I Met Some Bloggers!

I met some more Wellington bloggers last weekend! 
We had a lot of fun...
There was fabric browsing, surprising pattern finds in an unassuming shop, and a swap!  Oh and of course plenty of nattering.

One of my favourite pics:
Us getting excited over the discovery of boxes of patterns!

Picture taken by Nikki

I grabbed this from the second hand store:

I love it! 

And we had a fabric and pattern swap- I got some lovely floral cotton!

and I also got a vintage pattern- I'm thinking I'll have to grade it up even though it's my bust size (never done that before, eep!).  But oh the fabric possibilites!

"Simple to make"  Sure, sure...

They were all wearing lovely garments they'd made.  Impressive stuff, no?  I wore my wool circle skirt.  I'd better get cracking on a dress for the next meet-up- Oh and there will be a next meet-up!

Another photo courtesy of Nikki's camera!

The bloggers were:

Joy from a charm of magpies

Maryanne from Sent from my iRon and also of Made on Marion

Nikki from Nikki's Stitches

Juliet from The crazy gypsy chronicles

Kat from Modern vintage cupcakes

Mel from the Curious Kiwi

You can check out more pictures and better write-ups on the meet-up on Nikki's and Mel's blogs :)
And special mention to poor Emily of Calico Stretch who was too sick to make it.  Get well soon!

Knitting Progress- Nearly there?

As I mentioned a while back, I'm working on the Milena cardigan.
Progress has been intensely slow- I feel like I've re-knitted most parts of it about 3 times!
Seriously though.  This pattern has been an utter challenge!

But I've made progress:

Hastily taken snap complete with morning hair

I have calculated and re-calculated, and tried it on a bunch of times.
I've had to add length in the shoulders because the armholes were too tight.  Then I had to figure out how many stitches to pick up for the neckline.  Ugh, I did it about 5 times.

I knitted the first button band twice.  I also spent forever trying to figure out which buttonholes to make and in which size.  The pattern has pretty much no instruction on it.. at all!
Also, I feel like there should be another button hole in the neckline ribbing.  It looks like it sits fine in the pattern photo, but mine gapes.  I wonder if I should add a snap (might be easier than a buttonhole)?
I think I'm going to rip back the neckline ribbing a bit and make it less tall so that will help the gaping anyway.

Ooh but guess what, though- I learned how to do short rows!  Fancy!  I learned from watching the free Craftsy course.  There are short rows in the neckline ribbing so it's taller in the front than the back.  There are also short rows in the sleeves, but I haven't gotten to them yet!

But.. I'm almost there... I think.  So exciting!  Although... I don't think I can knit the sleeves in the round with my 60cm (24") circulars.  I might have to go shopping... experts, what do I need here?

So guys, any advice?  My advice to you is not to make this cardigan unless you want to think a lot (or if you're plenty experienced)!!  Although if you had access to my copious notes you might fare a little better ;)

p.s here are my buttons..  I'm very happy with them!