First Design in Simply Knitting

The new issue of Simply Knitting came yesterday and features my first design for Simply Knitting. It's a fair isle design, worked in one piece in the round with a circular yoke. Debbie did a fab job in knitting up the sample. They even showed a picture of the wrong side of the fair isle pattern. It looked perfect. Thank you Debbie. Debbie has just started a new company called Redhound which specialises in dog coats and gifts for dogs. Her stuff is fantastic. She had a stall at The Country Living Christmas Fair and won the Editors Choice Award.

There was even a small pic on the cover, down in the left hand bottom corner:

Here are some of the pics I took before I sent it off:

We did have a little bit of a drama with this sweater. Debbie rang me to say she wouldn't have enough of the green yarn to finish the yoke. She sent the garment back to me. I took of the ribs at the bottom of the sleeves and body and unravelled them and re-knit them much shorter. And used that yarn to finish the yoke. Perfect!

I've finished my last deadline before christmas. Now, I'm busy planning my Christmas knitting. I've promised the girls socks and fingerless gloves with mitten tops. Emily has picked out her yarn and I may get started on those tonight. Vanessa's may not get done. She got some new mittens on Sunday so is not desperate for the fingerless gloves. I also wanted to knit something for Simon's parents, his sister and her husband and my parents. I'm doing it on teh knitting machine so it should be quick. I spent some time on the knitting machine this morning and it did not go well. I tried to do a rib, which I can do quite well by now and I just ended up with some needles not knitting properly. I kept trying and it kept messing up. I had lunch and then tried again and it worked. I got to the point where I thought it was something wrong with the machine. I did manage to finish the second front for my navy cashmere cardi eventually:

Just sleeves to do. I'm joining the shoulders tonight and picking up for the front bands which i'm hand-knitting. We're having our housegroup Christmas social here tonight so I need something simple to knit. The front bands are perfect.

I also started a curly scarf crocheted in Art Yarns Beaded Silk. I was planning to take this to Norway but I started on my break this morning and just carried on. I'm slightly worried about running out of yarn as I've only got about 90 m.

I finished my cashmere waist coat on Monday.  I knitted the fronts and back on my knitting machine but handknitted the armbands and the front bands.  I'm very, very happy with this garment. I made no mistakes on the machine at all. My first completely mistake-free machine knitted garment! It looks huge on my dress form but my dress form is a size 8/10 and i'm not!

I love the shaping for the v-neck:

I've got some pattern writing to do and some Christmas knitting to plan.