New job!

I've had a slow autumn applying for lots of jobs and not hearing back from any of them and was actually starting to loose a little faith in myself. 3 weeks ago I finally got an interview, and then a follow-up interview and then I was offered the job! All in less than a week.

I started my new job a week after the first interview and have now done 2 weeks. It is so nice to be back in the rhythm and get a change of scenery every day. 

Unfortunately I don't have as much time to knit anymore, but at least I get to spend my days surrounded by yarn, needles and patterns. I am really enjoying my new job and my nice colleagues.

Mr A gave me a gift for getting a job, which arrived with great timing on the day I started the job. Two skeins of merino/silk 80/20 fingering in Metallurgy from Northbound knitting, absolutely gorgeous! I am thinking a shawl and lots of garter stitch, it is going to be fab!

Espalier

A couple of weeks back I test knitted a shawl pattern for a friend. It's a triangular shawl in fingering weight yarn, knit top-down.
The pattern is reverse stockinette with a leaf pattern that climbs on a trellis. I absolutely love leaf patterns, they're fairly simple to knit and they look amazing. The moment I saw a photo of this shawl it go right on the top of my knitting queue. The pattern however, did not exist yet so I had to wait for a few weeks and then I had the opportunity to test knit the shawl.

Last week Mia Rinde published the final pattern of Espalier and I can tell you it's a gorgeous shawl! I love my shawl and use it a lot.

The pattern is quite straight forward, lace pattern on the right side, relaxing rows back. No tricky techniques, just a little focus on keeping track of where you are in the pattern. I only used stitch markers to mark the centre stitch since the middle sections kept growing and stitch markers to mark the repeats would have to have been moved around a lot. I did one more repeat than the pattern suggested and ended up with a shawl in the perfect size for me. I can wrap it around my shoulders as well as wear it as a scarf. I used up 120 grams of Cascade fingering, most of the test knitters landed somewhere 100-150g of fingering weight.