A New Project (and a lot of talking)

Recently I started knitting a jumper/cardigan/hoodie for my daughter - here's my progress so far:

Important things to know about this - this is only the second article of clothing - or in fact anything that's not a plain rectangular type shape - no I lie, there was also a small hat (about 1" diameter) on circular needles for a teddy bear (despite my collecting toy patterns, I don't think I've ever knitted one) - and the first thing that isn't plain knit/purl that I have knitted. And I should mention about that first jersey - it was a bat-wing style with roll neck that I could pretty much wear upside down and my mother ended up unravelling and re-knitting in a new design for me.

And look - I even managed to find a photo of me wearing it when I was a teenager :)

So this is going to be an interesting undertaking :) I brought some cheap wool (yarn - which is probably more accurate since I don't think there is a bit of real wool in it) to do a first run through in case I mucked it up. So far it's going well though - the only mistake was not reading the bit about starting on smaller sized needles for the ribbing. I'll have to do that for the rest of it, but I'm not undoing this part.

If you are wondering with that history why I'm now trying to knit something that's a bit more than plain knitting in a rectangle then I have to confess I tend to think of knitting much the same as I do stitching - if you can do the basics (for knitting that would be knit, purl and casting on and off) then you can pretty much do anything you like. So far it's working :)

Now - going back to speaking of my mother - she has (finally :p) started her own blog of stitching (right here). My header says I started this blog to keep track of my WIP's - which is true - but the other half of the reason is that I started it to share with my stitching with Mum as she lived half a world away (and still does even we're both in different countries now than we were then), so now I get to see her stitching too. She's the one that taught me to stitch and does much neater work than I do.

Another project I started this month is a quilt for DD - a pink and purple and sparkly princess castle creation. Applique - on my new sewing machine - my old one (apart from being the wrong sort of power and having to be used with a transformer) is starting to fall apart and they can't get the parts for it so I figured I needed a new one sooner or later. Since a lot of the stitching for this quilt would be on the front I really wanted it all done on the same machine - which if I was borrowing machines every time I went to the quilting bee it wouldn't be. So it was the push I needed to look around and end up with a Singer Quantum. Loads of features for a reasonable price.

No photos of the quilt yet though as I've only got as far as cutting small shapes out. The original pattern was for a cot quilt so I was all set to just enlarge borders, when the instructor suggested that I enlarge the pattern and make the whole castle bigger. That meant a little delay in starting while I figured out all the changes - but I think I'm almost there now.

Also starting this month is the SAL for Tony Minieri's Stars for the New Millennium. I have all my threads and things ready to go, but have decided to wait just a little bit since I am supposed to be finishing a correspondence class (Stained Glass Sampler) by December and a wedding gift (Happily Ever After) by April - neither of which have got very far (not helped by over a month of not stitching).