I now have a Ravelry pattern shop! You do need to be a Ravelry member at the moment to access this, although you can buy patterns using the direct links in the blog even if you aren’t a member. I have become totally addicted to the download statistics of the shop, and not just because it is in a shockingly bright shade of orange and green 🙂

Talking of Ravelry, Sunday was the meet-up of the Surrey and Hampshire Ravelry group in Guildford. There were 6 of us altogether and we had a lovely time. There was much knitting, chatting, and admiring of projects, and a moderate amount of drinking, although I am still not convinced by the carrot and apple juice I had. It was an interesting idea but tasted rather of soil and vegetation, a little too organic for me 🙂 It was a fantastic shade of bright orange though so that nearly made up for the taste.

Apologies that the photo is a bit blurry, I think it was a little dark for my camera.

One near-catastrophe of the meeting though was that I ran out of knitting after only 2 hours. Usually I am the person who has at least 2 back-up projects where-ever I go just in case of such eventualities, but on Sunday I looked at my sleeve and thought there was no way I would ever finish the other half of the sleeve cap. What I had failed to realise was that due to the inherent shape of a set-in sleeve, if you knit from the elbow up to the shoulder then the rows will get shorter, so the second half of the sleeve cap (this is half the number of rows, not half the area 🙂 ) will be considerably quicker than the first half. If I had a brain, I could possibly be dangerous. Luckily I was saved from my own stupidity by Melanie. She had spent the previous couple of days sorting her stash, and had catalogued it beautifully in a notebook. So I spent a very happy hour examining it all, and drooling over her new Jordana Paige bag (very nice, lots of good pockets, I may have to drop some birthday hints to the other half).

It was great to see other people’s knitting – I am so nosy, and I think it was the first time I have been recognised by the jumper I was wearing 🙂 Good fun all round, we will have to have another one soon.

A result of all this gadding about to knitting groups at the weekend is that I have finished the knitting part of both sleeves of the Teal Top. I have sewn in one of the sleeves, and had a quick try-on. It fits well, which is a relief! I still have the neckline to pick up and knit, but I think I will do a bit more of the sewing up first.