Jaeger Winter Ribbon

I have actually been knitting! I have finished one sock apart from the grafting, my least favourite part, and I have one back, two sleeves and a few inches of left front of Fern completed.

My friends at the Stitch and Bitch http://knitting.meetup.com/137 will testify to the fact that I did actually do a few rows today. Few being the operative word after pulling two clean needles out of my bag and leaving the raw knitting behind. I thought I had caught it all okay only later to discover a dropped stitch in the shawl collar edging and spending ages ham fistedly picking it up for miles.

(They will also testify that Heather's version of Flora is AT LEAST as nice as the one in the picture below, and some of us are all the more determined now to have a go at it.)

Thanks go out to Carol on the Rowan International forum for explaining the edging on the shawl collar. The picture in Rowan mag 36 is very nice, but from it I wasn't even aware there WAS an edging on the collar, which is partly why I couldn't get my head around it in the pattern. There is a little loop edging every couple of rows and some short rows to flare out a little to make a little flounce and to compensate for the fact that garter stitch is not as tall as (reverse) stocking stitch. Thanks India ;-)

In the absence of any knitting to show you, I will include the before picture of a top which is in pieces on the back of the couch. I knitted this last year in Jaeger Winter Ribbon (long discontinued apparently) I had bought from ebay. I based it on Wavy which is in Rowan's Cotton Tape collection, with plenty of tinking thrown in. Anyway I have never had much wear out of it because I never really liked the way I sewed in the sleeves. I have taken it apart to try to fix it and I hope to show you some new improved after pictures in the near future.

This picture was taken at the Cream o' Galloway ice cream shop, Mull of Galloway, on a visit to see my mother in law.