I wasn’t fishing for compliments yesterday, honest. But very grateful for those that came.

I had a good time yesterday. I watched the Knitting Glossary passages about the Drop-Shoulder Sweater – knitting a tube to the shoulder, and cutting it open. That’s exactly what I’m doing, and I’ll re-watch those passages intently before taking action on the sleeve-holes. EZ was much more active in this bit.

Next time, I’ll just start at the beginning of the DVD and let it flow. It's wonderful. It doesn't waste time, either.

I got out my Koigu collection, a pleasure in itself, and sorted it somewhat with the Slicer-Smith Harlequin Coat in mind. I started with the idea of sorting the pile into Lights and Darks, and soon saw that the Darks could be usefully subdivided into Reds and Greens and Blues. There are a few solids. That left only a relatively small pile of Unclassifiables.


The Lights:


The Reds:

The Blues:

The Greens:

The Solids:

None of the Above:

There's lots to play with, there. I think -- without having ventured on any calculations -- that I can do a jacket with Reds and Lights alone.


I don’t think I entirely understand the instructions for the Harlequin Coat. And I think it's the Knitter's layout rather than Slicer-Smith that confuses me. Try it and you may, I say. But I need to spend more time with the book, as well. I don’t think I want to trouble Koigu with a stitch pattern, but that leaves the Metro Jacket and the Stripe Jacket, at least, with ideas that might go a long way.

As for actual knitting, little progress. I took my eye off the ball at some point, and discovered, as I was about to start a seeding round, that I had done three rounds of plain white since the last one, instead of the required two. I knit on for a few stitches in the hope that it Wouldn’t Matter, but I soon decided that the famous rider, even if she couldn’t pinpoint the error, would sense something wrong. And it came at just the worst point, across the upper chest.

So I took it out. The yarn was very firm and cooperative, but it still took a while to recover all the stitches and then to knit the next round, re-sitting the stitches that were the wrong way around and unsplitting the ones that had got split in the picking-up process. It’s all done. I’m ready to move forward, paying attention.

Thanks for the pointers (comments, yesterday) to Ysolda’s blog, and to Cornflower’s. I’ve subscribed to both.