I picked a lovely brown/gold shade of Rowan Felted Tweed called Gilt.

I can't possibly hope to knit as fast as Susan but my aim is to have it done for the November 10th Bruce Springsteen concert.

It would also serve me to adopt Susan's policy of working on one thing at a time. I have sdveral items started and I work on different ones depending on my mood.

Love your blog, Susan, particularly how you assess the difficulty of projects and problems you encounter. I may end up making Iris down the road. I would also appreciate any suggestions you may have for knitting Hildegard from currently available yarns. I looked a bit online and was having difficulty finding a cotton that meets 6he gauge.

Keep on knitting and blogging!;

Gosh! Thanks for the praise

To answer your questions….

1. About an hour a day while commuting (sitting on the train – walking, on escalators, the tube etc) plus an hour or so in the evenings either watching TV or when Ben is playing “Alien shooting” XBOX360 games. 2 hours dedicated knitting on a Sunday morning with my knitting group and sometimes I sit in Starbucks or the park of a lunchtime knitting too!
2. I’m very organised, I have a cleaner, I have the lovely Ben who helps with the boring stuff and I don’t have children to look after.
3. I’m not superfast at all! I just knit in all those otherwise wasted moments.
4. I knit classic English style – which is supposed to be the most inefficient!
5. Swatch? Nope, I very rarely swatch! I do check my tension when I’m half way up the back though. I’m lucky to usually knit bang on the required tension and I’ve knit enough to be able to judge if it feels right.

As for looking professional (thank you!) the biggest help was when I took a finishing techniques course with Jane Crowfoot at my local John Lewis branch. I know she still runs these. It was the best money I ever spent and improved my knitting immensely. The absolute MUSTs to learn are

* mattress stitch <-learn this if nothing else
* shortrow shaping for shoulders
* what decreases to use to give neat sleeve shaping and neck shaping (I should do a blog post on that!)

It also helps that from childhood my Mum drilled it into me that it didn't matter how beautifully knitted a garment was, you could really "bugger it up" by rushing and bodging the sewing up!

As for that leap to making garments – you could try a child's jumper? The construction is the same and less outlay?? Either that or an aran jumper grows quickly

Good luck with your knitting and keep reading and commenting! I love to hear from my readers.

Thank you
Susan

1. How much time per day do you spend knitting?
2. How on earth do you fit this in with working and other boring stuff?
3. How do you manage to knit everything so quickly – are you super super fast?
4. Continental or English? (it might give me an excuse for being slow).
5. Finally (and most importantly) do you always swatch?

I hope you don’t mind me asking but everything you make always looks so professional and fab. I’m too scared actual garments will go wrong and look rubbish so I always seem to stick to socks. Less financial investment I suppose.

Yours in stunned admiration.

Allison x

I picked a lovely brown/gold shade of Rowan Felted Tweed called Gilt.

I can’t possibly hope to knit as fast as Susan but my aim is to have it done for the November 10th Bruce Springsteen concert.

It would also serve me to adopt Susan’s policy of working on one thing at a time. I have several items started and I work on different ones depending on my mood.

Love your blog, Susan, particularly how you assess the difficulty of projects and problems you encounter. I may end up making Iris down the road. I would also appreciate any suggestions you may have for knitting Hildegard from currently available yarns. I looked a bit online and was having difficulty finding a cotton that meets the gauge.

Keep on knitting and blogging!