Back to my knitting...

Oddly enough, I'd never heard the phrase "getting back to my/our/their knitting" before this current financial crisis. Then I heard it on David Reidy's wonderful Sticks and String podcast in one of the essays, used in one sense; and if I've heard one banker/building-society manager/finance expert use it in the sense of "retrenching to what we used to be good at", I've heard a dozen...

It seems to mean getting conservative again, going (cringe) "back to basics". And while I think that's a great idea in the banking sense, given the current general balls-up, I don't think that's what knitters mean. Certainly not the seven knitters gathered in the I Knit basement on a glorious sunny Saturday for Gwen's Weird Techniques class anyway. Being a bad, bad blogger, I had my camera but was both too busy and too timid to suggest taking photos. As it turned out, I was sitting next to Joy from The Knitting Goddess Yarns who also had a camera with her but I don't think she took photos either... I learned to knit and purl backwards; and that although I'd been doing the Magic Loop technique correctly, I still didn't enjoy it. And that I really, really need to practice the long-tail cast-on, despite my complete failure at it in the class, because there are some seriously fun things you can do with it... And cabling without a cable needle finally made sense - I'll try it on the second sleeve of St Brigid and see whether things go faster... It was a whirlwind of new techniques, tips, ideas, shared experience; totally recommended when it comes round again... And my first ever formal knitting class (as a student!)...

I have also been knitting. I made the Seachange sweater [Ravelry link] from Gerard's book Knits to Share and Care. It's a lovely thing to make and only took a couple of weeks of train journeys and knit nights... Here it is on the line:

And here it is on. Yes, strange photo. I don't have a full-length mirror at home, so I stand on a chair and take a picture in the living-room mirror...

It's the most sensuous thing to wear - incredibly soft wool and silk. It may pill - I think it's already started - but I really don't care because I feel fantastic wearing it...

The thing I really couldn't get was how the underarm gussets went in. Here they are from one side:

and from the other:

Because it's not knitted in the round, you have to sew up the sweater. If you're tempted to do this gansey (and it's a really nice, quick knit), here's a construction diagram for the underarm gussets. Click to embiggen in Flickr.

I'm including this because it took me forever to work this out. I think it's a spatial awareness thing, maybe; but I had to do it at I Knit where they had the model in the shop, and I only finally worked it out when Laura took the sweater off the tailor's dummy and laid it across my lap; thanks, Laura!

I've also finally fallen in thrall to those Mason-Dixon ladies and made a couple of ballband dishcloths. Here's the first one - the second one is in the wash at the moment... Cool, simple. quick and practical...