I really should work on blogging more often. But I prefer to get on and do rather than write about doing... I'm over the whole pneumonia/influenza now, and it's school holidays, so I have been 'doing' the 'doing'.

The Kundalini Woolganics Cardi is coming along nicely - I'm below the bust line heading for the waist. It is all stocking stitch though, so it is my mindless knitting project at the moment. It is a bit longer than in this picture below.



I have also been plodding along on a pair of Froot Loop socks in the Dream in Color Smooshy Cloud Jungle yarn from the frogged Leyburns. I started these just before I fell ill two months ago and have typically knit a pattern repeat per day most days. The first sock is finished and its mate has just had the heel turned.



Between the cardi and the socks, I wasn't feeling challenged enough, so I cast on another lace shawl - the Moonlight Sonata Shawl in Dream in Color Starry in the colour "Black Pearl". The yarn is 'interesting' - it is labelled as "98% superfine Australian merino superwash, 2% silver fibres". It feels kind of like acrylic to me, and it is crocking too, so after 4-5 rows I have black fingers. I'm not really worried by it as I expect it will feel nicer and stop crocking once I give it a good bath before blocking. The pattern was a real bugger to start with - perhaps it isn't right to have complaints when the pattern is free, but Chart 2 was a nightmare for the first few repeats. The instructions are also written out, so I followed them for the first repeat, then switched to the chart. It wasn't until the third repeat that I realised there were three different double decrease methods - I hadn't picked S2KP and SK2P were not the same thing. I didn't bother ripping back because I honestly can't tell the difference! I colour-coded about 10 of the 12 or so symbols on the chart with textas so I could keep track. I've finished 7 repeats, but the photo below is from half way through the sixth. I'm hoping to do at least 10-12 repeats in total, or more if this ball of yarn will go that far. The silver does give it sparkle, but it is hard to capture in a photo.



I have been spinning too, with the aim of doing a little each day (oops! I missed yesterday!). I'm spinning up 100 grams of the merino/silk blend I bought at Ashford last December, which I will probably ply with some natural grey merino from the stash. Sorry, I haven't got a photo of the single on the bobbin. Maybe next post.

I can't quite believe I knit an entire shawl in just under two weeks. Admittedly I wasn't working in those two weeks, and the yarn certainly wasn't lace weight, but it wasn't a small shawl either (finished size 210cm x 70 cm).



The shawl is based on the Gaia pattern (Ravelry link), though I made many modifications, so who knows, it may actually resemble some other pattern unintentionally. I omitted the reverse stockinette; made the eyelet rows without bordering them with knit rows except on the bind-off edge; and I made a shallow, broad triangle by doing 4 st increases on RS rows AND 2 st increases on WS rows with the WS row increases knit through back of stitch on RS rows. The eyelet rows were positioned by whim, since the colour transitions in the yarn were too frequent.



I've been wearing this shawl most of the week, despite the fact I now have enough shawls to wear a different one for each day of the week! I wore it to WWKIP day in The Rocks yesterday too. I'm really happy with the yarn, particularly as I spun it myself, and the heavier weight of this shawl makes it a delight for really cold weather. It definitely proved to be the right choice on Friday when we had an evacuation at school.

Speaking of school, I returned last Monday and managed (just) through the whole week. I'm still on antibiotics and had another chest x-ray on Tuesday (which I assume was fine or I'd have been contacted). The long weekend is very welcome!

I have now started another cardigan, with raglan sleeves this time. I've decided that round yokes like on the Tea Leaves Cardigan (which I really should get a good photo of) and Tangled Yoke Pullover don't suit my shape and are not as comfortable as raglan shaping, like my worn-out, favourite black cardi or the modified Mr Greenjeans. So this cardigan will be somewhat like Mr Greenjeans, with more stocking stitch, a lace panel at the bottom and moss stitch bands. The yarn is Woolganic Organic Merino 8ply in "Kundalini".



Visitors to my blog (as opposed to reading through an aggregator) may have noticed that the work in progress bars have changed - they are now linked to Ravelry so are updated more readily. One of these days I will finally fix the title bar - I've always intended that the big white areas either side of the text would be filled in. One day.

I've been meaning to write a post all week. Enough stuff has happened in the "can't make this up" category. Really.

Last week I had two good days, straight after finishing 20 days of antibiotics. Then I started going backwards, badly. Obviously, I hadn't quite shifted all of the chest infection of doom. So on Thursday it was off to GP#4 (I don't like #1 or #2; #3 was booked out and my own GP doesn't work that day). I handed over my discharge letter from my hospital visit two weeks earlier, it was scanned for my files, and I took it back since otherwise it would have been binned. I ended up with prescriptions for a 14 day course of another antibiotic and a Bricanyl inhaler, another medical certificate giving me all of this week off, blood tests and an appointment with my own GP for Tuesday.

Now, Calli, my faithful companion, has been doing an awesome job of comforting me while I have been ill. She has been near constantly on my bed while I was bedridden and on my lap while I have couch-surfed.



So I got home from the GP, and she followed me into my study and sat down. I went to leave the study and she must have moved - and I tripped over her. Cue drama. A wailing Calli looked practically murderously at me. I managed to calm her down enough to examine her left front leg and establish that nothing was broken, but she couldn't put weight on it and was clearly in pain. So we had to go to the vet. The vet suspected it was a dislocated elbow and gave her a shot of anti-inflammatories and pain killers. I had to take her home and return on Friday after withholding food for her to be put under anaesthetic for x-rays.

Calli had an uncomfortable night, but still had enough spunk on Friday morning to jump up on the dining table to demand the breakfast she was not allowed. She did get hugs instead.



It was a simple dislocation of the elbow, which the vet fixed, and Friday afternoon I collected a very groggy Calli and brought her home again. She was so wobbly that I had to shadow her around the house to stop her doing stupid things. Saturday was better, and by Sunday she had bounced back to practically normal.

Meanwhile, I was neither getting better nor worse with my chest infection of doom. I had some of the Bricanyl puffer on Thursday, but wasn't convinced it actually gave me any of the medication (it was a twist dispenser of a fine powder that you then inhaled without seeing it). I took it regularly on Friday and felt awful, but I had been making trips back and forth to the vet that were more exertion than I needed. Saturday was spent on the couch going nowhere. On Saturday evening I took my first puffer dose in about 24 hours because I was a little wheezy. Within half an hour I was having the most awful crushing chest pain. I did not want to have to go back to hospital again, least of all on a Saturday night. But once it became clear that the pain was not going to let up, I called my sister, and my brother-in-law came and took me to hospital.

Surprisingly, the Emergency department was no where near as busy as it had been on my previous visit. I took the letter from my previous visit with me which helped them quickly bring up my records without my needing to fill out forms. I also took the box the puffer came in so they knew what I thought had caused my problems. Crushing chest pains get you in the door quite fast too. The vein blood was taken from on Thursday was completely trashed by another cannula, and they gave me a shot of antihistamine in my other arm that hurt like hell. After a few hours of observations, they let me go home again.

On Sunday and Monday I felt awful. Late on Monday I finally coughed up some horrid stuff and the tightness in my chest finally loosened. Since then, I have been better and better each day. I saw my GP on Tuesday, had the second hospital letter scanned for my files, and had my allergy list updated. I already have a problem with prednisone (I had to stop the hospital from giving me that on Saturday) and with sulfur food preservatives. The Bricanyl is a sulfate (terbutaline sulfate, for future reference), so it might have been a sulfur reaction, or might have been simply an adverse side-effect of the drug. So both that drug and all sulfur containing drugs are now off-limits. I'm sure that's going to create some fun in the future for prescribing anything to me. The blood tests confirmed I had Influenza A.

So bye-bye May. You sucked. June is a nicer month already.

Being ill has benefited my knitting as I simply haven't had the energy for much else. But before I became ill, I knit the Alpaca/Gotland yarn I spun at the end of the holidays into a pair of wrist warmers. The yarn was a bit over spun, but the resulting wrist warmers fit the bill perfectly and will get plenty of wear this Winter.



The Tea Leaves Cardigan is almost complete. I need to reknit both cuffs as I forgot to change needle size and they are a bit loosey-goosey. Then it is just a matter of weaving in all the ends and blocking it. The photo below is from about 4-5 days ago. The body is longer, and I even had enough yarn to put a ruffle along the lower edge. A few things trouble me about it though - the hand spun yarn is a little uneven, and the last few balls tended to be thinner than the yarn the yoke was knit with. It seems mostly okay, but the area in the front between the armscyes and button band are a bit too ruffled and don't sit right. I'm hoping the neck edge has been a bit stretched during knitting and the blocking will help sort it all out. Or I may be wishing too much from blocking. There's no way of knowing other than to simply try it.



As much as I like the look of these round-yoked cardigans, I think raglan sleeves suit my shoulder shape better and I ought to steer clear of the round-yokes.

I am also knitting Fruit Loop socks in the Dream in Color Smooshy in Could Jungle. This was the yarn I used for the Leyburn socks, but hated them so much that I frogged it. The Fruit Loops are better, but I keep forgetting to get a photo...

Baby blanket the third was gifted to my work colleague today in my absence. There was never any surprise that there was going to be a blanket after blanket one and blanket two. So the surprise this time around is that no one at work knew anything much about what this one looked like.

I chose to knit the "Tweed Baby Blanket" by Jared Flood. The intention was to knit the centre in dove grey and the border in blue/purple if it was a boy, pink/green if it was a girl or green/purple if it was unknown. As with the previous blankets, Bendigo Woollen Mills 8 ply cotton was used for its excellent weight, stitch definition and washability. The yarn does not come in grey. It doesn't come in blue/purple/green/pink shades that appeal to me either. It was dye pot time.

I'm good at getting strong colours on cotton with Procion MX dyes, as proven before with the second blanket and other garments like Daniel's jumper and Charlotte's Anouk. But black and pale colours have been problematic. I knew my "black" dye was actually bluish, and so would not come out grey at reduced colour saturation. I had bought a grey dye ages ago, but had never used it. Still, I threw 400 grams of cotton in a dye pot with the grey dye and hoped for the best. Unfortunately, what I got was not grey and too dark (below left). I didn't leave it in the dye bath for the usual duration, because I hoped to reduce the depth of shade. That didn't work. So I put another 400 grams in a new dye bath of much reduced strength. Still not grey, but actually a quite nice pale blue (below right).



I had to abandon all attempts at dyeing grey cotton. I could have knitted the two shades of blue, something like the two shades of grey used in the original blanket, but I feared if it was not a boy then it would suffer an identity crisis in a blue blanket! I came up with a new scheme - the centre would be in the colour "Parchment" that Bendigo does. The border colours would remain the same, and the pale blue I already had could be used as is, and some of the extra could be over-dyed to make the green or the purple and the only additional dyeing required might be for pink. I began knitting the centre panel before school started in January.

On returning to school, my colleague said she was not going to find out the baby's sex before birth. So I split 200 grams of the pale blue into two skeins, and over-dyed each to get purple and green. The day after the dyeing was done, she had a scan, and it was very evident it is a boy. Never mind - I liked the green and purple so much that I stuck to my revised plan.

The garter centre panel was tedious. I enlarged it to 221 sts on the diagonal so that there were nine pattern repeats of the border on each side rather than six, as cotton has less give than wool and would not block very large. It took 339 grams of cotton to make a 78 cm square. The border was a delight to knit but became tense towards the end as I nearly didn't have enough of the purple. The bind off was supposed to be icord, which is very yarn-hungry. I modified it to a suspended bind off (*K2tog tbl, pass stitch from right to left needle* repeat to end) and had just 4 metres of the purple left over (98 grams of purple, 41 grams of green used). The final size is about 90 cm square.

I got a picture message on my phone earlier of the happy recipient!