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.