I am a Lady............... a February Lady!

Right I am not quite sure how this escalated into the Marathon knitting event of the last week but maybe I could start to unravel the situation a little and throw some light on it.

I have posted recently about becoming a bit Virral with my knitting and there is now even a viral knits group on ravelry where all us viral knitters meet and continue to either infect one another or offer miracle cures or threats of immunisation.

I think it was Laura (Indieknits) that first pointed out the February Lady Sweater to me in one of her Ravtastic posts. She had purchased some lovely tweed yarn at a very reasonable price to make it so I thought I would have a little look at this pattern a number of people were raving about.

It was great and fulfilled one of my desires to have a go at knitting a top down sweater having been inspired by Sally of Missflipknits, podcasters for procrastinating knitters. Based on a baby jacket by the legendary Elizabeth Zimmerman this was one to add to my queque. Pattern downloaded, added to ravelry queue and no yarn yet purchased.

Then I forgot about it for a couple of weeks until I bought this...





..... and remembered I had this............



Actually when I say rememered I had this it is really 20 balls of this. Rooster almerino in Grape, 25grm balls that spit splice a dream.

So then I started to add up in my head. What about this?



PERFECT!

That would be perfect apart from the fact that it was now Thursday and I wanted to wear the top to Hard Rock Calling in Hyde Park on the 30th June - 9 days away. Could I get it knitted in time? Well I am known for my speedy knitting but there were a few other pressing items on the agenda that week. I had to finish my other Mosiac sock for sockclub, I had my class reports to finish, two reports for govenors to complete and a marketing stall for school to put together for the infant school fair.

I was willing to give it a go so I cast on.



In my haste I made a little button hole phopar but this will be a design feature. All was otherwise progressing well. I even managed to get the socks finished, reports written and my reports for govenors prepared. I still had a fair bit of the sweater to go but I had now set aside Thursday and Friday night to really crack on. I was already pushing on down the back so by Friday I was starting to pick up and knit down the first sleeve. I finally finished the first sleeve on Saturday afternoon and hadn't quite finished the back because I wanted to make sure I didn't run out of yarn. Dr Who and the second sleeve was picked up I was now really in with a chance I thought.

Then another spanner in the works, around 10.45pm, turning out time from the Bonjovi concert disaster struck the house. Everywhere we looked were small pools of blood. It was one of the cats! But which one and what had it done to create such a mess in everyroom? We couldn't hear any sounds which I have to say panicked us even more. Finally we saw Lola with blood all down her leg and unable to put her hind leg down. Luckily she allowed us to pick her up. Anyway cutting the story short, she was fine and DH whisked her off to the emergency vet over in Northolt while I carried on knitting and waited for his parents to arrive back (they were staying with us for the night). Lola came back with a stitch, she had managed to puncture a vein in her leg. I still hadn't finished the sweater.

Having gone to bed late I had to get up early to finish off. The upshot being as we were pulling the car up in Holland Park to park the car to get the tube to Hyde Park I was still casting off the last row of the back of the seater but I did wear it to Hard Rock Calling but that was a close one in the end even for me! Actually I should have just taken it with me unfinished as I would have had two hours knitting time waiting for it to start.

So here is the evidence that
1) I completed it
2) I really did where it to Hyde Park
3) Isn't 100% finished as I have yet to add buttons and some ribbon



These photos were taken on my lap while I was waiting for everything to kick off. Hence the hint of grass here and there!











Notice my jumper neatly folded despite all the debris around it.