My orange yarn finally decided what it wanted to be when it grew up.

I bought five skeins of this beautiful silk blend from The Uncommon Thread back in February.  As I wrote in this post, the yarn has a mind of its own and I had to wait for it to come to its own conclusions.  We finally decided on Laelia, a lovely, lacey cardigan designed by Hanna Maciejewska, of Hada Knits.  (Thank you, Laril, for sending me a link to your beautiful Laelia; it definitely helped us decide.)  I’ve had my eye on Hanna’s designs for a while; she’s got a really great style.

This cardigan has a cool construction technique.  You start with a provisional cast on at the back center neck, and knit the lace for a bit; then, you unravel the cast-on, put the live stitches back on the needle, and knit some more lace in the other direction.  Now you have a rectangle with live stitches at both ends.  You pick up along the long edge, and – voilà – you get this:

Isn’t it clever?  I love it!  Then, you start knitting, incorporating raglan increases as you go.  This is where it stands as of this morning:

As you can see, the lace pattern runs down the front edges of the cardigan, while the back and the sleeves are in stockinette stitch. The best part about the design is that there is almost no finishing involved.

Here it is, molded into the actual cardigan shape (as much as is possible given the limitations of the needle length):

In the photo below, I’ve held it up so that you could get an idea of the shaping at the front edge and shoulder, and also so that you can see the lace pattern better.  (Ignore the pesky hose that wanted to be in the photo.)

I love everything about this one so far.  Happy pattern!  Happy yarn!  Happy knitting!