M.I.A.

It appears I have gone missing again. I can't believe it's been almost a week since my last post. Sorry! Since I went back to work on Monday I've been mad busy. I also apologise to bloggers whose posts I haven't commented on. I promise to do it soon, honest!

I have gotten some knitting done, though:


Pattern: Baby Surprise Jacket by Elizabeth Zimmermann (all hail)
Yarn: King Cole Bamboo Cotton, 1 skein brown, about 3/4 skein turquoise
Needles: 4mm Knit Picks Options

I adore this pattern. It never ceases to amaze me how it turns out every time.
This is my first attempt at striping, I think it looks great! I did modify it a little bit, I used an Icord bind off at the end, joined the shoulders using 3 needle Icord and ran the icord around the neck. I think it gives it a much nicer finish. All I need to do now is find some cool buttons and it's all set! I started this on Saturday night and had the knitting done on Sunday. I cast off and icorded on Monday night. The icording took me as long as the jacket did to knit! Looks great though, I'm pleased with it.

I managed to finish the top part of the Ethereal top too:



I'm all ready to start the empire waistband. Yeah. I swatched and swatched and swatched trying to pick a nice stitch pattern for the bodice. Every one of the stitches I tried looked pants in the Drops Alpaca. It's so fine that it doesn't really have much stitch definition. I must have swatched half the stitch patterns in the Barbara Walker treasuries. Very frustrating. I put it down in a sulk and did the BSJ instead to give myself a break from it.

But, last night at knit night I got some brilliant ideas! Thanks girls! They put their thinking caps on, and this is more or less what they came up with:



Pardon the crappy drawing, I'm certainly no artist. Basically it looks kinda like an Irish Dancing costume :) I'm going to do some smocking at the waistband and then do panels of purl stitches which will be where the increases are to make the skirt flare out and in between will be panels of a nice cable stitch. I went through my treasuries again last night, and I have some more swatching to do to decide which smocking type stitch and which cable stitch to use. Ideally I want the cable to sort of flow out of the smocking, if you know what I mean. I'm re-invigorated about it now!

I also have another magazine review to do, Designer Knitting Winter 2010/11. That's Vogue knitting for you folks across the pond. I hope to do that this weekend, but here's a quick sneak peek at one of the patterns:



*swoon* I LOVE this pattern! The minute I saw it my heart beat a bit faster. Then I looked and saw it was Norah Gaughan and I said to myself "I should have known"! I adore Norah as a designer. Isn't it just breathtaking? Le sigh.

Good knitting!