After my last blog post, I rushed off to my needles and cast on the Judie Jacket….

Woosh! 😛

I had the back done in a couple of nights!

OK, that “Woosh” included using beautiful Namaste glass needles for the rib – they were too slippery and heavy and made the stitches huge – I had to frog 5″ (13cm for you metric types!) and restart because it just looked loose and wrong.

I also made a pig’s ear of short row shaping the shoulders so it took three goes. Mainly because I was tired , reading the wrong size and was trying to do it in my head instead of writing it out like I usually do! I need to short row the shoulders so I can do a 3 needle bind off – the only way I can get lumpless shoulder seams with this type of chunky yarn.

Sometimes I try to be to clever for my own good 😆

I’m not always a fan of big yarns but you’ve gotta love the speed. Isn’t the Ribbon twist working well??I really like the Moss Stitch and Rib pattern too. It kind of looks chocolatey to me – yum….

“Oh no! You’ve overtaken me on the knitalong”, said Judie (the inspiration for the knitalong)…

“Don’t worry, I’ll knit some squares for the Denim Blankie – You’ll catch up.”

I went off and knit a few more squares until my hands hurt from the unforgiving cotton. After knitting on 12mm needles, doing Blankie Squares on 4mm felt like knitting on tooth picks!

So, just to give my fatigued hands a rest, I cast on a front – oops 😳 I finished it 🙁

Thug valiantly tried to hide the evidence from Judie but failed. Judie was still on the back. “You’re banned from doing any more till I catch up!” said Judie, brandishing her 10mm 😀

In fear of being poked hard with a 10mm needle , I went back to the blankie.

As I had been quite excited by finishing all of certain squares, I’d knit quite a few out of sequence – the result was I hadn’t realised how near the end I was….

A couple of evenings of head down knitting and….

TA DA! 😛

All squares knitted and sewn together!

I’m standing on my toes there with my arms full stretch – that’s a whole lot of knitting – no wonder it’s taken 2 months!

Now onto the edging….

….Pick up 333 stitches evenly along one edge….Ghaah! It took eternity, mainly because it was boring and even adverts on TV were more interesting! I bet you’ve all been there huh?

At least it worked out at 37 stitches per square and not some odd fraction! Thank you Debbie Abrahams for that.

I have done one edge and I am now half way through knitting the second (that’s why the blankie is bunched up at the bottom in the picture – it’s squished on a circular needle…)

Wanna see the edging?? Ok then….

The edging is rather well thought out – garter stitch (just knit), then stocking stitch for the beady part then more garter stitch done with just purl rows so you don’t get a colour break. The cast off is in the contrasting colour – I really like the effect that gives. I can’t say it’s fun to knit but I have that “Nearly There” woolly mist spurring me on…

…And Judie has given me permission to knit the next front of the Judie Jacket…

So much knitting – So little time! 🙂