It’s taking a while for me to get back into what passes for a routine around here. That shouldn’t be surprising, I looked at the calendar and the last time things could be described as “normal” was the end of November. After that came heaps of snow and then Christmas. There’s no wonder that I’m struggling to get back into the pattern of my day to day life.

The New Year saw the creation of the pork pie of great awesomeness. I don’t like pork pie, not the pastry, the jelly or the meat so I’m not sure why it seemed like a good idea to make one.  I came across the recipe while researching cooking times for unfamiliar turkey roasts and as I’ve never made hot water pastry I thought it would be a good time to try it out.  I liked it, the pastry was crisp and tasty rather than hard and leaden, the meat was nicely seasoned and the jelly was not nasty. That’s not very positive but the jelly would have been tastier with the addition of a glass of sherry and it could have done with a little less stiffness. The whole thing was impressive but not hard to make and no doubt we’ll be making another one in the future. The recipe is from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s “Meat” book with some adjustments to the seasoning seeing as I hadn’t read that part of the recipe and mace does not feature on my shelves.

The bookmarks shown last time came out better than I’d anticipated, for a start I didn’t have to cut off the warp and throw it away. I tied the new warp onto the old one, 2/60 silk (alternatively it might be 60/2 silk depending which side of the atlantic you are, but wherever you are “sewing thread” is a good reference) doubled and sett at 48 epi. It would have been a little dense for a scarf but fine for what I wanted it for. The first one I made (the right hand one of the pair on the right) has lovely straight edges because I used a floating selvedge, that got old really fast and the rest were done without one. It means the sides are less than stellar but I enjoyed the weaving more. The weft is either doubled 2/60 silk, Jaggerspun Zephyr or handspun tussah not that you can see any difference unless you click the photos to see the larger ones. I got five bookmarks from the two and a half yard warp, there would have been six had it not been that I tied on again after taking the first one off for its bath and that I gave up after a few inches of another one. This was my lesson on tying a warp on to an existing one (it’s ok), working with fine thread (fairly tedious) and using a floating selvedge (tedious but effective).

I was lost from the moment I saw one of these on the Yarn Harlot’s blog. Garter stitch, so right for tv knitting, those little stripes and the dinky little sleeves. Just the right project for the mound of sock yarn fighting for its freedom. The dark sock yarn came out of the bag of leftovers despite being a full ball which means that at some point it must have sinned in some way. I think it was relegated for being too boring and bland but as single stripes it’s fine. This is a basic top down cardigan, no shaping on the arms or body other than a bit of shaping at the neck. This is because I’ve previous form for top button baby strangling so I’d prefer to have the top fall well under any double chins. The ties were going to be white except I ran out of the undyed and I haven’t talked myself into the darker ties yet.

I don’t have any babies handy to measure it against but in the back of Maggie Righetti’s “Sweater Design in Plain English” there are tables of body measurements for both adults and children so I’ve taken the sleeve and body length from there. I am unconvinced about the sleeve length which is why I haven’t sewn them up, I need to check the length against the schematics from a vaguely similar pattern with an 18″ chest. They look a bit long to me but that might just be me trying to shorten the sleeves to scrape together enough white to make the ties. I realise that it’s difficult for you to form an opinion given that I didn’t take a photo with the sleeves in but all photos are courtesy of the daylight lamp and it didn”t make a pool long enough to get all of the sweater in. I’ll be stuck with photographing tiny items until we get some actual daylight around here.

For anyone who wants to make one for their very own there’s a bottom up pattern here, if you’re confident that you knit to normal tension this might be the one for you.

Please excuse me while I wander off to see if I can remember how to work a duster.