It's been busy around here

The last four days was comedy festival, Easter weekend and the beginning of Passover, which means I've been out every night, either at Pesach Seders, comedy shows or just hanging out with friends. Yesterday I even went to Cranbourne, which isn't just zone two its at the end of the train line!
Throughout it I've been plugging away at my Travelling Woman shawl. I wanted it significantly bigger than the pattern called for, as it's a gift for my aged Grandmother, who lives in England. I wanted something she can really wrap herself in. I really feel like I've succeeded with that aim: it's 170cms across the top and 50 cms deep.
I love the way the three colours love together, and the way the relatively simple lace allows the yarn to shine, while still looking amazing.

I was very pleased to be able to use up three lots of handspun that I just didn't know what to do with. The middle, darkest, yarn I originally tried to spin for socks, but I came out short and a bit scratchy. Because it's in the middle it shouldn't be a problem, the yarns touching my grandmother's skin are all soft and squishy. The edging yarn is actually lace weight leftovers from Bitterroot, which I plied back on itself. So that one is a four ply yarn and it's still finer than the other yarns.

All in all, I am extremely pleased with this shawl and am looking forward to giving it to my grandmother when I see her in June

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Unravelled wednesday and WAYRN - the one where I prepare

We are heading off for some camping and hiking and general R&R on Friday, so I'm currently in planning and preparing mode. Of course that mainly means deciding what to knit - I'm going to make the Old Romance cardigan by Joji Locatelli. The yarn is wound and I'm ready to go. I completed Leon's Winter Set (2023) just in time, and it's currently blocking. I'm reading Georgette Hayer's Fredrica , which I am enjoying very much. Regency romance is so sweet and, unlike current romance offerings, I know it won't suddenly tumble into gynaecological territory! For unexplained reasons, NetGalley is offering some Georgette Heyer books at the moment - (maybe it's re-release?) and I'm taking this opportunity to read a few more of them And that's my week in knitting and reading. To read my all my book reviews, and to see everything I knit, you can find me on Ravelry as Sharondoublekni t and on GoodReads as Sharondblk . I'm joining in with Kat ...

Yarnalong - the one with the final bit of transport

Remember how I took every form of transport known to man a fortnight ago? Well, I was missing just one thing, suburban trains. But today I got to remedy that, knitting my way to Dandenong for work. Yay? My Char jumper has been knitting up ridiculously fast. It's easy, pleasant and a well written pattern. I'm reading Rachael Herron's latest book The Ones Who Matter Most . It's a good read so far, family centered fiction, easy to read but still emotionally challenging. I'm listening to Evelyn Waugh's Men At Arms . I'm enjoying it, I didn't really know what to expect, but some of it reminds me of Catch 22, in that it catalogues the absurdities of war and bureaucracy. The narrator has the perfect upper crust English accent and I'm very pleased it's the first of a trilogy. And that's another week of reading, knitting and catching trains everywhere for me. Do pop along to Ginny's blog to see what she and the rest of the yarnalong ...

Why Andrea Mowry, why? (A rant and a rather nice finished object)

As mentioned, prior to our hiking trip I suddenly, and rather randomly, decided to knit Andrea Morwy's Traveler Shell . It's basically an open fronted rectangle in a knit purl pattern. The pattern is FOURTEEN pages long. Why is the pattern 14 pages long? Because, instead of explaining the ten row repeat and then putting the shaping on top of that (e.g. decrease while continuing to knit in pattern), she writes out the entire ten row knit purl sequence every time something changes. Additionally, most of the time she starts with even number being the right side and wrong numbers being the right side,which is just plain odd. It's confusing and it's like she wants to keep you looking at the pattern for every row, rathe than following the very intuitive stitch pattern, which I had memorised after one repeat. The instructions for the band just say 'pick up x number of stitches'. No ratios, no acjnowledgement that different bits of the band have different ratios. Afte...

What I made, by Sharon

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