Thursday 31st May - Finishing up the WIPs

That's "Works In Progress".

The main peril of enjoying knitting is that sooner or later the knitting finishes and the finishing has to start.

The blue jumper

(this picture dates from 30th July last year) is properly finished now. I was wearing it last week, having resolved various issues, like it being a bit shorter than I liked, and the casting off at the lower hem being far too tight. After much thought, I managed to convince myself to undo the ending off at the bottom, pulled out the rows of ribbing, knitted several more inches and changed the hem to a rolled edge, like the collar. It was rolling a bit too enthusiastically, so I have "blocked" it, sort of, which may have sorted that too.

So, now I only have three works-in-progress left ( that's if I don't count the other two which are still in the "how am I going to finish them off" phase) and new a ball of wool waiting, nay, urging, to be cast on to make something, but I'm not sure what yet.

The Bamboozle jumper is knitted; and has been waiting until I was certain of having the brain power and consecutive minutes of time and enough light to make a halfway decent job of joining the pieces together.

(this picture also dates from 30th July last year). Which moment arrived yesterday. Using my step-by-step booked, I discovered how to graft the shoulder seams

and pick up stitches to knit the neck

  and how to neatly undo all the grafting and picking up of stitches

and do it all over again, joining the correct pair of seams together, without losing my cool

I now have a dozen or so loose ends of yarn to sew in, and then I can start the tricksy business of sewing in the sleeves and the main seams. I did block the sleeves (that word again - it means damping or washing the the pieces, gently pulling them into the correct shape and letting them dry slowly, in the hope that they remember those shapes in the future. "It's the thing that makes the difference between home-made and hand-made", said the expert....)   

I'm so looking forward to wearing it, with some trepidation in case it doesn't fit....