Knitting Fridays

I couldn't leave it any longer... it was time for me to knit my first tension square!  The original needle size of 4.5mm was obviously far too big, so I opted for 4mm as this is a pretty standard size.  I cast on 22 stitches as instructed and started knitting... but I got board... I was meant to knit 30 rows in order to try and achieve a 10cm x 10cm square.  I got to 10 rows, measured, tripled and realised that this square was still going to be too big, not much but nearer 11 to 12cm.  So I tried again.  This time with 3.75cm needles and I like the results, the stitches were neater, tighter, looked more professional.  It was slightly under 10cm but not by much.  I liked what I saw.

The smaller needles are going to make the jumper look brilliant.  But that does mean its going to take longer to knit.  Bit worried about that as I had estimated on the original jumper that it would be finished by Christmas.  Now I'm not so sure.  The pattern is in European sizes and I have opted for size 92 and Little Owl is still wearing most of her clothes that are sized 86 and only just growing into those that are 92.  However, it does mean the race is on!

The bottom of the jumper has a frill which means you have to knit an awful lot of stiches - 192 in fact!  It has taken me about 25 minutes to knit each row and there were 10 rows before it reduced to 78 stitches.

Having completed the frill, I could compare the two sets of knitting properly.  I struggled to get the focus right on the camera but hopefully you can see that the bottom set of knitting is might tighter.  This is the last photo I could take like this as it was finally time to unravel my original knitting as I needed the orange wool.  It felt ok doing it now I had started the new jumper, but I hadn't been able to bring myself to do it before!