Time to put on my *Shameface* and confess my slow progress with my Autumn Rose Sweater 😳

Can you remember way back to the end of December? I blogged about Autumn Rose here -> Something to Test My Skills 

She’s this beautiful fairisle sweater

The pattern picture from the book

I was going great guns – quickly whizzing up the body and starting the waste stitches in preparation for steeking to create the neckline.

the body, up to the armholes…

Hmmm. a bit worried how that bottom hem is curling up too…

My experience says this will be a problem but I am considering superglue as a solution… (joking!)

Here’s a close up to the neck/steekable bit. This is all new territory for me so quite exciting! 🙂

You want me to CUT my knitting – are you MAD??!!!

Then I got distracted – I was so enjoying the fairisle, I made the Kitten Mittens because they were utterly irresistible…

…then a scarf for a collegue at work…

…which made Ben jealous so I had to make him socks AND a jumper…

…then I got carried away making a hat and cowl for me…

….and cat toys….

…..and a green and a grey shawl….

And then I’ve come back to Autumn Rose and hit a wall 🙁

It’s the sleeves.

I found with the Kitten Mittens that I didn’t like small circumference fairisle on magic loop so I’m doing the sleeves on 4 needles – all good so far.

Then I stupidly misread the pattern and did the corrugated rib at the cuff in 2 colours of red like the lower edge rather than one colour – OK that doesn’t matter so long at they are the same. (And it seems from Ravelry that quite a few people have done that too!)

The real problem is that there are so few stitches and you change both yarns every three rows. I have just got the row of pattern in my head and you are on to the next row of the pattern – and this takes some remembering if you don’t want to squint at the pattern every few stitches! And the constant changing of the colours is a real pain in the butt – I guess I’m making it harder for myself  as I’m weaving in the new colour a few stitches before I need it and then weaving in the tail of the finished yarns – saving on darning in later but it’s a lot of fiddle-faddle 🙁

And I can’t even  take it on the train because I need to lug around 12 balls of yarn with me 🙁

Boo Hoo! – Woe is me! 😥

So where have I struggled to so far? I’ve done one sleeve to the point at which you join it to the main body

One down, one to go…

And the second sleeve, nearly to the top of that first medallion…

Slogging through…

I’m forcing myself to do a little here and there but this really isn’t the thing to tackle after a long day at work. I’m  really looking forward to when I join the sleeves to the body and start knitting the entire yoke on one piece .

So there you are -I’m struggling. Just when I had you all fooled into  thinking I find it all so effortless!