Willow



Here is Willow, completed and in the correct size. Now, it's quite lucky Willow fits me at all, since I used different needles and yarn to those recommended by the pattern. But it's twice as lucky that it fits so well.


It was so boring to knit just stocking stitch, and in such loopy yarn, for so long. My attention wandered several times and I ended up increasing instead of decreasing (and vice versa), or doing miles more stocking stitch and forgetting to do any shaping at all. This inattention meant quite a bit of frogging! I did make quite a mistake on the belt and it's such a stupid mistake to make that I can't quite believe I did it, even now ( and I was too lazy to put it right). The belt is knitted as part of the back of the cardigan, so you suddenly cast-on about another 160 sts (80 either side) and carry on knitting. The back was of course being worked up in st st and I carried on and knitted the belt in st st too, all the time thinking "this is a bit stupid. Surely this belt will curl like crazy, being just a skinny bit of stocking stitch" but instead of changing anything, I just continued. It was only when I read the pattern again that I realised it said to cast-on more sts and continue knitting. Knitting. They should make these things absolutely clear for knittingly challenged people such as myself. I can't imagine why I didn't just use my head. Now I have a curly belt. I haven't done any blocking yet, but I don't think it'll help much.



The picking up of 300 sts for the edging was a real pain (isn't it always?) but thank heavens it came out okay and if there are any mistakes you can't see them for all the fluffy loopiness. Had this been a plain yarn, however, I'm sure it wouldn't have looked so good. When I'm picking up stitches, whether it's for socks or edgings, sometimes there's a huge gap left between the stitch I've picked up and the rest of the knitting. I don't know why this would be. I pick up all the stitches in the same way. When this happens, I usually reject the stitch causing the gap, and pick up a bit from slightly lower down, or to the side. I always check to see if it looks odd, so tend to get away with it, but I don't know what will happen when I get to do the edging on a plain garment. I think I'll look up how to pick up edging stitches correctly before attempting it. In case you're wondering, all the black bits of Jaeger Siena cotton are there to divide up the edging into equal portions, making it that much easier to pick up the correct number of stitches

Texere sorted out the yarn problem, by the way, sending me the exact match, and in a very friendly and helpful manner. Hurrah for Christine at Texere!

You may have guessed, I've started on forecast. It took me forty minutes to knit one row of about 100 stitches last night (with about ten of those bobbles). This one's going to take me a long time. I already may have sizing issues but will tell you about it next time. Hold on to your seats!