Not Nearly Finished! And a Trip to Leuven

What did I say last time about the husband's sweater being nearly finished? Well, I am still working on it today, and have been for the last two weeks, including a long Eurostar/East Coast train journey at the weekend! Lengthening and reknitting part of the body took time, as did working out what to do with the neckline. But both problems have been solved, he tried on the almost-complete project earlier, and bar a few more rows on the bottom rib, weaving in ends and steam pressing, it is done - hallelujah, it has taken ages to do the last bits of finishing as I wanted to get them right. I cut, picked up and reknit the bottom in the end, and ripped out the neckline I had done and reknit that too. All more timeconsuming (and nervewracking at times), but I think the finished article will look better because of it. Anyway, more on that when it's done and I have a picture up!

This weekend just gone saw us travel to Brussels to many visit old friends - but we took an afternoon out to tour the beautiful town of Leuven - and yes I found some yarn!



I visited Twolwinkeltje, Parijsstr 25, and was impressed with its range of mainly continental yarns (Katia, Gedifra, Schachenmeyer Nomotta etc), although with a few other luxury makes (Rowan, Isegar, Noro, Arucania) thrown in. I bought some sock yarn in spring green, (socks or a scarf perhaps) and some brightly coloured Katia acrylic for a striped scarf. Twolwinkeltje stocks quilting supplies too, and also has some great classes and workshops - Kaffe Fassett is doing a book signing on July 4.

There were a few other places to pick up yarn in Leuven - I passed a few stores which sold other things (sometimes very random things that seemed to have no relationship to yarn!) but also had yarn in the windows, but we were on a mission for afternoon tea by that stage, after a long walk around the university and Beguine district, so I windowshopped in passing only.

Ah, tonight I will be done with the husband's sweater and can feel the need for some instant gratification coming on! I'm going to post this now as it's been a while between postings, but stay tuned as I will add more pics as well.

On Finishing

The husband's 1940s inpsired sweater is almost finished. I have spent most of today sewing in the sleeves, and sewing up the sleeve seams, pressing it, and knitting and sewing in the neckband. But - finishing can be a pernickity task, and so it is with this sweater.

I stretched the neckband too tight while sewing up the first half - so it was kind of lopsided. I did such a good job sewing it that try as I might it was a very difficult job unpicking it! So I have compromised and think I might have found a solution - laying one end over the other where the "v" meets, almost like a shawl collar (but not quite). It seems to work, but I'm still thinking it over.

Also the body length is a bit too short for him (he is sooo tall! With a long torso!), so I am picking up to knit a few extra inches of rib along the cast on edge. I know this will cause the rib to be off-set. I have a few ideas to hide that - let's see if they work! So most of this evening has been spend fiddling with a sweater that by rights should be finished by now.

Time to return to top down knitting - it never causes me these problems!