One finger one thumb

one sleeve, one front, keep knitting. One finger, one thumb.... (repeat ad infinitum.)

So, this is the other half of the sunrise circle jacket, pattern by Kate Gilbert, perspiration by me. All I can say is that while I think it's going to be amazing when I finish it, right now my fingers, thumbs, wrists and forearms all hurt and I need a break.

I still feel really proud though. A cardigan big enough to fit me and I'm 2/3 of the way through in a month? Waaay cool.

10 rows a night

No, nothing exciting is happening here. I'm knitting two million trillion billion yards of stockingette stitch (honestly, it's worse than the HP scarf) and you know what the funnest thing is?

My gauge is off. The swatch was right, the cardigan itself is freakily, scarily off. Because the row gauge is worse than the stitch gauge, though, and it's Peace Fleece I reckon I can stick it through the washing machine on a 40 degree wash (maybe even live dangerously and go to 60) and it'll come out wearable. If not, I'll felt it properly and give it to my mother (she of the 34 inch chest. )

And yes, I have now hit the point where I have to make myself do 10 rows a day before I can do something more interesting. I'm sure it'll be lovely when it's finished, though.

Dying? Or overdyeing?

This started life as an extremely ugly skein of yellow nettledyed BFL, but I got the dyes out and played. Oh, how I played! There's some black in there, and some red (to create brown, you understand) and then I did the whole thing in blue, and I love it. I absolutely love it.
It's destined to be the cowgirl slipper socks from last autumns IWK for a swap package, but as I know she isn't a knitter I think the chances of her reading my blog are somewhat remote... (I also know that she isn't sending to me. I'm organising the swap.) Unfortunately, I can't find my dpns in the right size, so I think I'm just going to have to keep plodding on with the circle jacket. I have the first arm finished now, so I'm nearly up to the interesting increases.

And in other news, I LOVE the new knitty. So many things to knit, so many of them for me :) What more can a girl ask for?

Natural cleaning....

Well, one of our missions for this week/month is to tidy our bedroom. It SO isn't happening, it's not funny. Something else we've been thinking about, though, is going greener- right now we're kind of at the midpoint on the green continuum- we think about it a lot and talk the talk, but sometimes our footsteps are those of someone wearing factory-farmed Nike trainers. So this is our mission at the moment.
In some ways, I'm doing good. We haven't used the tumble dryer at all in over a month, all the lights in the house have low-energy bulbs and we're using green washing up liquid all the time and as many commercially produced "green" cleansers as possible. OTOH, ecover does NOT get the boys crap off their clothes, and I either need to get more proactive with stains or handle the idea of dirty clothes. And I've tossed a LOT of clothes this week for no other reason than staining :(

So, this afternoon I whipped up a batch of cleanser from a recipe loosely based on one given in the guardian:
8 tablespoons sodium bicarbonate
4 teaspoons of vinegar
Juice of half a lemon
And I added four drops of cherry plum flower essence, given that me and cleaning have issues at the best of times.
And you know what? It worked. The bathroom sink looks beautiful, the bath is pretty good and the cooker hob is clean (and oiled) too. I feel really, really, really proud.

Put the sheep poo down...

Sarah and Rowan from MDC were in the country this month (aka Spughy and offspring) and they came and spent a few days with us. I think the insanity and noise and bustle and hysteria of a large family may have been a bit much and we should have prepared them gently- feeding time with a pack of ebullient monkeys or something, perhaps? Anyhow, yesterday we took them to Avebury so that they could run around like toddlers and we could drink beer. They ran- a little- but mostly they played with sheep poo. We drank (and I'm back on the diet coke, but not as badly. Blurgh.) And it was great.

Oh, and Sarah stayed at http://www.lowershawfarm.co.uk and I want to say a huge ginormous thankyou, should they ever find this, for looking after my friend so well. They really did :)

Skirt or sack?

5 days, umpteen hours, knitting so darned much that I gave myself carpal tunnel syndrome, and for what?

Mummy, is that a skirt or a sack?

Grrr. It is, of course, the back of the sunrise circle jacket from Interweave Knits, and available free from their website. And being both fat and pregnant, it's a big knit. LOTS of knitting. So that was 5 days work, and there's two sleeves and two front bits still to go.

The good news is that we seem to be in the middle of a heatwave, so hopefully I won't need warm woolly jumpers yet. And the yarn, predictably, is Peace Fleece, because I couldn't have afforded to knit it any other way.

2.25 skeins in, and the back down. I have 8, and I'm just hoping I don't run out. I bought enough yarn for Arwen (also by Kate Gilbert. Shorter, with a hood) and changed my mind on the pattern last minute. It has to be said, though, this cardigan is going to be HUGE.