Time for hottie botties

While I struggle to sew up the striped blue cardigan, I've started knitting another hot water bottle cover, using up the last of that mystery wool.  I hope there's enough wool!  This is how much I've done in two evenings (even I'm impressed...)

On the needles...

I seem to have a strange affinity for the needles I'm using:  they're an old pair of my mother's, one of only two pairs I could find.  I've never been able to sort out this mystery.  Did my mother really only have two pairs of needles?  Did she knit hundreds of jersies using only two sizes, both quite similar?  The ones I'm using are a US6 (which is a 5mm) and although I've got a pair of new 5mm, I find myself using these.  There's something about the feel of them that is nice.  Perhaps they're made of a better quality aluminium?!

In the meantime, during the day, for an hour or two only, I'm sewing up that cardigan.  I've already had to unpick one armhole.  What is about armholes.  When I used to sew (back in the days when you could buy decent fabric), I used to struggle with set-in sleeves.  In fact, I struggled with sleeves of all kinds.  The sleeve never seemed to be the same shape as the hole it was going into.  It seems to be the same with knitted garments!  But I promised my daughter the cardi would be finished by Halloween and I'm well on track.  For once!

On the needles (I think I've lost count.....)

Mmmmmm......I'm not so sure about the new Blogger dashboard.  It looks nice and big and all but it didn't automatically bring up the previous "on the needles" title so I don't know what number this is.  But, hey, not important!  This is about knitting, not my technical quibbles (I have enough of those in My Other Life.)  

I'm currently working on a long stripey cardigan for my daughter.  I saw the wool on sale at Black Sheep (yes, I confess:  I am a Black Sheep sucker.  Send me an ad for a Remarkable Sale Item and I'm buying it without blinking!) and am quite charmed with it.  It's pure acrylic - real wool knitters would probably sniff at it haughtily - but, golly, it's so EASY to knit with.  And with all the hassles I've been having recently, it's so nice to be able to knit something that just seems to flow off my needles!

It's called Sirdar Wash'n'Wear DK Double Crepe and is acrylic/nylon.

I chose the two blue shades for stripes.  Most of the time, it looks rather like a rolled up rugby scarf.  I'm sure it'll all work out when I sew it together...

Here is the completed back.  My knitting has never been this neat!

Abandoned in my wooden box is my autumn cardi....not entirely sure when I'll be getting back to that one.  There is a LONG story attached to this, which I'll save for my next blog.  In the meantime, it doesn't look all the appetising, which probably explains why I abandoned it....

The colour on the website AND the knitting magazine showed this is a bright golden yellow....in real life it looks like mud....

And for riveted followers of my blog, I have finally fixed up that cardi I knitted at the end of last winter.  I didn't like the bottom edge and it was also too short.  As it is chilly enough now for cardigans, I really wanted to wear it again without looking like a short-bodied troll.  So I picked up a thousand stitches along the bottom edge and knitted away merrily until I'd used up the last ball of wool.  That was a complete disaster as I'd used smaller needles and it succeeded in pulling tight the bottom of the cardi.  So I pulled it all out and the painstakingly unpicked the cast-on edges of the two fronts and back.  NOT as simple as unpicking the cast-off edge, which comes undone with one tug of the yarn.  But my patience was rewarded and finally I could pick up all ten thousand stitches with a too-short 6mm needle (I wanted to use my 6mm circular needles but lost confidence....) and off I went, using up every last drop of wool I had...

HUGE success.  I now have a cardi that is not only longer and smoother but hangs better too as it's heavier along the bottom edge.  

My favourite cardigan!