Cirkeltroje Progress & Bohus

Well, having found the best possible needles without having to order from the US, I continued knitting the Cirkeltroje and have now finished the main part and just have the sleeves to complete. Here it is, just off the needles and, obviously, unblocked - a big flower shaped piece of knitting with slits in for the sleeves to fit into!


I think I might take up Piglottie's suggestion (thanks, Piglottie!) and try some Crystal Palace Bamboo needles which I think I will have to get from the US or the other option is the Lantern Moon Destiny needles which can be got in the UK but in limited sizes and lengths. In the end, of all the easily obtainable possibilities here in the UK, and although I much prefer wooden needles generally, good old Prym, surprisingly, won hands down over Addi, Clover, etc, (a) because the wooden Addi and Clover haven't got joins that are smooth enough for fine yarn and (b) because all the metal ones I tried other than the Prym (including the Knitpicks Options) were unsuitable due to this particular shade of KSH not showing up enough against the colour of the needles. Perhaps, this explains why Sharon Miller of Heirloom Knitting recommends Prym for lace knitting.

For various reasons, I've decided to get myself a decent photo editing package such as Photoshop. At the moment, all I have is MS Photo Editor which I find very limiting. Some knitted items and some colours are really difficult to photograph and I need to either get to know my camera better or invest in a more sophisticated photo editing package. I may do a bit of both. I'd like to be able to play about with backgrounds more and be able to tweak colours until they more truly represent how they are in reality. Another useful idea, I thought, might be to buy some non-crease material for background. For instance, in the photo of the Cirkeltroje above, I was reduced to using sheets of A3 white paper as I didn't have a piece of material big enough in white! I did round the edges with MS Photo Editor to get rid of some of the paper joins but some lines are left which spoils the effect of the photo I think. I wish I had the time to study photography more because I think I'd find it really interesting. I keep finding myself quickly scanning through my camera instruction book when things don't come out right and reading about how one can adjust different settings such as white balance, etc, yet I just seem to always muddle through on automatic for the sake of quickness.

In the past few weeks, nice things have been arriving through my letterbox including the Large Lace Collar Jacket Bohus Kit from Solsilke. Of course, despite its name, it isn't actually lace. The photo on the front of the kit, I think, doesn't really do it justice but if you go to this page and scroll about three quarters of the way down, you'll see just how lovely this design really is.


I have my skinny toothpick needles all ready to start and am looking forward to knitting a piece of history.

I've also had a yen to knit some traditional mittens for some time and am hoping I can find some suitable candidates from this book . . .


. . . or Selbuvotter which I have on order.

Other bright and shiny things which are calling to me include Norah Gaughan's Russian Coat. Any Norah Gaughan fans who haven't yet got Vogue Knitting Holiday might do well to make sure they don't miss out as her Russian Coat featured in there is magnificent! Then there's the Secret of Chrysopolis. After having done MS3, I did sign up to a couple more secret stole lists including the SofC but decided other projects tempted me more until I saw a SofC stole on Ravelry and that was me hooked! No will power - that's my problem!