Swatches

I've finished my exams and am proceeding through the curious Cambridge experience known as May Week. May Week is a deceptive title, as it actually lasts about ten days and is in June. It's basically the week between everyone's exams finishing and having to go home, and is full of lavish May Balls, garden parties, lying in the sun (or rain, as it has been this week) and spending time with friends. We went to see Trinity May Ball's fireworks last night - which were sublime with fireworks, coloured fountains and balls of flame set to music, but also quite obscene in the amount of money they must have spent on it. Tonight we're planning to go and see St John's College's May Ball's (their 500 year anniversary May Ball, no less) fireworks. These fireworks are as close as we can get to the May Balls (tickets are expensive and nigh on impossible to get hold of) so we're hoping that they're going to be good.

Aside from firework watching, on the few spare moments, I've been trying to update and alter my Esmée pattern. Crocheting from the pattern for myself meant that I've identified many areas where I think it needs altering, and thus have decided to start from scratch. I've drawn schematics for each size, and am working from them to try and get the right sizing. But in some ways, this is a bit of a headache - I'm changing the neckline decreases, and this seems to require different instructions for each size and ack! I'm still plagued by doubt that I will get it wrong again, but, I know that lots of people responded positively to the look of the pattern, so I'd love to get the pattern itself right for when I can self-publish it.




While I was revising however, I had put Esmée to the back of my mind, and my crocheting was focussed on the follow-on project for when I finish the Esmée pattern. I don't want to say too much about it now, but it has involved crocheting a lot of swatches.



I'm quite excited about it - but I know that the hard work of getting the written Esmée pattern right has to be done before it. As blogging about 'ack! neckline decreases' is a little boring, I thought that I would just post up some pictures of swatches to amuse the eye. And as the weather finally appears fine, and I and my friends now have lots of free time, I intend to get photographs of Esmée 2 and my Ashfield Cardigan in a lovely location.



And to keep working on those neckline decreases.

Flowers and finishing

On Tuesday, my friend gave me some yellow roses for having completed half my exams. I, similarly, had given her flowers a week before for her own halfway point. The flowers I gave (nearly two weeks ago now), are Sweet Williams. They were 2 for 1, so I took half (the bunches were huge) and have survived and thus are now mixed with the roses in two makeshift vases in my room. I'm not sure if I would have bought yellow roses and pink and red Sweet Williams together, but they do look lovely.





In less than a week, I will have finished my exams and thus all the work for my degree. The prospect is both terrifying and exciting.

In the spirit of finishing things, today I finished my 'Zany' tunic.



It's based upon a design by Robyn Chachula that was in Inside Crochet number 2. I started it in August 2009,  intending to make it as a tunic. I did most of the legwork then, but got distracted and bored and never finished it. My longest UFO - but as the yarn is Rowan Pure Wool DK - soft and luscious against the skin, I knew that it would be a waste never to make anything of it. Unfortunately, all the cut ends required to make the motifs meant that I couldn't unravel it. In April, as I was sorting out my project box to come back to uni, I pulled out the half finished tunic and looked at it, pulled it, and realised that if I unwound some of the motifs and rearranged them, then I could make a rectangular throw. I'm not really an afghan/blanket making person - but as this project was basically already done, I guessed that it wouldn't take me too long to rearrange the sleeve motifs into a rectangle. Except that I got distracted by Esmée 2 and the Ashfield Cardigan, and didn't actually get round to doing this until today.



It only took about two hours - one for reattaching the motifs, and another for sewing in all the ends that you can see in the first picture. It is now blocking on my bedroom floor - on the space between my bed and the chest of drawers. But I thought that I would post about it now, while I have the inclination and enthusiasm. Anyway, it's a project that I started after the summer of my first year of university, and have finished in the third and final year. Hooray for finishing!