Wednesday 8th April - Knitting Madness

 We had a long long morning, or so it seemed; traipsing round Curry's electrical superstore to look at ovens, mini ovens, built in ovens and hobs... then moving three stores along to look at new kitchens (Wren). Finally to another superstore to look for buttons! 

I would reckon BB was very relieved that I was near the end of my stamina, so we just went in, found the buttons, paid for them and came home, with barely more than 5 minutes of eyeing up the yarn in passing...

I was very pleased with myself for knitting a small swatch with a buttonhole in it. So much easier to tuck into my little bag than the cardigan! Here's the Completely Finished Cardigan;

Those are BB's hands holding it up. It is still too warm for me to put it on for a fashion shoot. You can see how the back is longer than the front.

Here's the photographs on Ithe pattern so you can see it's supposed to be there

I'm using up a ball of super chunky left over; I'd bought an extra one, thinking I was going to run out, but fortunately I didn't need it as I'd bought the wrong colourway! Here's it is;

Being a variegated yarn the cable panel doesn't really show, which is just as well because I'm not used to doing them at all. I'm using a 10mm crochet hook as a cable needle, to match the knitting needles and it's working very well.

Finally, I have embarked upon this cardigan

The pattern is a freebie from Lovecraft, and uses a paintbox super chunky yarn. Except that I'm knitting it on thinner, Sirdar Jewelspun yarn on smaller needles. It's knitted in vertical strips of different patterns, so I reckon as long as my strips are the same width and length I might be ok. I'm not thinking about shoulder and neck shaping yet. Inspiration will come in due course...

And now here's a sweet little story; apparently Borodin's daughter came and sat on his lap when he was at the piano, and played this well-known tune, and he improvised and then wrote down this duet part;

I used to base an entire music lesson, several, perhaps, on this piece. I'd give the children two chime bars, or boomwhackers each or whatever was to hand. I'd arrange them in groups of four; the first person would play the first line, then the second person the second line, etc. Slowly, slowly we would work away until everyone could play their line in time with the recording. 

I was going to say you could have heard a pin drop, they were concentrating so fiercely, but of course it was actually far too noisy!