Blocking

So several months ago, I knit up Kim Hargreaves' "Precious" from her first book, the "Heartfelt" collection. (Quite a few months ago - January!!)
It languished for a little while, because I wanted a wide black taffeta ribbon for the front, and haven't been able to find one anywhere. So in the end I had to settle for a single sided satin ribbon. Nice, but not really what I was after.

But I'm happy with the cardi!

Specs:
Pattern:"Precious" by Kim Hargreaves from the "Heartfelt" book
Yarn: Rowan KidSilk Night in "Starry Night" (Black), bought from The Wool Inn in Penrith
Needles: Knitpicks Nickel fixed circs in 2.75mm and 3.00mm
Beads: 8/0 black seed beads

Mods: The cardi was supposed to have beads all over, but seeing as the KidSilk Night has the sparkly silver thread through it, I opted out of that, and just put the beads on the edgings. As you can see though, it was kind of a wasted effort, because you can hardly see the beads anyway. Silver probably would have been better, although it wouldn't have been very subtle!

That was the only mod I made. I wish I hadn't waited so long to sew that ribbon on though, because it's too cold now to wear it, and it's going to sit, unappreciated for months now. Although Monday (when we took the pictures) was a beautiful sunny day - the kind of days I'd like to have all winter!

In other news, we had a big knitting weekend last weekend! On Saturday I did a presentation on blocking at the June meeting of the Inner City group of the Knitter's Guild of NSW. Scary! I think it went over okay in the end though. I was really nervous to start with, but it's good to do that sort of thing among friends! If you're interested, I've posted the printout of the tutorial over in the sidebar under "Blocking Instructions"->
(many thanks to the Yarn Harlot, who introduced me to string blocking way back when)

Earlier in the week though, I was preparing to block the shawl so I'd have pictures for the instructions. I put the shawl in to soak, then laid out the white fabric so I'd have some contrast in the background. When I came down the hall a bit later to drain off the shawl, I found someone checking out the preparations.

Caught! She knows very well she isn't supposed to be in the bedrooms, let alone up on the bed. In fact, once she realised that she'd been caught, she moved faster than I've ever seen her move!