitting is non existent at the moment, blame crowded trains and short staffed at work due to holiday/maternity leave,,,)
I have, however, finished the knitting on Honeybee!
I tell you, it has taken me longer to knit the cardigan from halfway up the armhole to the top, than it has taken me to knit the body and two sleeves!
It started off well. I joined sleeves to body ready to start the mock set in sleeve shaping. I was a bit worried about this, a few of the ravelry projects mentioned that it was hardly worth knitting them like this and might have been easier to knit sleeves and then set them in. I found it ok though. I followed the chart, adjusting some of the decreases as I had less sleeve sts for my size (deliberately) and it all went well. That part anyway..
The sticking point for me was the neck decreases. You cast off, for my size, 12, then 6 and then 1 st for six alternate rows. When you start the shoulder shaping you are meant to have 25 stitches on each front, after decreasing 24sts each side.
This is where there is a pattern fail. There are two lace patterns. A narrow faggotting pattern, over four sts, and a bee pattern over ... well it varies depending on which row you're on! Each row has a different stitch count, ranging from 8 to 13! The pattern doesn't instruct you on which row to start the neck decreases. My first attempt left me with a narrow lace panel as the neck edge. I reached the shoulders and decided I didn't like it so frogged back (not peasant with the bee stich!) and reknitted, decreasing another four sts so that the neck edge ended with a bee panel. Another gripe was that there is no instruction for whether to work half a bee or st stitch as you are doing the front slopes. I tried half a bee (of course) but frogged that and knitted plain, it looked far too messy.
The shoulder, same thing about the stitch count! I just stopped on the left shoulder at the same point of the pattern, as my stitch count varied from 20-25 depending on the bee row! Just annoying. It would have been better to state which panels to decrease to for the shoulders, rather than giving a stitch count...
Grumble over. I had a mishap with the i-cord neck edging, but that was down to me. I had to tink back as I'd split the yarn, and dropped some of the faggotting lace stitches on the back.
After that waffle here's the finsihed knitted garment. Still have ends, underarm sts to graft, buttons and a wash, but it's nearly there!