Hello again

 It's been.. quite a long time.

I was just sitting on the bed knitting and browsing things on my tablet, and thought 'Why not go back to the blog?'. Why not indeed. Not that I have much of interest to say (did I ever?)

I am, for once, knitting an actual garment. I'm very nearly finished in fact - a couple more rows and I'll be casting off the second sleeve, and then I'll go back to the body and finish that off - I wasn't sure how much wool I'd need so, following the wise words of a fellow Icelandic-volcano enthusiast who I know from Discord, I switched to the sleeves before the body was finished because a jumper with a slightly-too-short body is less of a problem than one with one-and-a-half sleeves 😁.

The pattern is PetiteKnit's Novice Sweater, with a few tweaks, as I'm not actually a novice. I don't like a neckline as high as that, so that's reduced and I've made the sleeves longer with thumbholes in the cuffs to keep my creaky wrists warm. It's a nice clear pattern, and top-down which I'd never done before but like a lot.  

Once I've finished this (in what passes for sweltering heat in Scotland - it was 26° today which is too bloody hot for the likes of me), it might encourage me to dig out the half-knitted jumper I cast on in the first Lockdown in the year that we don't talk about. It was an Ysolda Teague Icelandic-style thing whose pattern name escapes me just now - really nice pattern, bottom-up and in the round, and I was getting on fine and onto the first sleeve but it had sleeve shaping and my yarn was a dark charcoal, slightly fluffy. I lost track of where I was in the shaping, couldn't see what I was doing and stalled. For five years. In the second lockdown I'd gone into a Fair Isle hat frenzy, which was so much fun, and more or less forgot the jumper (Strokkur! Just remembered!), and that was that. I'll probably have to rip that sleeve back because my eyesight hasn't got any better - I'm now long-sighted as well as short-sighted, so if I'm wearing my contact lenses I also need reading glasses for close work. As an aside (one of many), I should probably update my profile picture if I'm going to continue with this blog, as the one I have is from 16 years ago and I'm not that girl any more!

Anyway, I could either rip back that Strokkur sleeve and reknit it as the pattern says or do it as a straight sleeve. We will see. I strongly suspect that if I attempt the shaping again, exactly the same thing will happen - I'll get interrupted, lose track and be unable to see where I am. It's a metaphor for life.

Apologies for any confusing typos - my tablet has an eccentric approach to predictive text/autocorrect and I don't know how to switch it off. I think I've caught everything, but maybe not.