On the needles (3)

I haven't begun sewing up the owl yet - my excuse is that I don't have a pair of tweezers!  In the meantime, I'm knitting something nice and easy:  a yellow jersey for my daughter.  The pattern is actually for a stripy jersey which I made last winter.  It has several mistakes, of course - otherwise this wouldn't be BAD knitting!  I didn't have 3mm needles for the rib and 3.5 needles for the body, so just used 3.25 needles instead for all of it.  Obviously the rib ended up with no definition AND it keeps folding up, much to the wearer's annoyance.  It's far too shallow.  I now have the right needles - progress! - and have made the rib 12 rows deep instead of just 4.  Also, it's bliss not having to knit stripes and change colours constantly.  I did that wrong as well.  I've since learnt how to change colours neatly.  Give me several decades and I might actually advance to "intermediate" knitter....!  But the biggest "mistake" was being forced to buy yarn on-line as the colours did NOT come up as pictured.  The orange was too pumpkin-like, the blue too deep, the pink not a soft orange-pink but rather loud....only the yellow was beautiful.  I'm not sure what anyone can do about internet ordering.  Living in the centre of London, I've got no choice.  John Lewis has about one millionth the yarn available and then generally only the expensive stuff.

Despite these mistakes, a photo of the jersey - worn by my daughter on a wintry day in the British Museum, where the light is very soft and ideal for photography - appeared in the Spring issue of Simply Knitting magazine, along with the matching scarf I made, decorated with my famous knitted flowers (something I can do right!)  A rather proud moment!

I've ventured into adding a pattern on the plain yellow jumper (yellow as in banane) by knitting a row of hearts above the rib.  Why not across the top part, my daughter asked.  Because, frankly, trying to do a heart pattern AND negotiate the armhole decreasing filled me with dread.  Anyway, it's a narrow band of hearts so I thought it would look better above the waistband and arm ribs.  

The Banana Jersey...with hearts