Stashalong day off (from April), an FO and WIP

The completed fichu from the article by Meg Swansen in the current issue of Vogue Knitting, shown here in the process of pinning it out for wet blocking. I used one ball of ggh Soft Kid for this, and when it ran out (about an inch shorter than I wanted it) I finished the final few rows in Kidsilk Haze, which turned out to be a pretty close match for the ggh.





Some pics of what I bought on my recent Stashalong day off at the end of April. As these are mainly yarns I hadn't tried before, I bought them in scarf-sized quantities, which I've found to be much more fun than knitting tension squares. Shown in the 2 pictures, are several balls of Laines du Nord Kiddy Print (tried doing the fichu in one of these, like the mohair, but didn't like the colour effect - too splotchy - so these will probably be made into simple scarves, see my post on hair-sticks), ggh Mystik (in purple and tomato red), ggh Illusion (all of these were from Loop in Islington), Gedifra Soffice and Gedifra Fiocco (this is similar to Fiocco Oro, but without the Oro bit) - and both of these came from Liberty's. In addition, my sister kindly donated enough Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran to make Tubey, for my birthday

Work in progress - Tubey from Knitty. I seem to have got the idea (finally!) of how the 2 circs magic loop method works - and although it's a little bit slow, at least I don't feel like I'm trying to knit with a hedgehog. I am making some changes to the original pattern. The sleeves are being worked in the main 3x1 rib pattern (hope this should take care of the slightly flabby upper arm problem!) to about 3 inches below the elbow. I then plan to taper some of the ribs down to 1 stitch wide (so some decreasing to do), and will then change to 1x1 rib for the final part. I need to find out how to do tubular (sewn) cast-off, and this is an ideal project to try it on. (Fortunately, the Vogue Knitting encyclopaedia I picked up the other day seems to have some good diagrams for this). I also plan to use tubular cast-on (it's in Montse Stanley's book, cast on 1 k-wise, cast on 1 p-wise, repeat for number of stitches needed, and then work 2 rows in k1, yf, slip 1, yb) for the main body, and finish the bottom in 1 or 2 rows of 1x1 rib, and tubular cast off as for the sleeves. On the main body, I am going to use these lovely purple yarns from Texere, knitted in with the main yarn.