A New Project

Last week I knitted a child's hat and slipover, both in an Aran pattern. I decided not to photo them and put them on the blog as I feel you have probably seen enough of my attempt to knit something for every child in the land. However, this exercise did awaken my interest in Aran knitting. I knitted quite a few Aran sweaters etc in the days before I had children. Once they arrived I lost the ability (and will) to count carefully due to extreme tiredness. Eventually, of course, they grew up a bit and although the tiredness wasn't such a problem, exasperation took its place. Anyway, as I was saying, my interest in Aran was awakened and I was lucky enough to buy this on e-bay.

To be honest, I was a tiny bit disappointed with the book as I thought the patterns were a little dated. However, Joe's friend has been staying with us and so I thought he might be interested (well, I knew he wouldn't be really, but I desperately wanted to show someone and he is very polite). It turned out that he was pretty interested and thought the patterns were fantastic and 'retro'. I felt tremendously pleased with myself for being such a trendsetter and promised to knit him a jumper soon.
In the meantime I thought that the Aran cardigan pattern would be just the thing for my father, possibly for Christmas. So, I made a start, using the most fabulous natural aran (100% bluefaced aran) that we have in the handdyeing section of the shop.
Here is a photo of progress so far.

Not bad. I haven't decided when to show you a picture of the actual pattern, possibly when I've done a bit more.