The toilet roll sisters

Birds and Rockets

I am getting a lot of sleep though… and knitting, going to the movies, and knitting, cleaning the house (it’s still clean the next day), and knitting, doing the books, and knitting, blogging, and knitting, etc.

Evidently this happy family had already set off for a bit of a drive in their chosen vehicle (one of grandma Mary’s fabulous slippers).

Her favourite bears, dressed up to keep them warm and in their cars ready to go….

Of course I miss Jesse too, but I am used to him going away, he used to commute interstate 3.5 days a week. I don’t think I have ever spent more thant 4-6 hours apart from Isabelle before.

Oh my God. I just booked tickets for Jesse and Isabelle to go to Adelaide tomorrow. Without me. Let me say it again. Oh. My. God. Two days. Alone. I guess the last time this happened was somewhere between 4 and 5 years ago? I don’t know whether to break out the champagne or cry. I do know I am going to clean the house, do the book keeping and knit, a lot. I have a back and left front to reknit after all… Can’t talk have to pack.

Of course you probably can’t see this because of that broken router I mentioned…

I have just finished the ribbing on the next piece of the Debbie Bliss Cabled Jacket and I don’t know which needle to use for the body. Do I go the 6.5mm or the 7mm?

The 7mm is what is suggested for the JS Ultra and is only one size down from what the pattern suggests. But is one size really enough to make that much of a difference? At least it’s bedtime now so I have an excuse for putting off the decision…

So last night I managed to peel the blocked poncho and cable jacket pieces off of the bed just in time so sleep in it. But then I couldn’t sleep (it’s never that simple is it?). I was thinking I should rip it out and start again on smaller needles. The pattern is huge and I was hoping that by knitting it up in the JS Ultra that I would get a slightly smaller end product. Which would almost certainly have happened if I had used the needle size suggested for the Ultra instead of the one suggested in the pattern. Clear thinking? Me? Not so much…

When I got up this morning I found that Steph had left a comment about my cabled jacket. She knit hers on smaller needles and it is just gorgeous. Go on, go have a look. Seeing her lovely sweater has made me feel so much better about this pattern*, but also more sure that I should be frogging what I have done and starting again on a smaller needle. Partly because it is so huge and partly because of the way it wanted to stretch way out of shape when wet, I think the gauge is a bit loose for the yarn and I fear that I will pay for leaving it that way.

What do you think, should I start again? If I do start again do I just use the 6.5mm needle used in the ribbing for the whole thing or should I use a 5.5mm for the ribbing and the 6.5mm for the body? Or a 6.5mm for the ribbing and a 7mm for the body?**

*Am I the only one that wishes Debbie Bliss would provide photos that actually showed the details of the pattern - as well as being pretty to look at? I know that lots of designers do this but DB really seems to make a habit of it.

** The JS Ultra calls for a 7mm. The uses a 6.5mm for the ribbing and a 7.5mm for the body. I have 5.5mm, 6,5mm, 7mm and 7.5mm needles, but no 6mm and I have to mail order needles which I am not prepared to do for this. Now that i have started I need to keep moving.

No, not the sort of sauna some of you in the northern hemisphere seem to be experiencing at the moment. The sort of sauna that is required to dry wet blocked knits with any sort of speed in mid winter.

Last night I finished the left front of the Debbie Bliss Cabled Jacket.

I was very pleasantly surprised by the speed at which it knit up. I was somewhat panicked by the alarming behaviour of the garter stitch button band. So this morning, in the midst of a toddler toilet training debacle (and really I thought we were well past those issues), I washed what seemed like everything I have knit this year and then some. A few of them went outside on the airer. The ones that needed blocking went into my newly devised sauna, previously knows as the “master” bedroom.

The thing about our house is that it contains a small child, a small dog and very little space for anything else. The idea that our bedroom is a “master” anything is so laughable that I am unable to even take a photo to prove my point. The room is so small and so crowded with furniture (ie bed, wardrobe and small desk) that it is simply not possible to take any sort of sensible photo in there (though you can photograph part of the bed if you stand in the hallway). Small items can sometimes be blocked under the desk (one must first relocate all the items normally stored under the desk) but these ain’t no small items and drastic measures were called for.

There is a blocking party happening on my bed right now and I have no idea how I am going to explain it to Jesse when he decides he wants to go to sleep. Given that I like sleep too I have had a blow heater and a fan blowing away in there all day. Well actually they shorted out the power board when I first set them up, so its been about 6 hours of active drying so far. It really is a sauna in there. I so hope we can sleep on our bed tonight.

Oh, and the blocking completely resolved my issues with the garter stitch band, in the process creating a whole new set of fears regarding just how huge this sweater will be. I don’t think it has actually grown that much in the blocking process, but seeing it with the ribbing relaxed and the stocking stitch edges uncurled it looks a whole lot bigger. I wanted a great big cuddly sweater for the really cold days of winter. But at the same time I generally wear fairly fitted (though not tight) clothing as this seems to be more flattering on me. Like most women I am vain enough that I don’t want to end up looking twice the size I actually am. Why is it that you have to be built like a twig to still look slim in bulky clothes and everyone else looks much bigger than they actually are?

You may recall that we had a little incident with a pair of scissors recently. Well only a few days later we had another run in with scissors that I was too embarrassed to mention. What is that saying? Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?

I should have wondered what Isabelle was doing when she snuck off to play oh so quietly. The silence is always a give away, or at least it should be. A few minutes alone with a pair of scissors and she had cut holes in a brand new shirt that she was wearing for the very first time. I believe I may have screamed a little. I then put the top aside and ignored it for quite some time.

I have been sulking around home most of the weekend, recovering from an ovarian cyst bursting late in the week (this is a good thing btw, just sore) and I didn’t feel ready to cast on the next piece of the Debbie Bliss Cabled Jacket right after finishing the back, so I looked in my “to do” basket and finally pulled out Isabelle’s top.

The butterflies were always there, the flowers are my attempt to hide Isabelle’s handy work with the scissors. They look a bit messy up close but she never stands still long enough for anyone to get a good look anyway - a fact I should have considered before deciding to take a photo while she was wearing the top. This is what Isabelle thought of the experience.

The back is done and it ate up exactly one third of my yarn. That long thread you see hanging from the cast off edge at the top is what remains of the 7th skein. This is making me very, very nervous. I believe there is a rule of thumb that the front and back should each take about one third of the yarn and the sleeves together the remaining third. So I should be right on track right? Apart from the part where together the fronts of this cardi are slightly wider than back. Oh and then there is that honking great collar which I expect will need about one and half skeins on it’s own. Hmm. I just called the yarn store and asked them to hold another 3 skeins. I don’t suppose I will be three skeins short, but I would rather not underestimate twice.

I am ready to start the raglan decreases on my Debbie Bliss Cabled Jacket. This cabling business is so fun! I just hope that I find the fronts and sleeves as entertaining. Thanks to Wendy’s excellent tutorial I have been cabling without a cable needle from the start, for the small cables that is. Unfortunately my tension is too tight for me to use this technique comfortably on the horseshoe cables.

Of course I am too slack to have actually bought a proper cable needle. I am sure if I did have one, and perhaps if I consulted a book as to how to use it, I might find cabling with a third needle a little less awkward. But really cabling without the cable needle rocks, so much quicker and easier, so much less fiddly. Hmm, just blogging about my messy third needle technique has given me a number of ideas that might make it easier, like using a dpn instead of a spare circ, and I think I may be holding the “cable needle” in the wrong spot (with my right hand). Hmm. I think I will have more to say about this after a spot of car knitting this afternoon.

In the meantime here is a photo of the small center cables. They don’t exactly match and I am trying oh so hard to tell myself it doesn’t matter. Lets be clear here, the cables match (or are appropriately mirrored), the problem is with my knitting. The edge of each cable which is closest to the centre of the garment has a different look depending on whether it is the leading edge or the final edge of the cable. And this bothers me. Possibly enough to carefully readjust the tension of the left edge of the right cable on each and every row when I am done. Ugh.