Knitting? For reals?

It's been a while, knitting needles, but I thought I'd show you some love again.

I took the quilt to Canada where it was very well received. I had a fabulous two week holiday in Vancouver and Victoria. I can not wait until I can go back! (I've only been home a week....) While I was away I packed a little knitting something-something to keep me entertained. Turns out I didn't need much more entertaining than the two cities, but travel between towns afforded me a little bit of knitting time and I managed to finish up one little knit.

Pattern: Ishbel by Ysolda.
Yarn & Needles: 2 skeins of Artyarns Ultramerino 4 in 161 (a sort of burgundy semisolid), 4.5mm circulars.
Modifications: I knit the large stockinette and small lace but I ran out of yarn early, possibly because I used slightly bigger needles than called for. So I tinked back to the last pattern row of section D and did the bind off from there.

The yarn turned out to be much more variegated than I thought from the skein leading to a bit more striping than I would have liked but whatevs. Considering I'm more than likely never to wear it like a shawl the variegation shouldn't be so obvious. See?

And if I wear it like this:

... I think most people would be distracted by the fact that I look like an idiot rather than the vagaries of colour.

Ta-Da!

I am inordinately proud of myself. Everyone can expect quilts for Christmas. This is too much fun to stop now!

Onwards ever Onwards

The quilt is progressing despite my sewing machine's best efforts to thwart me. The back was sewn up in a snap and on Tuesday I took a slightly longer than normal lunch to baste the sucker together.

The front....

... and ze back.

And now the bit I was dreading - the quilting. I knew there was reason to be afraid! My machine is NOT LIKING. Not liking AT ALL. I did little test sandwiches that my machine loved, breezed through making perfectly even stitches that were a thing of beauty. But put the actual quilt in there and nuh-uh.

There is something wrong with the tension of the upper thread and it keeps snapping. I checked my machine's manual and it said to lower the tension (duh!) but when I do this even by the merest smidgen.... the stitches on the bottom look like Ass with a capital A. And the thread still snaps anyways. I have called my machine very many names over the past few days, none of which bear repeating and at one point I almost punched it. I didn't, though. I've come to the realisation that it might actually be the thread that is the problem. I bought 1000m of Gutterman 100% polyester as recommended by the quilt-along, but as I've got further into the spool I've noticed that the thread seems to be overly taut.

With time running out to get this sucker finished before I head to Canada (where the intend recipients have moved) on MONDAY, I have no leeway to figure out a solution other than to curse, curse some more, and knot and hide the ends of all those rows of quilting by hand. I really hope this thing makes it through the wash....