Bohus, nearing the end of the colour work :(

Blue shimmer bohus, well I am nearing the end of the colour work yoke, and it saddens me. I really enjoyed the colour work, but am now about to start colour work row 64, and there are only 72 in total. After this will be many many rows of plain stocking stitch. Stocking stitch flat, not in the round as I prefer. My purls will get a practice. But then I will get to wear it. The progress photo is ok, it was taken under a halogen light in the dining room. Usually I use the natural daylight coming in the window, but being it 7pm when I took the photo, here in the southern hemisphere, below the 42nd parallel. Entering winter, by 6pm it is dark. I tried to use the white balance correction in the camera but look ....

not pretty, not even salvagable. I call it Bohus Electric. I had to tone down the colour in the first photo a little, but still feel the aqua is not as faded as the real one, while the brown seems spot on. That is on my monitor, I know every monitor has its own settings, so aplogise if it looks garish on any one elses. On day I will stop feeling like an interloper when using photoshop and feel like I know how to do things.

GF Shrug, this is where I admit a terrible mistake, I didn't swatch! And I am the queen of the swatches, I am drive students and friends who are learning mad by insisting I will not help until they swatch. I should have and I learned my lesson yet again. I have used Opal for many, many socks, and even a hat, always knitting to gague using 2.5mm pins. I planned to use Elizabeth Zimmerman's knit the swatch as you go technique but I was so pleased with progress and the pretty colours I didn't stop to measure. I thought as I was knitting a "size up", and my Poppy would grow into it that it would be fine. But, the pattern was not written for Opal, and I have no idea why I thought I could substitute Opal for another unknown sock self striping yarn. Never, never, never again will I be so plain stupid, I had knit for 4 evenings, and was really pleased with my progress, up to beyond the arm hole and 2-3 inches across the back. I could see that the GF shrug would be finished easily in time for the party. I had half a shrug completed and then .....

A visiting friend of my daughters asked what I was knitting, so I showed her by putting it on Poppy. It was tight, wearable, by not over anything with sleeves, and no growing room. Ok, I left it be for a day, while seriously contemplating finishing it and gifting it to a friend with a younger girl child. Then Sunday afternoon I overcame that, I moved to an acceptance stage of pre-frogging, and ripped it all out. Cast on on 2.25mm pins, and ribbed. Switched to 2.75 mm pins and knit, I have slipped it onto her arm tonight before bedtime stories, and it fits fine, a bit of ease in there. I will check gague latter just to be sure. I wish I had a recorded picture of the shrug before I ripped it, but no, my camera was at work, and a Scan seemed way to much effort. I guess I was not full accepting the result at that stage. Any way this is the progress shot.

Still pretty, and given how fast the 'wrong' version knitted up there is a chance it will be finished by end of May in time for the party. So for now Bohus will share my knitting time with Shrug, but that will give me a little more time to enjoy the colour work. I also want to 'save' some colour work for when Bear can do the photo's of my hands knitting. I see so many images of how others knit and it is not quite like mine. May as well add mine to the mix.

Blog Stuff, well I have fixed the links, but need to spend some time working on the blog layout. I really want a WIP section, with those cool progress charts. Bars showing how complete, or even cooler wee images of the project with the colour filling up as the work grows towards completion. Not quite sure how to do that, I was thinking images of the garment, I can do that in corel draw or photoshop, and then fill in the colour as I go, saving each to my flicker acount. then the WIP in the side bar would link to the relevant image? I would have to upload a new image for each WIP that had progressed, for each blog, but I already upload a few images each time. Might post that one on Knitters review and see if there are any suggestions.