Full of surprises

They say women are natural multi-taskers - except me. I took young man to the Red bull Flugtag contest at Hyde Park last weekend. I took along my knitting as usual. Something nice and easy and I brought the pattern with me. It was a lovely afternoon, lots to see and me pitched in a corner with my foot up sat knitting for the entirety. The baby jacket I'm working on has a one piece body with a simple stitch pattern. I focused on my knitting, like any other obsessive would do, rather than all the lovely (non) flying machines diving so gracelessly into the Serpentine. I had enough time to finish the body and both sleeves. What an achievement for an afternoons work. 5 days later I'm ready to sew together and finish it off. I wanted to take some progress shots and began arranging the pieces. I couldn't work out why the pieces didn't look right. It was when I downloaded the pictures that I realised I'd totally omitted the pattern on the yoke area. I managed to convince myself that it was the pattern and not me until I fished the book out and read the 2 lines - the 2 crucial lines - I'd missed out. Obviously I was more distracted by the 'flying machines' than I thought.

Plain jacket - should have a moss stitch ribbed yoke!!

On a more positive note, I sewed 2 panels together on the Mystery Blanket. I've mentioned before that this blanket is a piece of work that incorporates many of the techniques needed generally for knitting. My pet hate - sewing seams is one of them. Armed with Jane Crowfoot's Finishing Techniques for and Knitters, I sewed my first mattress stitch seam. I am queen of the back stitch and my previous attempts with mattress stitch, felt very awkward - so I would give up. However, I knew I had no other choice than to use mattress stitch for the blanket. A few hiccups later and the two strips are done.

You can see my trusted well used book in the background!!

I've created a few problems for myself. I modified the sheep squares, they body of the sheep should have been the loop stitch. I used moss titch instead. But in order to create the look of volume, doubled the yarn. This in turn made the square slightly larger than it ought to have been, which transpired when it came time to sew the strips together. I hope we don't have any more sheep!!