What to do when you don't feel like sewing - pick up a bigger needle

I haven't felt like sewing anything major for a few weeks, but did want to do something with my hands. A couple of my neighbours have started knitting, so when I found 8 hanks of this 100% cashmere yarn in a charity shop for an unbelievable £2.00, I had to buy it.

In the eighties ( yes, I am that age) I used to knit a lot, and loved the challenge of the patterns by Patricia Roberts . As I was a student, there was no way I could afford to buy the finished jumpers. I was then a bench scientist, and my experiments needed me to to a very repetitive task every 4 minutes, for up to 4h, so there was lots of time in between to knit. This was before the days of ipods, Nintendo DS, itouch phones and the like, remember. I also loved patterns by Sasha Kagan and Christian de Falbe.


So when I decided to knit this yarn, I wanted a bit of a challenge. I found it in this pattern from Cheryl Niamath in Knitty. I've never done a thumb shaping, although have knitted in the round. Lovely beechwood needles from Mrs Moon set me off on the right track.


I knitted these on 3.5 mm needles as I have quite small hands, and also lengthened the main section to 24 rows, rather than 18, as I wanted these to extend up my wrists. The thumb was certainly a challenge, but good photos on cheryl's blog show helped me to understand how to do this.

These fit beautifully, so I think I'll be running up some more in the indigo and cream yarn that were part of the original bargain. What next - a Hanne Falkenberg mermaid jacket perhaps?