It's Knitting Time & Time to Learn Something New!

Free Digital Longline Hooded Cardigan Pattern 

Well now the nights are cutting in seems like time to start knitting again.

A few months ago I went a bit doo-lally and bought loads of wool in a website sale. I still say wool, can't get out of the habit & call it yarn which shows my age!

Last week I thought it was a good time to get that big box of wool out of the bedroom & get cracking! 

I saw the free digital pattern when I bought the wool and have started knitting it. Might get it finished if I can keep going with the back & fronts that I decided to knit in one piece up to the armholes so that I didn't have to stitch up the side seams. Not the best of ideas as I don't like knitting on circular needles so in Double Knitting the stitches (over 240) are squashed tight which makes it hard to see if I make a mistake. I do make them because I am usually watching telly when I knit. 

The second problem I had was joining the new balls of wool as there are no side seams and no joins at the the front ribs. So this is where I learned something new! After 70 years of knitting there's always something to learn. I did a bit of research on the "tinterweb" and found some good videos showing you how to spit or split splice. They work best on pure wool but after trying a couple of methods I liked this one by Suzanne Bryan best and have used it three times on acylic now & you can't see the joins which is amazing. It did take a fair bit of rubbing in your palms to get the friction as I have cold hands but the result was good.

Only 4" to go now! I'm making it a bit shorter than the pattern as I'm not very tall. I think I'll be making the sleeves shorter than in the picture too.

I can't find the pattern in Ravelry so I've used the link to it HERE on the Deramores website where I bought the wool. They have quite a lot of free patterns for knitting & crochet and some great Christmas patterns if you haven't already seen this site.

I'm not on commission by the way!

Update!

Finally finished it!

I had problems with the hood. Didn't like the size of it so took it out and started again. I did that twice but still didn't like it so I got out a hoodie and used that as the shapre and knitted it to that. Thankfully it worked.

I still haven't worn it. For some reason it feels fractionally small. Not the length, the arms could do with being an inch or so wider. Might be because I've been wearing really baggy jumpers for a few weeks. It's probably be more of a cool summer day cardi!