I’ve been really pleased lately with progress made on various knitting projects . I’ve finished several, actually finished to the point where they can be worn (and admired, I’m pleased to say) in public without discomfort or self-consciousness. I’m pleased with them, they fit, the world is a happy, happy place.

This, of course, means that my mind is whirring with the many projects that I could start.

I have the yarn to make this (poplar & elms) in baby pink, but it means buying the pattern. I am looking at a stack of knitting pattern books from where I sit, and this isn’t even all of the books I have.

p.s. the knitting ones are the ones that haven’t been put away properly. And I’ve also realised that the one on top is also a knitting book.

In my new intention to dress smarter, and also my habit of going for stuff that’s slightly costumey or historic-looking, this timpani jacket is calling to me in a very loud and insistent voice. I will definitely be making this at some point, because frankly it’s too “me” to resist, and so far all the other examples in Ravelry also look good on normal-looking people (as opposed to stick people who appear to spend many hours doing their hair to take photos of their knitting projects and possibly also hire a studio). This is a good shape & length for me and, helpfully, they’ve made it in one of my favourite colours. It isn’t really going to be needed as a wardrobe staple until the weather gets consistently cooler, say September, so in some ways there’s no huge rush. Also, it’s knit sideways on and we all know how I love to go with the structurally unusual (I give you skew and elektra). The two impediments and the reason why this isn’t on my needles yet? I’d have to buy the pattern and the yarn. Not buying patterns we’ve covered above, reasons for not buying yarn – I have a big stash of my own, and have just inherited some as well, which added about 1/3 by volume to my un-knitted yarn collection.

And then there are the twisted woolly toppers which are calling to me en masse (although not very loudly since the weather is getting warmer, admittedly).

Also, there are these shoes which seem ideal, but I want to chat to the nice man in the Timpson’s in Ormskirk to come up with a good sole solution. I have dark pink hemp which will be ideal. All I would need then is a beach holiday to go with it, rather than the planned week’s trekking around fields in Glastonbury.

So, in spite these many & varied potential projects calling to me from various parts of the house, I am instead devoting some effort to growing THE PROJECTS THAT WILL NOT GROW.

Exhibit A.

This project started conceptually over a year ago when I planned to make a shawl for my sister-in-law’s birthday. I decided after Christmas to make a shawl for a birthday at the end of May. I had made one shawl before this, and it had taken me around 5 months (although I’ve just had to adjust the dates in Ravelry because according to that, I finished it in -7 months… that must have been before the time machine broke) so it seemed at the very least do-able. I threw in an extra challenge of designing a Mackintosh-motif shawl (couldn’t find any on Ravelry, or The Internet, you see…) although I’ve never designed any knitwear before or (see above) knitted more than one shawl.

After a short while struggling with trying to come up with a decent Mackintosh rose motif (bizarrely, it’s harder than it looks) I gave up and decided to just do a nice shawl. So I picked this one, Icarus from Interweave Knits.

It started well, but I didn’t take into account the very long dull rows which get longer each time you do one, up to over 300 stitches per row before you get to a new & different bit of pattern. I’m currently 3/5 of the way through the body of this shawl, and it has had loooong periods of hibernation. I’ve picked it up and done some this week, and it turns out I can do 4 rows in an evening. So this is more of a marathon than a sprint, it turns out.

Exhibit B.

The braided bodice wench blouse. We’re back to the unusual & historical, and this has the added jeopardy that it’s in chenille, so tinking is really not an enticing option. Even trying to make a single stitch bigger is quite traumatic so if I get some ways through a piece of this project and realise it’s irreperably wrong (which, mercifully hasn’t happened yet I don’t think) I may just throw it away and start again, especially as I have plenty of spare yarn. When I first started it I had to wrip back several times and that was more than enough for one project, frankly.

I’m fired up now by the fact that I’ve been asked if the picture I took of the front-so-far could be used on the ravelry page for this pattern. Which means that my (albeit adapted) finished object might become the definitive example of this piece on Ravelry. And I’ll have to apologise to Teva Durham for butchering her pattern…

I’ve actually made significant progress on this this week. On Thursday I took Dad to a hospital appointment and brought my knitting along to do while I waited for him. This is part of our re-arranged relationship since Mum passed away, as Mum would usually have done this. When Dad was called through, I assumed he was being called through for his treatment, so stayed in the waiting room. I got out my knitting and started listening to the educational & uplifting podcasts I had on my phone.

Having previously ploughed through the majority of the sleeve I was knitting, I was pleasantly surprised to find quite early on that I could embark on the sleeve shaping. So I did, and hurrah I finished that sleeve. Starting the second sleeve, I began the long haul of the rib. When I got to the point of nearly running out of yarn, and was listening to the second not-quite-so-educational podcast I checked the time again, and saw that 3 hours had passed. This seemed odd for a procedure that was allegedly going to take 10-15 minutes. (OK, I’d been checking the time intermittently in the meantime, but 3 hours and no yarn left seemed like a good check-out-what’s-happening point)

I went to the front desk to ask what was happening. Had there been an Incident, was my Dad OK, etc? It turns out, he had been taken through to prepare for his procedure which meant getting into a hospital gown (presumably to reduce the risk he would get fed up and just walk out) and waiting in a bedroom until it was his turn to take to the table. Turns out that while I’d been knitting in the waiting bunker, he’d been watching the snooker in his bedroom *sigh*.

So I went to find nurses, who told us he had at least an hour to wait, then would have to stop in for 3/4 hour afterwards to make sure he was OK before heading home again.

It seems that knowing you’ll be in until about 6.30 when you’ve been told to get there for 1pm isn ‘t useful information. Clearly, these people don’t have childcare to arrange. Don’t get me wrong #welovethenhs but sometimes I think the lovely nurses who do a fabulous job could show some awareness that the people they come into contact with don’t know the routine, how surgery schedules work, and what they’re thinking in their heads.

Next time, I am going to be the pushy daughter who asks all the questions and who they wish would just go away and next time can he please call a cab?

Anyway, the upshot of all this is, I’m on the last sleeve of the braided bodice wench blouse. The end is in sight.

And finally, while taking the above progress photos, I noticed that these flowers have sprung up in one of my pots. Here it looks like they are clover flowers, but those are just leaves from the clover that is trying to take over the pot – it’s actually an alpine. Which, given this pot is freuqntly water logged, is doing remarkably well!