Lace Tunic

On Wednesday evening, I was speaking to Hubby and discovered that he was due home the next day. This was quite a surprise as I thought he wasn't due home for another week. So, he came home on Thursday but now he has gone again: off for a course in Austin. He's due home again on 4 February and then has a week at home before he goes back to Algeria. It's rubbish and so I am probably going to eat junk and mope for the rest of the day - oh, and knit ;-).

On the knitting front, I have finished the Lace Tunic from Debbie Bliss's Summer. I have come across a couple of tricky points with this. Firstly, having blocked the back, front and first sleeve, I realised that there was no way in which the sleeve was going to fit into the arm hole. The problem was that the bind off on the sleeve was waaay to tight. So, I unpicked the cast off and the last row, and re-worked using a superstretch bind off on needles several size larger. It was a bit of a pain then to set the sleeve but it did fit. Secondly, having pressed the neck band, it was poking up in a strange manner. I have fixed this by threading elastic through the edge. So here it is, modelled by Hermione:

The colour is actually a sort of duck-egg blue - which I couldn't capture, even outside. It has to be said that I wouldn't have been taking Hermione into the garden for a photo shoot if Hubby was still here!

Talking of whom, he has just called from the airport, apparently in order to check that I have got the first load of washing out of the machine (I haven't) and then to tell me that I would need to take the water softener tablet out of its wrapper before I put the second load in. How does he think I cope when he's away?!