Boho Blocks Cardigan

This cardigan has been on my hook for many weeks, since October/November last year when we went to visit Ali and I browsed her patterns. This design caught my eye and I had just taken delivery of the main yarn I used for my version. It is some more gorgeous yarn from Hong Kong, I bought it from ebay and got a bit worried because communication was a bit tricky and it felt like I was never going to get this yarn. However, the wait was well worth it, I got a friend of mine to translate the yarn content label for me and he said it is wool/silk/mohair which is what I had worked it out to be. The description of the yarn was
' Total Net 500g, 6 skeins of 100% pure wool pashm,soft touched!!
so you can see what a lucky dip this order was going to be, the price is amazing though and the quality outstanding. The weight is about a fingering/4 ply yarn, bordering on a sport weight and I have enough left to make some socks with it too!
I thought you might like to see the close up detail of the third yarn I used, now the content of the yarn is a bit iffy but I think it's some sort of viscose yarn, it sort of tightened up when I steamed it but then relaxed again as it cooled. The tiny beads run throughout the yarn and I noticed as I worked with it that the beads tended to be mostly on the reverse side of the squares so these squares were used on the reverse side for maximum effect. It's another yarn from ebay but this time it's from Turkey. The gorgeous green yarn is of course Rowan, kid silk haze. Oh and the pattern is in the Interweave Crochet Fall Magazine where you will find a child's version to download. The design was a joy to make, I crocheted squares all over the place, one particular place was when we went to York, I think I left a couple of the squares in the car park there! I've got one of the dark squares left over too!

I have started to make some pretty socks using the Swirling Lace Anklet pattern...now this pattern caused me many a headache. I honestly started to make this pattern 4 times!! There are two charts to work from and I found it most confusing, I followed the chart and yet time and time again my knitting did NOT look like the pretty socks in the picture so I frogged them over and over again until I had a brainwave, I wasn't going to shift the pattern to the left 5 times and then the right 5 times as the diagram suggested. I simply reapeated the same 2 rows five times and then the next two rows 5 times and it worked perfectly, hence I was up VERY late last night until I got the pattern right!

This yarn was bought from Hong Kong, it's called summer socks and from what I can make out it's mostly cotton. You get 4 darling little 125g cones of single ply yarn and I am using 3 strands here which gives a lovely, round fingering weight so I guess 4 strands would give you a sport weight. I will definitely be ordering from this seller again, I will know to wait about 9 weeks for the delivery though and I'll try not to panic whilst I am waiting.

Barry is working away again and isn't back til tomorrow evening so Maisie and I are off to do some girlie shopping in Cambridge just as soon as I can get her out of bed!