Decided to knit with 2 strands together - black and a self striping yarn..did a swatch and it looked reallt nice.

24/07/22
Started pattern; really struggled with the neckband! The instructions are quite hard to follow, and I struggled with knitting one half then picking up stitches on the cast on edge to knit the other half. Spent a long time trying to work out the correct way round to do it.

26/07/22
Frogged the project after finishing the neck band as I’d realised I’d picked stitches up on the incorrect side so that the slipped stitches didn’t match up. Started all over again. Bonus points this meant my self striping yarn flowed properly as I was able to start from the end of the previous yarn, so when I picked up the middle stitches on the neckband the colours flowed correctly.

August 2022

Really struggling with planning the increases and which row they occur on. I’m not getting on with this pattern st all! There’s lots of text yet still it seems vague and the lack of row numbers means I’m struggling to know if my planned increases are on the right rows.

08/09/22

On Row 60 now and reached the hard slog..12 rows to go before I split the body and sleeves.