Grace Update

What a funny old week. Mr Myrtle had a few days holiday, we had workmen in our house, one of the Myrtle kids was ill,  the cold returned on the one day/night we had no heating, and there was even a little snow.

I did manage to knit, but boy oh boy, it certainly wasn't plain sailing! After finishing the body of my Grace cardigan I started the right sleeve. Picking it up was fine and off I went. But then the "fun" began. 

I'm alternating my skeins of yarn because they are quite obviously varying shades of silvery/grey and I don't want any big blobs of one shade or another. For the body I changed my yarn every two rows so I could carry it up just one side at the front. That was fairly straight forward. On the arms I alternate every row by dropping one yarn at the end of a round and starting with the other on the next. What a performance! I found that if I started the new yarn too tightly I ended up with a row of tight little stitches down my sleeve, too loose and it got plain ugly. Plus, I couldn't get my tension right. Sorry, it's tortured, but I have to tell you all about it. I have to de-brief.

I've given you the low-down of my sleeve journey in bullet points. I hope that'll be less painful for all of us.

• Started magic looping on 3.5mm needles. Was getting yucky stitches where I swapped from one half to the other.  
• Changed to 3.5mm dpns. Not much better. Tried to knit loosely because my gauge seemed too tight.  Stitches kept falling off the ends of needles.
• Knit the front bands for a change of scene. Thankfully, casting on 3 out of every 4 stitches = exactly the correct number of stitches called for ... 
• Back to sleeve. Changed to 3.75mm circulars. Tried a travelling loop, where you yank the loop out as you go along.  Doing okay until one of the kids broke my needle tip when I was out of the room. Grrrr!!!
• Back to 3.5mm's.
• Decided that my previous few inches of knitting on the 3.75mm's looked awful, too loose. Ripped it out. 
• Sick of sleeve.
• Back to 3.5mm magic loop. 

And then suddenly, it was good. Tension good, alternating skeins good. The only thing that wasn't too good was my enthusiasm! And, to cut what is now a very long story short, I eventually finished my first sleeve. I went down to 3.25mm needles for the ribbing and cast off nice and loosely. 

I think I'll do the neck band before starting the second sleeve!

The other TrulyGrace Knitters seem to be progressing at varying rates. Some are near the beginning, some are zooming down the body and at least one knitter is doing the sleeves first. I think nearly everyone (including me) ripped out the lace at least once! We've decided that because it seems like a super easy lace pattern we relax and then make silly mistakes. One knitter worked out her stitch counts for the ends of rows before starting. No mistakes there. Very sensible.

I have to say, if you are thinking of knitting Grace one day, you should go check out the TrulyGrace projects - there are some fantastic yarns being used, it's very inspiring. And, if you want to join us, there's still time! See the Grace Knit Along page for more details.

In other news ... you'll see Truly Myrtle has a new look.  It was time for change. 

Do you also see my new buttons in the side bar? Yip, I'm tweeting and instagram-ing. If you are on Twitter and Instagram too, pleeeease pop over and say Hi! I feel like I've arrived late to a pretty fantastic party over there. It'd be lovely to see some familiar faces.