I’ll give all of the details for these yarns once I finish the month, but this one is part of a kilo of merino and alpaca I picked up in Victoria last year.

See that speedo up there? That’s my baby Vespa. See the numbers around the outside? They’re kilometres. The numbers on the inside? Miles.

Yep.

Even though I knew that a km was shorter than a mile, that I could ride 80kph on the road between here and my parents and that that was about 50mph, I still thought I would have less spinning to do if I chose to spin a mile and not a kilometre.

Oh my.

All isn’t lost, though, I’ve managed to do a bit of spinning, and am intending to take the peggy with me when we go dirtbiking next weekend.

I haven’t been slacking on my resolution knitting this month, either. I’m almost finished my upper body garment and have knit a few lace items, I just have to tackle the items for the feet (Perhaps Ysolda’s Grown Up Booties, they look nice and quick).

I’ve been going really gung-ho with our line of patterns, including this one, the Mermaid Scales cowl. It’s been test knit by some lovely people over on Ravelry and the pattern is ready to go. It comes in two sizes, regular and super slouchy and uses a single skein of worsted weight yarn, 6mm/ US10 needles and a darning needle.

It’s currently available as a PDF on Rav, here, costing $3US, or you can buy it using the paypal button below.

My March item for the feet was a wee bit of a cheat, too.

Baby shoes are super simple and fast and, frankly, pretty damn cute.

I’ll hopefully get a modelled photo when the little spudlet is born next month.

I started this cardigan an embarrassingly long time ago, like, at the end of last winter.

I remember it well, Pants and I were off on a dirt biking weekend at a friend’s farm, so I cast on for greenjeans (I get the song ‘Greensleeves’ in my head every time I think of the pattern) on the drive down to Goulburn.

I knit diligently the whole time we were away, around the campfire, before breakfast, all the way home (thanks to Pants for being the best driver ever) and soon completed a big chunk of it.

It’s a really simple, easy to understand knit, and seamless, my favourite.

Alas, I picked up the stitches for the button bands and stalled there for 8 or so months. I threw it in a cupboard, then moved and unpacked it and threw it into a new cupboard before I decided I needed a little cheat to get my upper body garment done in a month that I mostly spent abroad.

The yarn, Valley Yarn Colrain is one of my favourites, a 50/50 merino/tencel from the kind people at Webs. I used 9 skeins (at $3.99 each), which makes this a brilliant cardi at under $40US.

As far as amendments go, I made it in a thinner gauge than recommended, so I made a bigger size, I lengthened the sleeves quite a lot (they reach my knuckles) and lengthened the body by a few inches. I gave it three buttonholes instead of the one, but upon reflection I like it held closed with just a single pin.

March Upper Body Garment Completed on time!

As my lace item for March, I chose Ishbel, by the ever talented Ysolda Teague. I knit it almost entirely while flying from London-Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi-Sydney (note to self: Etihad = worst airline EVER).

This is actually the first time I’ve knit a pattern of hers and I found it to be very well written, easy to understand and the resulting shawl is just gorgeous. The yarn I used is by Mayhem and Chaos, their lovely, firmly spun sock yarn in Tainted Love, a fantastically moody reddy black. I ran out during a brief lull in the rain yesterday and snapped this shot of it blocked:

I made the largest size of the shawl in the thickest yarn (the lace weight size in sock yarn) because I like a substantial shawl and because I had two skeins. The resulting shawl is generously sized (150 x 75cm unblocked, 160 x 80 blocked or, almost as long across the top as our queen sized bed) and used 140g of yarn.