I don’t know about you, but I feel the year is just hitting its stride, so April feels like a bit of a new beginning. Then again, I’ve felt like that the first couple of days of every month this year and the feeling hasn’t lasted.

I’ve worked quite hard on my sleeveless cardi and I was pleased to get the back finished yesterday. I’m happy with the length of the back as I wanted all along for this to be a good low-hip-length garment. I do love my shorter cardigans as a rule, but right now I need something that provides some forgiveness. I’m still very much on the fence about whether I have enough of the pink wool; the back has used 165g of the 300g I began with. Now, my plan all along was to make the back at the largest size in the pattern, reducing down to the medium size by the time the armholes start, then to knit the fronts at the medium size because the wide front bands in the magic multi-coloured ball will even it all out. So I’m sure I have plenty of yarn, but my sludge-coloured glasses have me believing I won’t. Sludge-coloured glasses are the opposite of rose-tinted spectacles, by the way.

Before I press on with the cari, though, I’m taking a quick break to finish the Arne and Carlos Nusfjord socks. These have been on the needles quite long enough and, as I’ve just got the foot of the second sock to complete, will be relatively quick to get off the needles and onto my feet. I’ve got a lot of knitting thoughts swirling around in my head and so I don’t want projects lingering when they could easily be finished and moved off my knitting radar.

Uppermost in my mind are some basic knits – a decent twinset for work at the very least. I was going to buy a plain Merino twinset at a high street store, but I was shocked by how thin these are. Fine as a base layer, when you’re cycling for example, but I wouldn’t consider them suitable as normal garments on account of being rather see-through and far too clingy. Of course, these very basic items are the knits that my DK wool experiments will be aimed at, so I’ll need to decide which will be the best everyday wool and then buy enough to make the twinset, then knit the twinset. So long as it’s ready by November I’ll be pretty happy.

I was wearing my lace-panel jumper yesterday and it occurred to me that the lace pattern would make very interesting button bands on a plain cardigan. You could possibly even get away with not making buttonholes as it would be easy to push a button through any of the holes in the lace pattern. An idea to keep on the back-burner for when it is needed.