She is done!

The front:

The back:

Pattern: Sylvi from Twist Collective Winter 2008, which is one of the few patterns I’ve ordered online.
Yarn: Patons Inca
Modifications: Left off the hood. Finished the cabled back by changing the last thick stem into a thinner one then ending with another leaf. Joined all pieces then cast off neck edge. Knit a longer sleeve cuff for the collar and sewed on.

Knit and sewed on three ‘leaf frog’ closures from Knitting Beyond the Edge by Nicky Epstein (page 119), and two single leaf motifs for the sleeve cuffs.

Conclusion: Oh Sylvi, how I love you. (It has to be love, otherwise why else knit a bulky weight coat in the middle of an Aussie summer?)

I have one and a bit balls of yarn left and I’m tempted to knit a hat to match (something like this). But would that be too matchy-matchy?

I finished them last night. All I had left to do was sew in the (multitudes of) ends and grab some more black Patonyle so I could knit the second cuff.

Then I remembered that this means I can ‘receive’ my new Personal Sock Club package. Having just sewn in a whole lot of ends of a scrappy sock, I was hoping I would pick a different sort of sock project this time. And the yarn that appealed the most was the purple/black one, which I’d bought in Tapestry Craft last time I was in Sydney. The odds were one in four. I grabbed a bag and opened it…

Yipee! I did a little happy dance and transferred the yarn to a sock knitting bag. These will be the first socks I’ve knit reinforcing thread into. (It comes with the yarn.) Since the yarn is busy enough as it is, I’ll knit them plain, using my toe-up heel flap pattern.

While in Canberra and Sydney I bought these:

I read the Yarn Harlot book at airports and during flights, and it’s sweet and funny. Yarn, too, was excellent travel reading. It was a toss up between Crochet in No Time and another crochet pattern book, but this one won out because it is a UK publication and so the patterns use terms I’m familiar with.

Hmm. I keep buying crochet books, but never seem to get around to making anything in them. I think a personal crochet challenge may be in my future.

I also bought yarn.

Which I kinda have to be a bit creative with my KFYS rules to justify:

1, The Patonyle and Heirloom Jigsaw come under 2.f. and 2.d.
2, The Araucania Ranco comes under 2.e. (I really did believe I’d finish the scrappy socks before I got home and it’s not like I could have gone shopping for yarn on a Sunday or public holiday in Canberra).
3, The Debbie Bliss Pure Silk… I admit doesn’t come under any rule. It’s just that I’ve always wanted to knit red silk gloves and the perfect yarn lay in wait for me under the counter at Tapestry Craft. But the irony is, when I got outside into the sunlight it turned out to be pink, which would have been easy to resist. I went back and exchanged it for purple the next day.

I’m back from my week-and-a-bit jaunt in Canberra and Sydney. For some strange reason I was able to blog here the first weekend, but not on the second. The new post page in Blogger wouldn’t load.

A longer post is coming, but for now… I knit, I bought knitting and crochet books, and I bought yarn.

(What yarn diet?)

Due to a long phone call on Thursday night, I didn’t find time to work on Sylvi until Friday afternoon. This was probably a good thing, because the last part of the chart wasn’t adding up and I was in no state of mind to be puzzling it out. So on Friday I compared my printout to the pdf, and sure enough there were colours that hadn’t translated into b&b clearly. With those bits marked with a highlighter it all made sense. Well, until the pattern did something wierd, but by then I was fudging in an extra leaf to finish the pattern early rather than knit the hood so I just kept making it up.

Then I sewed all the pieces together and cast off the neck edge. When I tried it on I didn’t like how wide the neckline was, so I knit up a band in the same pattern specs for the cuff, and sewed that on. I mostly like the result, but I’m probably going to unpick the start and end of the band and rip back to make it level with the fronts rather than overlapping. (Unfortunately you can’t see it in any of the pics.)

Here’s how I ‘finished’ the cable pattern:

On Saturday morning I tackled the petals. I was hoping that I’d get all three flowers done before I had to leave for the airport, but only managed one:

So I didn’t manage to finish Sylvi before leaving, but I got pretty close:

At the airport this plane arrived while I was waiting to board mine.

The effect is quite eye-catching and got some of the waiting passengers all excited. I thought at first it might be a celebrity’s plane, but it’s one of two that Qantas commissioned a special paint job for.