One Down

After my assessment of WIPs and my plan to finish them, I am happy to show a finished project. I hope there will be more by tomorrow but just in case I am posting about the one item now because I have a photo.

But a quick update on the status of the other items. The seaming of the cardigan is finished and just needs the buttons sewn on - which I did purchase this week. The socks are nearly finished; I am working on the cuff which is worked sideways and, unlike the shawl, I can see the stitches disappearing.

The shawl is my finished item so the next project I picked up was the toy which I really should have finished last night apart from the embroidery. Except I made a mistake which was hard to undo. Last night I wanted to sew the front feet on the animal. I'd had trouble working out where they went, worked it out, sewed one on and immediately could see it was wrong. Problem was I couldn't see the stitches to pull it out. That's good for a finished object but not so good for correcting a mistake. I might have been able to fix it in daylight but instead of waiting I cut the knitted part. The foot was knitted in different yarn from the body of the toy so I knew I wouldn't be cutting that. Basically I cut the middle out close to the edge stitches and then worked all the extra yarn out. Once I had done this I had another good look at the body and worked out where the leg was and thus the foot. What I had been doing before was making the foot fit and as it turned out to be bigger than needed I had been fitting it into the wrong place. I will say in my defense that it is not obvious from the shape of the knitting how the front legs were formed.

I finished one of the shawls. I finished the sideways knitted border, soaked and blocked the shawl. I lay the main part flat, pinning the top edge and then stretched the border to show off the design. I am really happy with it, although it is DK weight 80% merino so I do not think I will be wearing it much until the winter months.

The yarn is Black Cat DK by Dye Cauldron, a Canadian dyer who does not seem to be dying anymore. This is the same dyer as the yarn used in this project. I had bought some of the yarn and some was a gift. Once I moved, I had no idea what I was going to make with the yarn. Then I saw a mystery Knit Along starting in March for a shawl using DK weight yarn. I looked at the projects after the fist clue, liked what I saw and decided that it would be an ideal project to take away with me. I wanted to use up all the yarn, I had two skeins in orange and one in brown, and ended up knitting the border 2 1/2 times.

I am really happy with how it came out.