3 days and counting...

Finally, after about 7 years of studying the classics, I get to go to Greece! YAY! I leave Friday morning to spend a day in London being arty with Stephanie, and then sit knitting in Heathrow for the night (too excited to sleep, im sure!). Then I get to pick up mike from arrivals, and head off to the land of the wine-dark seas! YAY! (can you tell i'm looking forward to this?!!)

Anyway, since this is likely to be my last chance to post before I go, I thought I'd help you OD on knitting content, to make up for the no-knitting, all-photo posts that I'll be posting when I get back!

First, there's the sea creature from the deep (aka circular blanket) that I started a while back...

(its about 14 inches across in this photo)

I had to steal the needles from this project to use them for panpan, and in the process I dropped a few stitches that I couldn't pick up... which is how this perfectly good blanket took up residence in the swamp. When I started knitting it again, I realized that I had been doing my yarnovers wrong, which explains why there weren't any holes along the pinwheel spoke thingies... so maybe ripping out wasn't such a bad thing (for once!). It has been started again, but is now resting on too-small needles, so that panpan can have correctly sized sleeves.

As for the panpan jumper... that photo from the other day showed only the front part of the jumper, but the piece actually was much wider - i was trying to minimize seaming by knitting the whole body as one piece. Bad idea! two skeins of blue (one on either side of the rabbit) + one of white + one of light grey + one of dark grey = giant mess of yarn, and too many too tight stitches. So panpan visited the frog pond too. But he was reknit, and now looks like this (the front and back are now 2 separate pieces:
Please excuse my momentary MCS but isn't he just so cute!? the pattern requires you to knit to the underarms, then knit the sleeves, and then knit the yoke part all together... the only problem is that the body was supposed to have been knit in the round. so now that i'm joining it all into a round, the last 5 rows of intarsia are going to be rather interesting to knit. (I did try to finish the whole rabbit before joining the sleeves, but the body ended up being way too long... this way its only slightly too long! good thing its for a tall kid!)

Oh, that reminds me, im using (a heavily modified version of) the corrected version of this pattern, but I found another mistake - on the 2-4 year old size, the sleeves are missing an increase row repeat - you have to knit the increase row every 8th row 5 times, not 4. but of course I didn't realise this till too late, so i had to rip it out and do it again. nothing like making a sweater with 3 sleeves! :)

I need to post this ASAP to get it to the recipient before easter, so i think my night in Heathrow will be spent seaming and sewing in ends rather than knitting! (do they have a post office in Heathrow?!)

My jemima sweater has progressed pathetically... the back is finished. that's it. I did start the front about a week ago, but then i realized that i'd messed up the contrast colour section at the bottom (i missed a row), so it all got frogged. I have been meaning to cast it on again, but panpan was bogarting the 5mm needles that i need for jemima. that rabbit really is too greedy!

In other news, I want to say hi to Lara and Laura, my two secret pals. Lara was the pal I've been sending things to, and Laura was the pal sending parcels to me (i love this whole secret pal thing!). Their blogs will now be residing happily on the sidebar!

Anyway, i have to drag myself away from the computer now... dinner, dishes, laundry, packing, and unearthing my bedroom floor all await my attention. im helping at a conference at school all day tomorrow, so all that last minute pre-trip panic all has to be taken care of today!

See you in a few weeks! Have a great easter!