Stripy Knit in Bamboo Cotton

I've spent most of the summer - the hottest part of it - knitting a jumper for my daughter.  I bought the yarn last year as soon as I spotted it in Simply Knitting [issue 107] in this delicious coral shade.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be available anymore, but there are other lovely colours, with new ones recently added.  It's King Cole Bamboo Cotton DK and seems to be generally available.  It was lovely to work with on those boiling hot days we had - light and easy to hold.  Really lovely to work with too as it didn't split.  The pattern has three-quarter sleeves (or what I would call two-thirds sleeves, surely the most useless length of all) but I made them full-length and also added stripes to the sleeves to match the body.  Luckily, the stripes matched the body for positioning!  The pattern also has buttons on the neckline but I honestly couldn't work out how to knit the shoulder bit so blithely ignored the instructions and did an ordinary seam!  Fortunately my daughter could still get her head through the rather small neck hole!  I bought the same yarn for myself but am reluctant to make myself the same jumper - my daughter is very slim (oh, to be 14 again...) and it looks stunning on her.  With my multitudinous curves, I'm not convinced I'll look as good!  Perhaps I'll find another pattern in the same yarn.....

I used flower-shaped shell buttons for the front opening but did not make buttonholes as I - correctly - thought they were superfluous.

I'll get my daughter to wear this tomorrow and take a "live" pic!

Gedifra Jacket Finally Finished

The reknit of this project was abandoned a couple of years ago as I developed an extremely painful shoulder.  It has since spread into my other shoulder too and I found working with heavy wool and huge needles utterly impossible.  I've not knitted with anything bigger than 4 mm for quite a while now!  However, my shoulder (the really bad one) is finally getting better:  2 injections, several physios and some rather strange medical acupuncture seem to be doing the trick.  And endless exercises.....did I mention the endless exercises....?!  But having finished one project this week, I decided to have a go at this one and finally it's done.  I hadn't knitted it badly the first time but it was too small and too tightly knitted, making it murderously  hot to wear.  So I used bigger needles than I was supposed to and made the biggest size and at last I've got an autumn jacket with a bit of swing.  Just in time for autumn, in fact!  (Summer being over, at last.)  As it's quite roomy, I've decided to close it with my shawl pin rather than add buttons.  It looks a little flat lying on my bed here, but honestly, it does look better on!

For the previous link to this story, click here.