End of August already

Well. I've been sort of busy. I've finished my lovely cabled jacket and wore it out the other day. Here is my youngest daughter modelling it for me so I could take the photo. I had put a buttonhole in the top, but having worn it for a couple of times, I decided to undo the first couple of stitches, dropped down and reknitted them closed.

Then there was the mammoth job of doing the short row skirt for my eldest. Oh lordy, what a nasty job that was.

Here it is, just before I took it off the machine. Done in 3 colours, 2 rows of black between short rows of Silver Twist and Dark Plum Bendi Classic 5ply. She wants to do the finishing herself. It turned out to be an entire circle, I'll put it's fuzzy photo on the end of the post.

The continental is going well enough to keep it for Saturday's SnB knit. It's not quicker, but have done up to the arms of the body, started the sleeves in round. I don't mind leaving it on the slow burner, it's good to have an easy knit.

Next on my agenda is to do the last bit on my Bannister jumper and work on the machine vest in a bigger stitch size. The last one was wonderful, but stiff as a board!

The Continental - tra la la la

After more than 30 years of contemplation and procrastination, I've finally decided it's about time to bite the bullet and learn to do the German or continental knitting technique. I've fiddled around with it over the years and have quickly given it the flick. Well yesterday I fished out that bag of 10 x 100g Patons Shadow Tweed that I got cheap at Wang last month (5.5 and 6.5 needles) and off to the practice patch for a bit. I'm doing Emerald from knitty.com, a simple enough, stocking stitch mostly, project to practice on.

OK, I know, I WAS supposed to be sewing up Bluey, the cables and rib cardi - but who really likes sewing up? Me either! I've done some of it, really I have - ends woven in and all, on the collar, shoulders and sleeves are done and tidy- only both sides to go - see?

So this week in Lorna Land I'm going to

• finish sewing up bluey, (only two long long loooonngg sleeves/sides ... sob sob!);
• get good at continental, oddly enough I'm finding the purl easier - but I did practice it a lot yesterday - whilst all the time ignoring the pain of both these activities.
• and finally, I want to get cracking on the Passap, get my vest done on the looser tension (OH NO, more sewing up... more sobs all week it looks like!); then get Loz's skirt swatched, write up the notes and get it done for her. She was coming over to help do it, but has now landed herself a 5 day job, much better then the 3 days she was doing, so it needs to be done and outta here. Hopefully get these two things off the machine, I don't even mind if the sewing up spills over to next week (is lying on the blog bad??).

So that's it for this week's plans. Now time to watch Aussie idol for a couple of hours and choose which painful activity to do - sew up or knit 142 sts 2:2 rib using continental. My head will probably just fall off by the end of the week and save me.