When is a square not a square?

I just love the colours of the Sirdar Pattercake yarns.  So delicious!  But what do I knit with them?  I couldn't resist the one called Seaside Surprise as it contained all my daughter's favourite colours.  I decided to knit the blanket pattern printed on the inside of the band, though I used two "cakes" instead of one.  I've knitted this kind of square before and knew exactly what was going to happen:  no matter how careful I was with the increases and decreases, the "square" would end up being kite-shaped.  For some unbelievably weird reason (which the more scientific of you may be able to explain), the number of decreases does NOT equal the number of increases.  So although I used two identical balls of wool, the decrease side ended up much longer.  Also there wasn't enough to end it so the last corner looks as if it has been snipped off!
But after struggling for months with dolls' clothes, it was nice to knit something easy and pretty.
My daughter's room has been transformed by the blanket.  With the introduction of the turquoise and aqua colours, the yellow in the room has found a perfect contrast.  Needless to say, the room only looks so lovely because my daughter is at university!  Aside from prettying up the space, the blanket serves no real purpose.  I just like looking at it.

 

You can still buy the yarn from Deramores here.

Rainbow jumper and scarf

As is usual when I ooh and aah over colours in a knitting magazine, it transpires that they are false.  I don't know how many times I've been caught out by this.  I see colours which are lovely;  I order the wool online;  the wool turns up and it's entirely wrong.

There is a lovely rainbow jumper in Simply Knitting 181, knitted with blocks.  I decided to knit it for my daughter, omitting the blocks which I didn't think were necessary.  I thought the rainbow stripes were in soft shades:  red, orange and yellow in spring shades, with a clear turquoise and soft lavender.  

Hah!  It's not turquoise at all but emerald green and the lavender is dark purple.  How can they get the colours so WRONG in a magazine?  One could accuse the lighting of altering the shades but the colours on the wool website were exactly the same:  much lighter than they actually are in real life.  

I just honestly could not be bothered to send the wool back, although I should have done as it isn't very nice to knit with.  It's fuzzy and the stitches split and tear.  I'm seriously going to be hating it by the time I'm done.  The yarn, in case you want to avoid it, is King Cole's Riot DK and the shade that is so hopelessly wrong is called Chameleon.

This is what it looks like as a (short) scarf:  

 

I've also started knitting the jersey but fear I may only finish it next winter as I'm mighty bored.  I've also noticed, to my despair, that the ribbed edge is curling and nothing I do will flatten it.  I foresee a very annoying jersey that my daughter may not want to wear (the wool is quite scratchy and she's a delicate flower, like me!)

On the Simply Knitting Facebook page is an image of the jersey as it appears in their magazine.  You can see straight away that the colours are different.  There is NO yellow in the image above (taken in harsh February daylight) and the green and turquoise are miles apart.  Yet this is the shade called Chameleon, exactly as I bought it.

Why not buy your wool from a shop where you can see the colours, you might ask.

To which I would answer:  I live in central London.  WHAT shop??