The Sunday Yarn - 23 September 2012

Introducing a new post series - The Sunday Yarn, which will be my weekly yarncraft update as I make progress with knitting and, in time, crochet.  It's also a play on words as 'to have a good yarn' is also a regional way of saying to have a good chat or talk.  Some, often in fairly rural areas of England, also use 'to yarn' to mean to talk, especially for a long time!!  So, that's what you'll be seeing many Sundays from now on.

To get the ball rolling (OK, the ball of yarn, if you like!!), here's how far I've got with my first baby cardigan. Essentially, it's finished.  All that needs doing now is to press it and to attach the buttons and a little embroidery to trim it up.  I've bought some little red heart buttons and plan on making 'flowers' out of them.  It's rather strange - one side seems to have come out so much more even that the other.  Part of that seems to be to do with taking less care than I should when assembling and the other part from, perhaps, not starting quite low enough down when picking up stitches for the border.  More practice needed...

These are the other patterns I have on hand with the yarns for them by the sides.  I also plan on doing another one of these fairly plain cardigans in mint green, perhaps even adding in the pattern down the sleeves as well and trimming it up with purple flowers.  I'll do that one in the next size up, I think.  So, I'm learning a lot and the good thing about doing baby clothes is that you can learn a lot within a few small garments.

I also borrowed this book from the library and plan to have a go at some of the patterns from it.  I can't crochet at all yet, (whereas knitting was largely resurrecting an old, childhood skill and then learning some more advanced things with it), so this will be something very new for me.  Exciting!  I'm quite keen to start and am interested in the pattern for a bath mat - of all the unglam things!!  A beginners' knitting book I've also borrowed from the local library has a lovely, lacy looking shawl that I plan to have a go at too.  It's only about 30 rows, but it's a decent size for a 'trim', i.e. it's not really meant to keep you seriously warm, just for decoration.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012