Then I bought my dress. I love it. It’s perfect. And now I want a hand-knit shawl to wear in the evening, after the ceremony.

While I was pondering this, R rang. there were still spaces left on a lace knitting class with Carol Feller at This is Knit. (I’m blogging from my phone and can’t work
out how to get links in but Carol’s website is called Stolen Stitches, and she has fabulous designs, so do look for it). Carol has a design that is perfect for the wedding. I hadn’t signed up for the class before as I was supposed to be working that day, but the schedules had changed and I was free. If I was that way inclined, I’d think that the universe was trying to tell me something.
Carol very kindly allowed me to work on the non-class pattern during the workshop, but I’m also completely in love with one of the class shawls and will be making it at some time in the future.

Next then, I needed some yarn. I don’t wear silk, which limited my choice for laceweight. However, TIK have a lovely laceweight yarn called Cashwool, which is 100% merino, really soft, and great value, with 1.3km of yarn per skein. No white left in stock though. It’s ok, I can deal with that. Lilac then. Very me.

I was all set to swatch when I got an excited text from R. D had the cashwool in white, and would pass a skein on to me. To top it off, R, who works something like 23 hours a day, finished work for the night, kidnapped D, and like wonderful yarn ninjas the two of them arrived up at my place with a late night emergency delivery of white laceweight.

So now I’m knitting for the wedding.

The last couple of weeks seem to have flown by. Work, college, life, eh, it just seems to have been a never ending stream of things to do.

This morning (just) I checked twitter, realised it was the day of the Dublin monthly spin-in in Powerscourt, grabbed my spindle and headed in. I ran out of the fibre I had with me just before it was time to pack up, so I did a bit of knitting too, and spent a very relaxing few hours in good company playing with fibre. It was super, and just what I needed. The spindle was spinning instead of me.

The consensus on the cardigan is that it is indeed too big for me. (I say consensus, and what I mean is everyone thinks so except the eternal optimist R, who insists I’m just wearing it wrong). So, friends and family, anyone want a cardigan? It’s lovely. I’ll even put a button on it for you.

So, here’s me in the cardie. Granted, it doesn’t really go with the dress I was wearing today, but it was a quickly grabbed photo. It also doesn’t have a button yet. It needs one, at the top.

See? It’s lovely, it’s just too big. It’s very squishy and stretchy, and it swamps me a bit.

Frogging it is not an option. There are 10 balls of yarn in there, plus 2 out of every 3 balls had a knot, so there are many, many ends that I sewed in. I’m not ripping it out. Shrinking it won’t work either – the yarn is machine washable, and really, it’s too lovely to mess around with like that.

So. I’m thinking. I don’t think it’s meant for me. Which means I need to work out the best way to go about finding the right home for it. I’m open to any suggestions.

This is my Six Nations cardigan.
It’s a lovely pattern (Shalom Cardigan, from Involving the Senses), and lovely yarn (Rowan RYC Cashsoft Chunky), but I do not love the cardigan.
It’s too big for me.
This is the sort of project where that shouldn’t really matter, and I made it slightly smaller than called for anyway.
But it’s still too big. (No, I didn’t swatch, but I don’t think that would have helped, it just doesn’t suit me).
Right now it’s drying, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. I don’t see myself wearing it.
So now I’m a bit stuck, as I don’t really know what to do with it.

To cheer myself up though, I’ve cast on for some Garter Stitch Mitts for myself, to replace my Fetchings as spring/autumn wear, as the missing one never showed up. I love this pattern. It’s simple, pleasingly constructed, and works really well in the tweedy yarn I’m using.

I shall continue anyway. We headed off not so bright and early on Saturday to Ashford in Wicklow, to visit The Yarn Room. Oh My. Close your eyes for a second. Imagine your perfect local yarn store. Mine has a comfy sofa to knit on, big windows to let the light in, lots of lovely yarn in bright colours, friendly people dropping in, and a nice cup of tea.
The Yarn Room has all of this. (Unfortunately the 45 minute drive when there’s no traffic means it doesn’t really count as local).

While we were there we bumped into Nic, who was teaching a mother and son to knit down at the back of the shop, and met Pumpkinknits and Jenna from Ravelry.

I got to try out the Ashford Knitter’s Loom, which I want very much indeed, but can’t afford (yet!) and don’t really have the space for at the moment, even though it folds up and is very portable. I really had to drag myself away from this, I was having loads of fun weaving.

Then we sat and the lovely Stephanie made us tea and we ate the yummy cookies Kneehigh had made and we knit and chatted and could have spent all day there quite happily, but we had another appointment to make…
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Our second appointment was to pop in to visit The Constant Knitter. This is a new online shop in Dublin, and we went along for a little yarn preview. Rosemary stocks Garnstudio yarns, which are really good quality and excellent value – it’s great to have a supplier in Ireland. The Constant Knitter is the only place I’ve found that stocks pure linen yarn, very reasonably priced too, so I bought a ball to have a play with, along with a few other bits and pieces of course.

Rosemary made us tea and lovely cupcakes too, and again it was hard to drag ourselves away!
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After fueling up with some delicious lentil soup we popped into the lovely This is Knit, to pet their lovely yarns and so I could gt a new options cable.
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Phew! Three yarn shops in one day. All we could do at that point was head off to Kneehigh’s, drink tea, eat tasty snacks, and knit and spin the evening away. Super.