Invincible

That's it. I've done a steek. I've now done everything in knitting. Maybe. I've done lace, cables, knitting backwards, steeking, fairisle, intarsia, socks, jumpers, blankets, hats. Any suggestions for what I've missed?

The steeking went well although I did get butterflies when actually cutting the knitting. I just kept thinking of how many hours of work had gone into it. I used both the Knitty article and the pages on it in Alice Starmore's repinted book.

Having steeked and sewn the shoulders we have....

I may still redo the neckline at the front as it is a bit high, but apart from that it looks like the size and fit is pretty good! I've cast on the sleeves

Taking the eek out of steek

The body of my Kauni cardi is now done. There are 4 steeks all together - the big front one, one at each armhole and the neckline one.

Being a champion bodger there are live stitches on holders in random places too waiting to be 3-needle-bound-off and so on. But first the steeking needs to be done to open up the body and create some room for manouvering.

Slowly but surely

My recovery from the op is progressing nicely, if a bit stop and startish. I think this is my own fault though. It's proving difficult to regulate my activity level. I went out for dinner with friends on friday. Then on sat I was a wreck so hardly did anything, but then couldn't get to sleep til 3am. There's no pain - just exhaustion. I did the same thing last night and couldn't get to sleep so I'm planning an outing this afternoon despite feeling like a chewed up dog toy.

Fortunately the Pooch is now back from japan and arrived bearing gifts. I really am a lucky person. Although it does beg the question - what do you do with lace weight mohair?

The colours don't really come across in the photo. There is a very pale almost grey green, a pale green and a dark green. 40g of the first two and 20g of the third. He also came back with some terribly sweet porcelin polka dot cats and two little discs which we think must be chopstick rests.

So cute!

While Pooch was away I was busy knitting, sewing, embroidering and finishing dyeing my denise needles. I added orange, red and green to the blue ones I had already done. I've done all the needles and my crochet hooks too.

I'm very happy with them and have been knitting with them since and the colours are colourfast.

Lastly, because blogger is being really annoying about inserting images and life is too short, I give you....bread! I'm getting quite into bread now. This one is mostly gone already as we had it with beef and stout soup last night. So domestic!

Aunty Alex and Uncle Grumpy!

Pooch and I are now aunt and uncle to Alife Thomas Coward. Here he is with possibly the proudest grandmother in the whole world!

It all happened on friday night so he's home with his mum and dad now and looking even more gorgeous than in that photo. I'm just annoyed I can't go and visit yet. My stamina is increasing but I am still exhausted after an hour of moving about. However, every cloud has a silver lining and all this sitting is increasing my output. Here is the polka dot bag I started a few days ago, drying out after felting.

It's based on one I queued when I first joined Ravelry - more than 2 years ago. It's perfect for a small shoulder bag and is exactly what I wanted.

The bag was knitted and the dots were crocheted and sewn on before felting. Yarn was doubled for the icord handles.

I've also got back on with the secret wedding afghan, which is no longer a secret. The recipients, who got married in, ahem, august, came round a few days ago and I showed it to them. Since then I've finished another square.

Says it all really!

A few days ago I was pondering an excursion when I saw this man doing his leaf blowing thing.

So bloody noisy. I looked at him and remembered the William Shatner song "I can't get behind that" which contains the line "The leaf blowers - is there anything more futile?". Here's the rest of the photo.

That's a lot of leaves.

Steeks

I know that steeks are to some the pinnacle of knitting. It's not something I'ver ever done before but now I'm doing two fairisle cardigans at once and so suddenly they are a large part of my life. I am fairly sure though that if the finest steekers happened to chance across these cardigans or this blog in the future they would need a sit down and a stiff nip before they could continue with whatever they were doing. You see not having steeked before and being by nature a bodger I have applied Byrne Logic to the issue. For instance, I know that steeked armholes are normally straight cuts and you pop the sleeve in the hole to give a square kind of shape. I know this, but I don;t agree with it. So I decided to do steeks with a set in sleeve. I realised that it would be a bit like trying to sew a curved hem (something I also bodge) and that one simple cut wouldn't work with this sleeve type. So this is what I've ended up with.

That is the bottom of the armhole. I cast off the first cast off row and then cast on again on the next round to start the steek. Then as other stitches needed to be cast off I've moved the stitch marker that far into the garment and tried to decrease the same number of stitches in the middle of the steek. Confused? Me too - especially when I realised I'd been reading the wrong numbers and had to lose an extra 40 stitches suddenly (never go back, especially where it's fairisle with sticky wool). Has anyone else ever done something like this? Is it normal?!

Whatever has been happening with the steeks it's all looking rather nice, although a lot stripier than I thought it would.

I would have got further on this if I hadn't been alternating with bargello and embroidery. The bargello from the Doodle Zine is done and I adore it.

It's about 6" square. Will take it to be framed once I am mobile. Plus of course there have been more pants. Some for my sister and these for me!

This embroidery has made me revisit embroidery transfers on Flickr. There are thousands! And loads of other images that aren't them but could be. If you're interested set aside an hour and start here. Then see where all the links take you. It's all free and when you find one you like just add it to your faves for later.

Back (literally)

I'm back home after a really rather nice few days in hospital. Praise be for company healthcare. This was my room.

Ensuite bathroom with wet room type shower. Room service (seriously - room service). Deluxe dining with lots of choices of things like guinea fowl or sea bass plus puddings. There was a wine menu too but I left that alone. Seriously, there was. The staff were lovely and my care was excellent. The operation itself went perfectly and I was standing up within an hour of coming back from the recovery room. Baby steps but am fine pottering around. Journey home this morning was a bit hardcore - only 30 mins in a taxi but conked out as soon as got home for a 90 min nap. Bed rest with occasional pottering for the next week then stitches out and a few longer walks.

I did look pretty bionic while in hospital. I had this very funky watch thing that let me control my pain killers.

I just pressed the black button on the left whenever it started hurting or I was planning to get up. 5-10 mins later eveything was rosy again. Very clever and it has a little brake on it so you can't overdose.

Despite all the devices plugged into me I have been able to get a move on with my Kauni and it is now a very nice 13 inches so time to be thinking about arms. There are some options....
1. Even though am going bottom up do arms top down. This means you start with the right colour combo even though it may diverge towards the cuff so you get nearly but not quite the same ones.
2. Do arms as one piece of fabric but do a steek between them so once you're done you cut them in two lengthwise and have two sleeves, which them need to be stitched into position. If done top down then should still start with roughly the right colours.
3. Do arms as would normally for a bottom up raglan (if indeed it is a raglan). Cast on cuff, knit arm, do second, then join two arms and body in the round and bodge the colour combo where they meet. Maybe with some icord or something.

I think I like option 3 least. I would prefer the colours to match at the armholes. If I were to do option 1, which I think I prefer, then I'd have to be careful as knitting down on the stitches would throw the pattern off by half a stitch or something. I seem to remember reading this in an EZ book. I'll need to experiment. Option 2 would really only seem to be a good idea with a drop shoulder jumper and I'm not anal about colours matching everywhere so I think I'll see what I can do with 1.

I had some great visitors come and see my in hospital but it is nice to be back. Gifts like flowers and chocolate were very welcome but it was the ones where people had really put a lot of thought into it that counted. So when I saw what Mead and Dann had brought me as a get well present I knew I had to share.

I must look like someone who would wear this kind of thing since my colleagues want to get me a 'nobody knows I'm a lesbian' t-shirt in the same style. Aren't they all thoughtful! I can wear it in bed. And yes, Pooch does sleep on my left.

Speaking of the Poochnurser, he is well. He has been working from home today to make sure I was ok. He was muttering about his monitor not being big enough for what he was doing and sure enough, after some thumps and scraping of furniture, I found him like this.

That's a 42" tv he's using as a monitor. Insane. But then he's been lovely since this whole back thing kicked off and is very pleased to have me back so I guess if he wants to be mental then who am I to stop him?

Snippety Snip

The specialist tells me that on a scale of small, medium and large, the bulge on my disc is enormous. So it's an operation on Tuesday and I'll be in hospital until Friday. Then it's 6 weeks to recover enough to get back to work. Hardcore. I am teeny weeny bit nervous but it will be so much better not to be in constant pain.

Meanwhile there is lots to prepare. I'm not going to be able to move about much so I've prepared some 'project bags' with everything I need in them for projects like embroidery and knitting. Then I can just station them strategically near the sick bed and pick them up as I want them. The same with reading books, ipod, phone etc.

In between little bouts of slow moving preparation I'm working away at my Kauni. I've finished the first thistle. Although I think they look more like lillies than thistles.

I absolutely love it, especially the colour combinations. The blue and orange are like goldfish in water, the red and green are like geraniums. I'm looking forward to yellow and purple - I've always liked them together.

I should have time to blog again before the chop. If not I'll get back to it in a week or so!