Second Year of Projects Week 5

Lots of progress to report this week! First off I finished my Annikki's hat

And I'm pleased to say it fits, both with my hair down and up, so it'll be really useful for winter when I'm on placement (or even now, since it started hailing this afternoon...)

This hat had a lot of new techniques for me, including the provisional cast on, grafting in Kitchener stitch with cables, and using magic loop to knit it. I was dreading the grafting, as I hate Kitchener stitch anyway, until I came across this incredible way of doing it, which makes it so easy and painless, and I was able to graft it in about  5 minutes flat: How to do Kitchener Stitch with out Kitchener(ing). And I think it came out really well.

The only way you can tell that it's grafted there is the colour change in the semi-solid yarn, and the fact that I didn't think about how grafting would add in an extra row, so the last row of the repeat is there twice. It's not noticeable unless you look for it though, so I decided I didn't care.

Since I had a couple of days 'til the Ravellenic Games, I decided to cast on my Ghostie socks

I knitted the ribbing on 2.75mm needles, but when I got to the ghostie part, I realised my gauge was off. I tried 2.5 (due to not realising which way I needed to go), and 3.0 needles with no success, and eventually got gauge on 3.25mm. The ghosties are coming out perfectly now, but the socks are WAY too big, so I'm not sure what to do with them. They've gone into time out of the Ravellenic Games, but any advice about what to do with them would be great!

I cast on for my Ravellenic Games project on Saturday, as I was in the Children's Emergency Department on Friday over the opening ceremony.

It's the Top Down Raglan Sweater Generator and I cast on an extra 40 stitches and omitted the first 5 increase rows to give it a lower neckline. I've only had to frog once, right at the start, since I realised that 2x2 rib doesn't work with 118 stitches, and I needed 120. It's going well, and fingers crossed I'll get it finished!