Yesterday

That's a sad song for a show off thread but it's been buzzing around my head all day because yesterday was seriously the most productive day that has ever taken place almost exclusively in a bed. Let me tell you.

I woke up, naturally, at about half past nine. That's the first time in about a month that I've woken up without a hangover and without the help of an alarm clock. The first thing I did was made an order with Cygnet. Without a coffee or anything!!!

Then I started on a commission for a balaclava. Not just any kind of balaclava - one without holes for the eyes or nose. Just holes for ears. It's some sort of uni project to do with how people don't listen anymore and he might have mentioned how everybody's always listening to ipods all the time too. I don't know, he was too handsome to concentrate on really. Ha. (I can say that now because we saw him out the other day, on the fateful night when I found out that I am not just a local celebrity and pillar of the community but an international superstar too!!!!! Masa made a right tit of me whilst I was trying, in a pissy-arsed manner, to be as professional as possible - Masa just kept saying 'but you're soooooo handsome, so fit! How does that even happen???'. Oh god, why did anybody let me loose with a shop!??!). Anyway - photo:

I love a bit of easy intarsia I do. 

We couldn't work out before we started how he wanted it to be finished so it is still on the needles at the bottom and we'll work that out later. If he likes the crochet around the ear then I'll probably end up doing the same on the bottom. But he's got to come in first. 

Then I did a bit of selfish knitting and finished up this: 

It's a version of the Adult Pinwheel Sweater.

I made it before, probably about four or five years ago now in Cascade 220 which cost a bomb (to me at the time) and bobbled like a bastard pretty much as soon as I wore it. It was in a lovely aubergine colour and I wore it to death but it's pretty much only good for a pj cardi now. One of my mum's friends liked it so much that she paid me to make her one! That's probably my first commission!!!

Anyway, it's a really weird construction - you start in the middle with 8 stitches and work outwards, increasing every row in segments. When the diameter matches your cross back you work the entirety of the first and fourth sections with spare yarn (breaking and rejoining the original at the beginning and end) and then carry on as before until it's as big as you think you need it and complete with some garter stitch. Afterwards, you come back, pick out the spare yarn stitch by stitch and pick up the resulting live stitches on either side (a bit like a peasant heel if you're interested in socks) and then knit that in the round, decreasing a bit until it's the length of your arm. Repeat on the other arm and there you go. If you can imagine, you get a circle with arms coming out either side of one half and one half just plain (as in section one has an arm, sections two and three are free, section four has an arm and then sections five, six, seven and eight are free of arms). That means that you can either wear it with sections two and three at the neck and five, six, seven and eight hanging down (which is what most of the ladies on the rav entry are doing), or wear it with five, six, seven and eight around the neck which makes it fall down like a kind of sailor collar. 

I've just realised that that it a terrible description but I've not had anybody in the shop that I know well enough to make them take a photo yet... So I've tried with the webcam: 

Does it make a bit more sense? I'll get a good photo soon (hopefully today because my hair is looking particularly urban). 

I only had to finish a couple of inches on each sleeve to do and sewing the ends in so that took about an hour and it got sent off to blocking land. 

Then I started on another commission that should have been done a good couple of weeks ago. Finished the back and got most of the front done. It's a kiddies jumper with a big shawl collar and I've left a big space to embroider 'Big Brother' on the front. As soon as it's finished I'm doing a baby cardi with a big shawl collar in opposite colours with 'Little Brother' embroidered somewhere on it. They will most definitely be sweet. 

And then! I knitted a little bit of a sock leg as a shop sample in the Jungle colourway of the Regia Sock with the leftovers from the pair of socks that I also finished yesterday. They're all in the blocking pool as we speak so photos at a later date. 

AND THEN! I did some embroidery on the tummy of a cute teddy bear for the same lady as the jumper/cardi above. Looks a lot like this:

It isn't this though. It's for the same lady (she loves my teddies, I think this may be the fifth one I've knitted) and it has the same initial but it's a different embroidering yarn (I used some leftover wicked as she likes the colour-changers). 

AAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNDDDDDDDDDD THEN, I thought I'd settle down for a good hour of selfish knitting. Went to pull out a WIP Mythos only to discover that half of it is bloody missing!!! A whole half of the sweater! You work this cardi from the end of the sleeve to the middle and then the other side the same before grafting together at the back. Half of that is missing. I definitely knitted it but it's a yarn that we don't stock anymore and I hate the idea of reknitting something I've already done so I got on with another WIP which is the drapey poncho in the King Cole Opium that's been on the needles since the first day it came in. But then I realised that I didn't have the pattern with me and I didn't know how long they wanted it to be. So I put that down and rode the crest of the sock-knitting-obsession-wave and cast on some more socks in some Regia from stash: 

As you can see, I didn't get very far, but the beauty of socks is that you can pick them up and put them down and pick them up and put them down... 

In between all of this I made dinner, changed my sheets, put on and hung up a load of washing, drank five cups of tea (and regretted it when I wanted to sleep) and completely caught up with all the tv I've been missing over the last month of being unusually social. 

Despite all of this I am still three commissions deep. Ugh. Best get on with it then. 

Love Eleanor.