Did I finish Ombre for Christmas?? I’m sorry to confess… No.

I got overwhelmed by the usual baking, turkey stuffing, shopping, eating, entertaining “fest” that is Christmas. I decided I was putting myself under WAY too much pressure.

I try very hard to keep knitting as my pleasure and indulgence. Forcing myself to knit to a deadline was destroying that indulgent vibe so I let the “wear it on Christmas day” aspirations go and concentrated on the Crimble chores at hand….

With hindsight, it was the right thing to do… The fabulous blouse I had planned to wear with Ombre is the wrong shade of blue and looked horrid! I’m not sure if the knitting Gods are on my side or not?? 🙄

Want to see the finished article?? Want to see a picture that shows the garment much more clearly than the one in the Rowan mag? (Not hard huh?)

So there she is – all Ziggy and Zaggy. A little different for me to wear but I like it for that.

I proudly modelled Ombre for a Knitterly friend of mine who immediately blurted out,

“Oh, It’s a boob holder!”…she has a point – it is rather cropped! 😯

I did make a change to the yarn used for the rib. The originally pattern used Rowan Tapestry and Rowan Wool Cotton. The variegated Tapestry was used for the rib and the edging. The Louisa Harding Impressions that I subbed for Tapestry is much fuzzier and floppier. It would have been a disaster as the rib, which in my view, needed to be quite crisp to pull the garment together. I rushed out and bought another ball of the plain blue Wool Silk to finish it. I think it worked.

The buttons are two I’ve had in my button box for years…they jumped out and wanted to be used…I thought they picked up the angular nature of the ripple stitch quite well.

The centre back seam pressed up ok. My fears and concerns about having a lumpy spine were unfounded…

Here’s a back view so you can judge for yourself…

One thing I did find hard work with this pattern was the picking up of the stitches for the rib and the edging. Of all thing Knitterly, I probably dislike picking up stitches the most. I dislike it much more than most knitters’ nemesis of sewing up!! It worked out that I was picking up every single stitch I had knitted. Unusual as you normally only pick up about 80% of the stitches. I had a hard time finding enough stitches to be able to pick up! Of course, using a fuzzy yarn made the situation even harder!!

So what to knit next?…..

…..will it be something from the fabulous Christmas present book I received??? 😉