Snow White... 's no more?

I don't know if this makes me into a wicked stepmother, but I'm thinking of dismembering Snow White. I love the yarn and the pattern is genius, but the two are not the best match; if I were ever to make it again, I'd definitely use something more washable, that could be comfortably worn next to the skin - perhaps a wool-cotton blend. Such a tight-fitting garment in non-superwash wool is just a bit... hot. And not in a hot way. Also, I made it just a little too short. On the few occasions when I have worn it, I have felt at war with this pullover, as it demanded constant yanking down, or undignified wriggling out of, making me feel like a seagull caught in an oil-slick. 

I have not fully decided: this is a beautiful jumper, and the thought of reducing it back to a pile of crinkly yarn does seem a bit heretical. But then, what's the use of a beautiful jumper that just sits in a drawer? I've been considering transforming it into the Estelle Pullover: I think it might get more wear that way (and it would have the added benefit of matching the Meret I made out of the remainder of this yarn). Or are these evil thoughts deserving of a poison apple? What do you think? To frog or not to frog? 

'tis the Season to be Meret

Amid that hypothetical holiday knitting I might just be doing, I found the time to make myself a cheery red hat with the Cascade 220 left-over from making my Snow White jumper. I can highly recommend this excellent free pattern, the Meret (or mystery beret) by Woolly Wormhead. The only mini-mod I made was to knit a small i-cord stalk at the crown, as in my view a beret isn't really a beret without one. It didn't really occur to me till after I'd finished it, but this is an especially festive bit of headgear. Not only is the yarn colour called 'Christmas Red', but the crown decreases also form a rather lovely star shape.

I am most pleased with this wee hat and its unexpected yuletide associations; my birthday is on Christmas day, and I still get ridiculously excited about it.

Seeing red

Remember that red Cascade 220 wool I got in London a while ago? It has been slowly morphing into the Lush and Lacy cardigan by the Sweaterbabe, which I have wanted to knit for ages. I knew I would have to make some substantial changes to the pattern, namely:

- The smallest size is too big for me

- I wanted to use a different lace pattern

- I decided to knit the body in one piece

To take advantage of this seamlessness, I wanted to put something where the seam would have been, and settled on a little bit of faggoting. 

I must admit, I felt a little bit smug as I steamed up the body, merrily faggoting away, up to just before the peplum ruffle at the back. I glanced at the instructions for the fronts to see if I had to work any pocket magic at this point... and saw that I had missed the vital instruction to decrease every few rows. Sigh. Rip, rip, rip, re-knit, re-knit, re-knit...

Hooray! Peplum ruffle! Finally I can get down to some serious honeybees. But wait... does this ruffle look a little off-centre? Let me just check... Oh. 13 stitches on one side of the ruffle, 15 stitches on the other. 

At this point I saw red. Yes, this latest error might not actually take all that long to fix, but I could not escape the fact that this thing was trying to get me, mocking my hubristic idea that  I could navigate my way through all of these at once...

... with only this paltry excuse for a compass.

I'm sick of red. I'm putting red down for the moment. I'm going to knit... the Something Red cardigan by Wendy Bernard. In yellow!

Button it

Here is one of the things I have been grumpily refusing to work on.

This is the Forecast cardigan by that I treated you to a grainy close-up of a while ago, and as you can see it is oh-so-nearly finished. All I have left to do is to rip out and re-knit the buttonhole band because there is everything in the world wrong with it. This is maybe an hour's work, at the very most, but I keep putting it off in favour of newer, exciting things. So today I toddled off to John Lewis in the hope of re-motivating myself via the medium of buttons. I was looking for something small and rounded to echo the bobbles, and picked out these...

I was helped in my quest by a very nice shop assistant who was evidently very knowledgeable about knitting, but who had never heard of Knitty.com. My oh my. I guess because so much of what I've learned about the way of the needle has come from the internet I forget that there are a whole load of people who only use books and magazines. Now, I do have a lot of those too, but I have found online patterns to be so much more user-friendly. Perhaps this is partly an issue of space - it is more expensive to produce physical print than to publish something on the internet, so printed patterns tend to have space-saving, telegraphic instructions like 'Keeping patt correct, BO 7 sts at beg of next 2 rows. Dec 1 st at each end of next 7 rows, then on foll 2 alt rows, then on 4 foll 4th rows,' where by contrast self-published patterns can contain sanity-saving paragraphs of explanations, warnings or advice.  

I have gone a little bit button-buying-bananas recently.

The following used to be a fudge house. Now it is a button house.

Most of the little glittering treasures nestling in my palm above are from Loop, where I nipped into on a recent jaunt to London. I had been there last summer when I was staying nearby while rehearsing for a play, but I don't think I realised then the full extent of its awesomeness. It stocks a lot of American yarns that I hear about all the time on podcasts but very rarely get to see in person. This vibrant red Cascade 220 wool spoke to me from the shelf....

... it whispered 'honeybees and faggoting'. Which is, of course, a perfectly legitimate term in lace knitting.