Change of Direction with Progress...

Progress on the smoking jacket has officially come to a complete halt, and by "officially", I mean that it's been agreed with my (very patient) husband that other projects have more immediate deadlines. These are:

1. A baby's cardigan, for the baby of my best friend, due in December;
2. A scarf (decorated with some kind of a pretzel pattern) for a dear friend as a part of a murder mystery evening that we're hosting, also in December;
3. A pair of short crocheted gloves for myself for the party (these are somewhat less important, especially given that I cannot currently crochet).

The scarf that I began after hearing about the 'Knit Your Bit' cause on the Fedora Lounge is nearly finished - I just need to finish the many coloured "ends" (bits of wool that I left whenever I changed colour, because I had inconveniently lost my darning needle at some point in the past seven years, or however long it has been since I last knitted), knit a few more rows of the second half, and stitch the two halves together.

I have to say, in addition to this being for an excellent cause, this is a wonderful way to get into knitting from a pattern (as opposed to just rectangles, which was all I knew how to do before this) and so I'd enthusiastically encourage anyone who wanted to try knitting to try this.

What's more, having bought some short, bamboo knitting needles, I have now discovered the joy of knitting during my commute on the train: it's very therapeutic (even more so than knitting on its own), and the new needles mean that I both don't poke anybody, nor do I make any noise (unlike those businesspeople tapping away on their laptops and/or poorly designed mobile phone keyboards). It has, in all seriousness, improved my train journey no end, and I'm going to recommend it to all of my friends!

Anyway, I shall leave this update here and pick up my baby cardigan knitting, and hopefully get a good few rows done before I have to shower.

Sara

Slow Progress

Smoking Jacket

Progress so far: 3 pieces (out of about 11!) cut out and marked. This could take a while, although I'm hoping to get a little more done this weekend.

The good news is that I am now successfully getting into work earlier, as planned, and have kept it up for nearly three weeks (to the point where I have now sent an email to my team-mates letting them know that my official office hours have changed); I'm extremely pleased.

Knitting

On a separate note, I learned four new knitting stitch abbreviations last night! I'm starting upon another learning curve - that of reading simple knitting patterns - in order to take part in this: http://www.nationalww2museum.org/calendar/knit-your-bit.html.

I already appear to have gained a stitch from somewhere, which would normally bother me immensely, but I've decided that learning to knit cannot be something in which I indulge my inner perfectionist, or else I'll go crazy. So I'm doing a "rough" version of the scarf first. We'll see how that turns out (!).

Sara