Or rather it's THE back.

This is the finished back for my Aran cycling jacket. I think it looks better in the picture than in real life, the sunshine really brings out the cabling. It's knitted up uite fast as you might expect with this thickness of wool. The Chamonix I am using is ideal for this kind of work even though I suspect it wasn't actually designed for it.

So, it's on to the front then.

So I found these at my local charity shop on Saturday.

Knitting books.

The one on the left is a set of punchcard designs by Wendy Phillips. Over the past few months I've picked up quite a few of these thin booklets with her designs in, and yet I know virtually nothing about her. I've never seen anything in any of the magazines I've picked up and yet she seems to have been extremely prolific in designing for all manner of things, fruit, animals, Christmas, you name it and she's probably designed a punchcard for it. I'd be very interested to find out just how many designs she has put together and if they are still available.

In other news, it's thumbs up for the glove repair.

Thumb on glove.

And the jacket keeps on growing.

The glove.

The cotton top

The Aran jacket.

Any perceived future crisis is likely to be very boring. Bring your knitting.

Acrylic yarn from Yeoman Yarns.

It's arrived! More reinforcements in my quest to knit, knit and knit again. Thrice knit I say! (I think thrice should be employed more often, what a great word)

So I was thinking, as it's acrylic yarn should I have even thought about buying it. I got it to use with some acrylics that I already have and mainly aquired through a local charity shop. If I knit things in a mix of wool and acrylic they probably won't look right, the tension will be all odd and the washing instructions? Let's not go there. The effort and energy used to produce acrylics is tremendous and I'll readily admit to having a preference for supporting the use of real wools particularly the ones now coming from rare breeds.

I think this is an item for my 'working towards' list. As I use up the acrylics I do have perhaps I can replace them with more sustainable and local to me versions. I'm sure that they're out there, so I'll keep looking.

All suggestions welcome.

Start of cotton top.

I love beginnings. A new hank of yarn, a fresh piece of paper, when I was at school a brand new exercise book, these days I love a brand new, never borowed before library book. There's nothing quite like being at the very start of something. The inifinite possibilities, the choices about what to do and which way to go.

So I got going, this is one complete pattern repeat. It doesn't quite match the perfect example in the magazine picture but I would imagine that version has been washed, pressed and blocked to within a picometre of it's existence.

Today's weather forecast is awful - so more knitting time for me then - Great!!
Oh, the sacrifice! The hardship!!

Pink French cotton from Yeoman Yarns.
It's arrived and it's not a glove. Hurrah!!

It's the Pink cotton for my gran's birthday present. I had to knit three tension squares before I started to get anywhere near the right amount of stitches to knit. I see why they are called tension squares, I was beginning to feel very tense. After the third attempt I finally cracked it and cast on. I'm now on the eighth row of the first repeat, and strangely the pattern gets you to knit the front first. I don't think I've ever met that before. Hey ho, knitting is all about being flexible, so front first it is.

The second re-knit glove in progress. Knitting it is, exciting it isn't. Sometimes knitting just is that way.

There are a million variations on the theme above. I may just get through half of them in the coming weeks. How so? I have hit the knitters eternal dread. Knitting doldrums. I have a list of things to knit that's as long as my arm (evidence on request), but almost every project is stuck. I'm either waiting for yarn or some other necessary equipment to arrive through the post, or I need to learn something on my knitting machine first. The second problem I can actively sort out, but it's frustrating waiting for the first one to happen. You probably don't want to be my postie right now.

So does this mean I have bought yarn instead of recycling it? Well, in two out of three cases, yes it does. In fact, in all three cases where I am waiting for yarn it's brand new. One lot is free - although that makes it absolutely no more environmentally friendly. The good things about ordering new yarn are that I help support other small businesses in the same field. It's an awkward square to circle. Do you buy new and create more resource use or do you recycle because it's friendlier to the planet? If you constantly don't buy the firm you need may go out of business and that helps no-one when they are a small friendly firm with an excellent ethical policy. Two of my upcoming projects use a combination of new and recycled yarn, which is a good way to go I think.

My friend asked me to knit her a cardigan to wear at a summer wedding - the weather in the UK being notoriously fickle on a good day.

This is the finished item. It was so much fun to design and make. There was no pattern for anything like this that I could find so we just drew a sketch and went from there, most of it is a simple case of maths.

What really strikes me about it though is the invisible part. The trust my friend showed in my capabilities as a knitter even though she can knit herself. She allowed me time to work and make mistakes, she even liked one mistake so much we kept it and it's now a major feature of the finished item.

Before I knitted this I'm not sure I was really convinced about my own abilities, but my friend obviously saw something in me that I didn't see. Now though, my confidence is sky-high, I'm garning knitting projects from all over and I just know that I can complete them and that people will love them. Without this first one though I would have been lost.

Having got a little sick of K2, P2 yesterday I decided to cheer myself up and cast on for the next thing. As I'm not actually knitting anything for myself at the moment I decided on the Chamonix and this pattern rather than my original choice.

It's an Aran jacket with a hood, which I hope will work with my cycle helmet.

So I cast on.

What'd you know? Same stuff, different day.

In other news

I started the second glove in need of repair.

As it's my birthday, anyone for cake?

My gran has knitted since she was 14, mainly for herself I imagine, but when I was younger she was forever knitting something for someone. She knitted me so many things, and thinking about it now I don't think I own any of them anymore and I'm certain I took it for granted at the time. My gran is now more advanced in her years and doesn't always feel like knitting. She's certainly earned a rest. So when this pattern appeared in a magazine she reads a few weeks ago and she mentioned how much it appealed to her, well I couldn't resist and so I offered to make it.

It's a cotton top, in pink, which is nearly up there with beige in my palette of hated colours, but offerers can't be choosers and as I don't have to wear it that's fine. Does one garment repay a lifetime of knitting? Well, it's a start.

I got the back and forth,
end to end,
knit two, purl two blues

Knitting is a thing to live for. It's exciting, it's interesting, it's fun, it's an education and a history lesson. Sometimes though, it just sucks. Collars don't do anything for me. They leave me cold. Where's the excitement? Where's the interest? Where's the cute twist in the middle to relieve the monotany of boredom? I knitted this last night whilst watching 'Snoopy come home' which turned out to be only marginally more interesting than the knitting. There's another half a ball of wool to go. I may have to cast on something else before the end of the day to stop myself going insane.

Spot the obvious. There's no sleeves and I'm working on the neck. Yep, I finished the back, and the front, and now I'm on the last ball of wool. Fortunately I have been promised some more so sleeves are a distinct possibility, although by when is an entirely different question.

I'm still here. I've been busy. All will be revealed as we go along. Today though we talk about gloves. What do you do when your gloves have seen better days? When perhaps they have seen one winter and one cycling accident too many?

Well, if you are smart enough to live with someone who buys Peter Storm thermal gloves with knitted exteriors you obviously reknit the exterior.

The left is a before, showing my previous and rather useless attempt at patching. Having realised the gloves were in two secions I was able to cut the exterior off and reknit using sock wool with the thermal layer as a template ala the right. The fingers get a bit tricky, and you need to start quite low as my effort suggests but I think the overall idea has merit. Oh, and if you use stuff out of your stash it doesn't cost anything - my favourite price!