I'm ready for my close up Mr de Mille

Dang it! My personal photographer has gone AWOL. Actually, since he got back from his last job I've barely seen him. He's out in the barn most of the time, tending to the mums to be. Thankfully no one decided to kid while he was away (I hate to admit it but I think they were probably waiting for him to come home :0 ). We've had no more births since 3rd Feb, but several look as though it could be any day now.

Anyway, in the absence of Eddie I'm afraid you'll have to make do with an unmodelled shot of the completed Anniversary Sweater



















Vital statistics:

Pattern - Anniversary Sweater
Yarn - Worsted merino from HandpaintedYarn.com. Main colour Cognac, contrast Applewood
Needles - 5mm Addi Turbos
Time on needles - Seemed like forever! It got put aside when I had Christmas knitting to do. I think it took about 6 - 8 weeks.

A great pattern. The original was knit in cotton and mine is 100% wool, so obviously the drape is not the same, but I love it. The only thing I would change if I knitted it again (hmm, all those cables....) would be to make the sleeves narrower. It is a man's sweater, and the sleeves are pretty wide.

Jess asked if I bought the yarn online direct from handpaintedyarn.com. Yes, I did. It was last April just after they had decided to (temporarily) stop selling the worsted merino online. I emailed them and asked them when they would be doing it again and Marcos emailed me straight back to say they would make up an order of whatever I wanted. I ordered a kilo of Cognac and 600g of Applewood. It arrived, all the way from Uruguay, about 5 days later!

They have now stopped doing the worsted merino altogether online, other than as the Malabrigo brand, but I intend to email Marcos again and see if I can't order some more. As Malabrigo is not available in the UK, maybe he might do the odd order for UK customers? I have to say this yarn is unbelieveable, I can't praise it enough. Every time I slip this sweater on I'm amazed all over again by how beautifully soft it is.

Here's a close up of the stitch detail














All those cables really did my head in, but still it was a very enjoyable knit.

I'm now busy limbering up for the Knitting Olympics. I've had some problems getting gauge with the Korchoran. It apparently knits to 16sts to 4" on 6mm, which is the gauge I need for my sweater. I have never before had any problems getting gauge, but this time I've had to go down to 5mm. I was a bit worried the resulting fabric would be too "tight", but the swatch actually knitted up fine. So I'm all set to go. Well, I do need to order some 4mm circs. I took Purlpower's advice on the Glampyre sweater and got some 30cm Addis for that, which were a great help (thanks purlpower!), so I think I'll try them on this sweater as well.

Pre-Olympic training has also involved trying to whip up a quick scarf. I ended up abandoning the Campus scarf. The yarn is lovely but the pattern just wasn't doing it for me. A dig around in the stash unearthed some cashmere sock yarn I bought from Kerrie last summer. I bought 100g thinking that would do me a pair of socks. Well, the socks took about 30g! So I have loads left over, and much as I love my socks the cashmere isn't terribly hardwearing, so I thought a scarf would be ideal. I'm knitting Misti Garden, also from Scarf Style

This is a fast, easy knit. I find patterns like this great for learning to "read" my knitting. It's only a 4 row repeat so I find even I can do that without a row counter if I pay attention. It's currently growing by about 10" for every couple of hours of knitting so I'm hoping with a bit of luck and a following wind it will be finished on Thursday evening, ready for the big Cast On on Friday.

Good luck to all the other Olympic Knitters out there - I'll be thinking of you all on Friday!