steekfear

I has it.

Weird. I've been looking forward to this bit for ages, but as The Steek looms larger on the horizon, so does a nascent feeling of fear. At first the idea seemed like fun, but now I've spent about a month knitting this jumper, it seems rather like madness to cheerfully attack the thing with scissors.

Actually I think I was even more nervous about doing the sewing bit. Having very little experience with a sewing machine, and a propensity to tangle threads, distort fabric, make wavy lines and generally ruin stuff, I had very low confidence about this step. I had to steek a test swatch and drink a pint of beer before even picking up the jumper. But I took a deep breath and started sewing it last night. No tanglings, and marginally straighter than a dog's hind leg! I thought I was doing pretty well. Then Mr. Rubbishknitter entered the room, wondering why I was red-faced and sweating, despite the baltic weather and our boiler being on the blink. Oh well. It is sewn now, and awaits the scissors! *takes deep breath*...
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float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

After a short period of sofa-bound flueyness, I just finished the body of the baby norgi. It's actually made me feel quite Christmassy, all those reindeer and fir trees. Am rather pleased with the stranded colourwork. One minor problem is, I didn't really think about it until I got to this part, but there are some alarmingly long floats required in the top section, like 10 stitches or more. In my past experience with stranded knitting, my attempts to weave in floats were a bit of a disaster. You could see it on the right side, it stubbornly refused to stretch by as much as a millimetre, and the knitting puckered up like it was trying to kiss you. So this time, I decided I was going to blithely knit on and leave huge gaping floats. I will report back on the wisdom of this when I have attempted to get it over the wee mans head and trapped various limbs in a forest of inverse reindeer. If it's a disaster, I may go back and tack them down. But right now, I can't really be bothered. Onward to the sleeves! I can't wait to attack this thing with scissors!

I also modified the neckline to accommodate the small fella's not-so-small head, which is the size of a planetoid. Added 10 stitches into the opening, front and back. It looks nice and roomy, so we'll see how it is after the neckband is added. Am thinking I might go with a sewn cast-off on that for added elasticity.

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