Category Archives: Finished Projects

Why I Knit

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Sometimes it all comes together just right.  The magical combination of pattern and yarn.  A fabulous fit.  This is why I knit.10-IMG_9778

The only thing better than creating a beautiful knit garment is wearing one.  This is my daughter Leah, modelling the cardigan I knit for her.  Anyone who knows Leah, would know that this sweater just screams LEAH.  It is made for her (both literally and figuratively).

Regular readers will know that I was racing to finish this before Leah flew off to Canada for her second year at university.  I had a marathon finishing session, knitting the button bands in the middle of the night.  I dropped it into the wash basin just 48 hours before her plane left, worrying all along that it wouldn’t dry in time (or worse, that we wouldn’t be able to photograph it before she left).  Here is a very exhausted but happy mom:

The cardigan was designed by Sandi Rosner for the Twist Collective.  It is called Peloponnese.  I knew the instant I saw it that I would knit it for Leah.  Astonishingly, although the pattern was released over a year ago, there is only one other project up on Ravelry.  Knitters, you are truly missing out here!  Knit this – you won’t be sorry.

The yarn is Madelinetosh Tosh DK in Composition Book Grey and Candlewick.  This won’t be my last project with either colour; the Candlewick especially.  It is absolutely radiant – it glows in the sunshine and looks like burnished gold in low light.

I made a number of modifications from the pattern, which I will outline here.  Those of you who are only interested in the pretty, and not in the boring technical details (surely, no one falls into that category!), could easily skim through the next few paragraphs.  Here is the pattern photo for comparison’s sake.

Modifications:

1. Long sleeves.  I think a long-sleeved cardigan is more useful.  I was knitting the second size, so I cast on the sleeves as if for the first size (because the wrist is narrower than the forearm) and then increased at 2″, 4″, 6″ and 8″ and then every inch until the desired 72 stitches, and then continued until the sleeve length was right.  (This is always a bit tricky with a yoked sweater; I made Leah try it on so many times and measured it ad nauseum.  In the end, it was perfect.)

2. The pattern calls for the mosaic portions of the cardigan (around the yoke) to be knit with a larger needle than the stockinette portions.  I used a US number 5 needle for everything – all of the body, the edgings and the yoke.  I liked the way it looked.  Also, I have knit many times using mosaic pattern stitches and knew that my stitches would not be unduly pulled in – I am pretty good at keeping an even tension in mosaic.

3. Alterations to the yoke.  You can see in the pattern photo that there are six rings of mosaics in the yoke (in addition to the edging, which is in garter stitch).  If you look carefully, you can see that this is actually three repeats of the pattern.  Sandi Rosner has written a beautiful pattern, and the way the yoke is designed is brilliant.  I especially like the way the decreases are worked into the yoke.  However, I encountered some fit problems here and had to improvise on the pattern.

The pattern calls for a decrease row after each pattern repeat.  After I had worked five rows of mosaics (thus two and a half pattern repeats and two yoke decrease rows), I had Leah try it on and realized that (1) the cardigan was stretched too tightly around her shoulders, and (2) the yoke would not be long enough if I followed the pattern exactly.  Before continuing, I would like to stress two points.  First, this is by no means a problem with the pattern.  Recall point 2 above – I did not go up a needle size when I began the mosaic portion – thus it is not surprising that I had a few fit issues.  Second, and more important, is that ALL patterns are written to standard sizes.  The whole point of hand-knitting a garment is to knit it to fit.  You should never just knit blindly to the pattern measurement.  If the pattern says to knit the sleeves to 19″ for a size 38, and you are a size 38 but have extra long arms, it would be crazy to knit the sleeves to fit the pattern rather than to fit your body.

To fix this, I ripped back to before the second yoke decreases and knit another half-repeat before decreasing.  Thus, Leah’s sweater has 7 rows of mosaic (3.5 repeats) with yoke decreases after the second, fifth and seventh rows of mosaics.  This means that the decreases are made in the contrast colour (the Candlewick) the second time.

4. The buttonbands.  Unblocked, the fit on this cardigan was tight.  I was worried about getting a good fit, but didn’t want to do a hard block on the pattern.  I decided instead to add a bit more give by adding 4 rows of garter stich in the main colour to the beginning of the button bands.  This adds two garter ridges in grey between the yoke pattern and the buttonband edging.  This gave me just enough extra “give” so that the fit is perfect.  And, I think it looks fabulous.  I really like the effect; I think it makes the yoke pattern “pop” even better.

We really went right to the wire with this project.  It was 3pm on Saturday by the time I finished blocking it; Leah and I then hopped in the car and raced out to find buttons.  I had wanted to find yellow buttons, but they weren’t to be had.  Leah insisted these small grey metal ones would be just right, and she nailed it.

The weather has been pretty miserable this Bank Holiday weekend, but the rain held off just enough that I was able to unpin the cardigan and put it outside for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, enough to ensure the back was dry.  (You can see I was also busy washing several of Leah’s other hand knitted garments – and one of Emma’s as well; aren’t my girls lucky?)

Then, I had just enough time to weave in some ends and sew on 11 buttons (yes, 11 buttons!) before the light failed.  The weather cooperated and a photo-shoot ensued:

This pattern is beautifully written and detailed.  The cardigan looks so intricate and complicated but is quite simple to knit (the mosaic pattern means that you never knit with more than one colour on any row).  I love all of the little details that make the pattern special; for example, the edging done in the mosaic pattern but in garter stitch instead of stockinette.  This looks so classy!

And this, Dear Readers, is why I knit!

 

How to become shapely in 23 days

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How to become shapely in 23 days?  First, you pick up some knitting neeedles.  Then you add an amazing optical illusion of a knitting pattern, designed to showcase curves; a pattern so ingenious it does for the waistline what hours of crunches cannot acheive.

I have had less time to devote to blogging lately, but that doesn’t mean my hands have been idle.  In fact, I have just finished knitting a sweater that took only 23 days from start to finish.  (And this includes at least a week of no knitting at all while I prepared for a B-school presentation.)  This is the fastest I have been able to turn out a project in some time. The pattern is the #11 Hourglass Top designed by Theresa Schabes for Noro Knitting Magazine, Spring 2013.  It has a very interesting construction, which accentuates the waist, resulting in an hourglass silhouette.

The sweater is knit in two quick pieces and then seamed together.  It is an especially effective construction technique for Noro yarn, which is known for its long colour sequences.  At the waist, the stitch count for the back (which wraps around the front of the sweater) is three times that of the front (approximately 150 stitches for the back and 50 stitches for the front).  This means that the stripes of any one colour will be deeper on the narrower knitted parts, and shallower on the wider knitted parts, which results in the mis-match of colour sequences along the seams.  I don’t think a monotoned yarn, or a yarn with shorter colour changes, would be as affective as the Noro in this design.

This is not only an extremely quick and easy knit, but is also a very cheap one.  I used 3 skeins of Noro Silk Garden Sock yarn for this sweater.  This makes it about the equivalent cost of two cinema tickets.  This is definitely a win-win project.

I do think the pattern runs a bit big.  I intended to add a lot of negative ease into the pattern, as I wanted to accentuate the waist.  To do this, I tailored a size between the small and medium, casting on 112 stitches and then for the most part following the directions for the second size with respect to increases and decreases.  The finished product actually has about zero ease.  In fact, when it’s not on the body it appears to have very little waist shaping at all.

Here lies the genious of the pattern.  It creates a very effective optical illusion:  it looks extremely shapely without being the least bit snug or binding.  Notice the rolling at the bottom of the sweater; this was even more problematic with the purled edging called for in the pattern.  I ripped out the waist and armhole edgings and redid them in ribbing.  This mostly solved the rolling problem, particularly on the armholes.  The bottom still rolls up when the sweater is off, but behaves itself when its being worn.

So, who needs dieting when you can knit?  Next time you think of doing crunches, pull out your knitting needles instead!

My thanks to Emma who took the photos.  Emma is home (yeah!) but only for the week (boo!).

I seem to be stuck in a purple theme

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I finished knitting my Carpino sweater weeks ago.  After doing all of the finishing and trying it on, I decided it was too short, so I ripped out the ribbing, and re-knit it a few inches longer.  With my busy schedule, that took a while.  Then, it took an entire week to get some photos of it.  So, here, a little delayed but better late than never, is the finished project:

This is my first time knitting with Brooklyn Tweed Loft.  I must say the yarn is not what I expected.  The knitted fabric is very fleece-like; it really has the feel of a sweatshirt.  I am not sure what I think about this – after all, if you wanted to wear a sweatshirt then why knit a sweater?  On the other hand, I’ve only been wearing it a week so I would still like to reserve judgement.  There is no denying that the colours of Loft, like its sister worsted yarn, Shelter, are rich and tweedy and lovely.  I wish I had used one of the lighter colours to knit this as the lovely lacey pattern on the front is somewhat obscured in this dark purple.  I tried wearing it with a white tank underneath so that the lace would show up, but it wasn’t the most successful of styles:

Still, it is a nice photo of the shape of the sweater.  If I were to knit this again, I would use a different yarn and a much paler colour (I keep imagining it in a silk blend in a very pale blue or pearl grey).

The pattern is Carpino, and is designed by Carol Feller of Stolen Stitches.  I really like Carol’s designs, and as this is the third one I’ve knit, I knew that the fit would be good and the pattern would be clear.  I was not disappointed.  Except for making it longer and using my normal bindoff (rather than the super stretchy one she recommends) I made no changes to this at all.  It’s knit exactly to pattern.  It is an extremely well-written and intuitive pattern and quite a fun knit.   I have at least two other Carol Feller sweaters on my short list, so its unlikely to be my last.

I realize that my last three projects have all been purple.  I seem to be stuck in a purple theme here.  In a complete and total change of subject, for some reason this reminded me of the purple man, a character from my childhood.  When I was in junior high school, my dad lived in Manhatten, just off Central Park West, and my sisters and I used to visit him on the weekends.  One of the neighborhood characters was a man who was always dressed entirely in purple – purple coat, vest, shirt, trousers, socks, shoes, hat, tie.  He even rode a purple bicycle.  We would see him frequently and to us he was a beloved part of New York – like the pickle man on the lower East Side.  Once, after many years of seeing the purple man on his own, we were out walking with Daddy and came across the purple man walking hand-in-hand with a purple woman, also dressed head-to-toe in purple.  It was a magical moment, one in which I really thought that there was someone special out there for everyone.

Doug took the above photo in our back garden, just as the light was going, late in the evening.  I think its kind of pretty.   In fact, Doug took 171 photos of me in this sweater, so that I could find a few good ones to show you.  I’ve put on weight since I started knitting it (business school should come with a warning label – “Business school makes you fat!”).  There were photos that looked like this:

And photos that looked like this:

And there were about 150 photos that vanity won’t allow me to publish.

I submitted a big paper this week for b-school, so tonight I am on holiday.  I have poured a glass of wine and plan to pick up my needles and knit something not-purple.

 

One gift to rule them all

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Regular readers of this blog will recall the saga of Leah’s birthday present.  Well, it’s  finished!

I made her a knitted pillow with the words from Tolkien’s ring (yes, the One RIng to Rule Them All) knitted in gold.  I finished the knitting in time for her birthday in December, but fretted about how to sew it to the fabric and how to do the finishing.  I am a pretty good knitter, but have little sewing experience.  I really didn’t want to wreck it.

You can read all of the posts I wrote about this project here.  This was a big step for me in many ways.  I am pretty much a beginner at two-handed stranded knitting, so it was a leap of faith.  Also, it was my very first time steeking.  Bringing a pair of scissors to bear upon one’s knitting, especially a piece so special and time-consuming, is not for the faint of heart.  Having put so much effort into the project, I decided not to rush the sewing part, even if that meant Leah having to patiently wait a few more months.  I asked for suggestions on the blog and many of you were kind enough to reply.  The consensus was to find a professional to sew it for me.

The only tailor I knew in the area was Sally Stevens, who runs a tailoring business out of her home in Berkshire.  Sally had done some work for me a number of years ago.  I called her and explained what I needed.  “Let me send you a link to my blog posts about this, so that you can have an idea of what I am looking for,”  I said.  The next day, I set off with the knitted piece and the fabric to take it to Sally.  I was a bit worried about whether I was doing the right thing.  What if she couldn’t envision what I wanted?

When I got there she said “I was up past midnight last night reading your blog posts.  I think we need to sew the pillowcase out of a plain cotton fabric and then sew the knitted panel to it.  That will reinforce it so that you won’t need to use any facing.  Then, we can sew the fabric to that.”  The pillow would thus have an inner lining to give some structure to the piece.  She also suggested a long zipper along the back, instead of the alternatives of a side zipper or an envelope closing.  “Here,” Sally said “I’ve made you a sketch”:

When I got home, Doug said “Do you think she gets it?” “Oh, yes,” I said.  “She’s going to to do this just right.”

I don’t know how to say this without gushing.  I think this is absolutely the greatest thing I’ve ever knitted.  I love it!  It’s perfect!  I want to keep it!  (Just kidding, Leah.  Maybe.)  I think it’s the greatest birthday present ever.

Every part of making this was fun, from conception through throwing it up into the air for the above photo.  Even the steek!  (At least, in retrospect.)  You can probably not help but notice that this pillow is huge.  It is defintiely not a standard size pillow.  I spent a long time searching for a pillow the right size to fit this case, and finally found one here.  This is a duck feather and down bolster pillow measuring 51x100cm (20″ x 39″).

I love the fabric I chose for the back as much as I love the knitted panel.  They compliment each other so well.  (In one of the previous posts, see above link, I wrote about finding the fabric; it was a remnant so I have no details.)  See how it shines in the sun?  And the yellow yarn (Quince & Co Chickadee in Carrie’s yellow), while pale with slightly brownish  undertones on its own, gleams against the purple like burnished gold.  Leah is a Tolkien fan but also a medieval history fanatic and I love the way this project has a very medieval look to it.

Happy Belated Birthday, Leah!  I’m holding the pillow hostage until you come home to visit.

“Holy Viva, Batman!”

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My friend Lizz defended her PhD dissertation yesterday.  In the UK, the defense is called a viva (short for viva voce, ‘living voice’ or oral exam).  In honour of this milestone event, I knitted her a present:

Aren’t these mitts cool?  The pattern, called Fightin’ Words, is designed by Annie Watts.  You can find them here (along with lots of other cool designs) or on the Ravelry link here.  I first saw the pattern a few years ago and instantly decided that they were destined for Lizz when she finished her PhD.  As time passed, I had them continually in the back of my mind but always thought “Oh, I have lots of time to knit these up.”  Stupidly, even when she submitted the dissertation, I continued to procrastinate knowing that it can take awhile to schedule the actual exam.  And then, two weeks ago Lizz said to me “My viva has been scheduled; it’s two weeks from today!”  Eek!

Luckily, I had the perfect yarn sitting at home.  This is Quince & Co Chickadee in Carrie’s Yellow and Frank’s Plum.  I think they look awesome together!  Both colours really pop in this design.  (Forgive the early morning, just rolled out of bed shot; I finished knitting these mitts just in the nick of time.)

Can you think of a more perfect gift for a PhD defense? (Well, other than, perhaps, a job…or maybe a car…a holiday in Fiji…..)  Here is a photo of Lizz taken post-defense, with my phone, after we both had consumed some champagne:

How did your Viva go, Lizz?  Bam! Pow!  Slam dunk!

I absolutely recommend this great pattern.  They are so much fun to knit and look so cool!  Make sure you pick two high contrast colours, they really need to pop in order to carry the design.

I’ll be at b-school on the weekend and won’t post, but I have two more finished projects to show you; coming up soon!  Kapow!

Slipped through the cracks

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Over the Christmas holidays I knit a number of cowls as Christmas gifts. (You can see them here.)  Two of them were knit from a stash of Rowan Cocoon that had been sitting around my house for years.   I knit a third Cocoon cowl while in Vancouver, for my daughter Leah, but never wrote a post about it.  This is because I finished it on the 2nd of January, just hours before hopping on a flight back to the UK.  It was dark and rainy at the time and I couldn’t get a photo.  A few weeks ago, Emma sent me some photos she had taken of Leah wearing the cowl, which means that now, in the pursuit of full disclosure, I can show them to you.

I had one skein of Cocoon in a nice cream colour and one in a teal blue.  I used a US 10.5 needle and cast on 180 stitches in the cream, joined in the round and then knit in 3×3 ribbing until I ran out of the cream yarn.  Then I switched to the blue and knit until I had enough yarn left over for the cast off.  When it is twisted and wound around the neck, the blue and cream portions flip around each other in an eye-pleasing way.

I knit this without a pattern and didn’t take any notes so I can’t even give you finished dimensions.  It literally went from my needles to Leah’s neck (it didn’t even need blocking).  It has been cold in Canada this winter, so it has received a lot of wear.  I believe it ended up about 8″ wide, and it is long enough to wrap twice around.  It is an extremely quick and mindless knit, and produces a warm and cozy cowl.

You can just make out in the above photo the hand-knit mitts that Leah is wearing (they are these ones).  What lucky daughters I have!

I am in the enviable position of having three more finished projects to show you.  Yes, you read that right – THREE projects off the needles!!!  (And if I do say so myself, they are pretty great.)  I will try to find time to get them blocked, photographed and written up as soon as possible.  But my next three posts will have finished objects in them.  Hey, this post does too!  I may set a record here!

A few knitted gifts

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While in Vancouver, I knit two cowls in shades of rust and burgundy.  The first was a gift for my sister-in-law Vivian.  I don’t have any photos of Viv wearing it because the light fades very quickly this time of year.  So you will have to make do with a few hastily taken photos of me (taken before my morning coffee no less).

While this photo does not do much for me, it does a good job of showing the lovely rich colour of this Cocoon wool.  The pattern is the Infinitude Scarf, designed by Jeni Chase and available for free on Ravelry.  I cast on 170 stitches on a US 10.5 needle and I used all of two skeins of wool.  It didn’t look nearly so nice before blocking; the blocking transformed the wool into a very light, breathable and warm fabric.

I still have a bunch of Cocoon sitting around in my stash so I might be tempted to make one of these for me.

Emma’s friend Indi has spent part of the holidays with us and I knit her a cowl as well.  Indi’s cowl presented some difficulties.  Indi is vegan and doesn’t wear animal fibres.  Emma and I spent quite some time searching for a suitable yarn.  Unfortunately, we searched online, which means the tactile portion of the yarn buying experience was missing.  I must admit here to being a bit of a yarn snob; I don’t want to use manmade fibres.  It’s likely that there are some very soft acrylic yarns out there that would make wonderfully cozy, vegan-approved cowls, but I only looked at the cotton and linen options. The yarn that we settled on is really very lovely and has a great sheen to it, but let’s face it – it just doesn’t feel like wool.  But as Emma kept reminding me: “That’s sort of the point, Mom!”

This is a Danish yarn called Allino, made by BC Garn.  It is a 50/50 cotton and linen blend. I really like the colours; you can see that the linen and cotton take to the dye differently, thus producing this interesting marled effect in the yarn. (Neither of these photos shows the colour very well but my light is limited this time of year.) I knit the cowl using the yarn held double on US 9 needles.  I started by casting on 200 stitches and knitting in 4×4 rib.  My intention was to knit the whole cowl in rib, but about half way through Emma said “Mom, this is pretty boring.”  She also said “You can buy a boring cowl in any store.  The reason to knit a cowl is to avoid buying the boring cowls from the stores and have something beautiful and interesting to wear.”  So, I put in some cabling in what I thought was an interesting way, and then went back to the 4×4 ribbing.  The cabled portion is placed assymetrically into the ribs, which I find pleasing.

I put in the cabling without once thinking about the fact that it would pull in the fabric; I must have been having a bit of a mind meltdown over Christmas.  This means that the cowl is considerably shorter and tighter than it should be.  (I cannot double it over my head.)  Indi is quite small so I was aiming for a short cowl to begin with, and then inadvertantly made it even shorter.  The moral: think before you cable.

I do think that this cowl is pretty and has an interesting structure.  The linen makes it quite stiff, which gives it a sort of architectural feel.  The colour is wonderful and looks great on Indi. (I will post a modelled shot tomorrow.)  In retrospect, however, I should have shopped around more for a good vegan cowl option.  This yarn would be great in many things but I think a cowl should be soft before all else.  Next time I will go for a cotton yarn and bypass linen all together.

In addition to these pretty gifts, I also gave a knitted cowl to my lovely neice, Lydia.  I don’t have a photo of Lydia in it, but here is one of me modelling it:

I made this last month and posted about it here.  I made this one especially thick and warm as Lydia lives in cold and snowy Ontario.

Emma also received a little knitted cheer in her stocking: the pair of Noro mitts that I posted about here.  If I am able, I will post a modelled shot tomorrow because everything looks better when Emma wears it.

For regular readers of this blog, let me say that I have steeked, it went well and will be reported in due time.  Tomorrow I will post up my end-of-the-knitting-year review.

Sometimes you need a quickie

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All of my knitting projects lately have seemed endless.  I keep picking time-consuming projects, and this is exacerbated by my new schedule which means I have much less time in which to knit.  The result has been that I occasionally feel as if knitting is a slog – not the desired outcome for a pleasurable pasttime.  I was in need of instant gratification; hence, the quickie.

I also have two daughters at university, which means little disposable income.  So, I did a search through my stash yarn.  I found two and a bit skeins of Rowan Cocoon, a chunky wool in a soft grey, no doubt left over from when I knit an Owl Sweater for Leah (which will be the subject soon of a Wearability Wednesday post).  I didn’t feel the need to search for a pattern and just grabbed a set of needles and improvised a pattern for a cowl.

I used a US 10.5 needle and cast on 272 stitches, joined in the round, placed a stitch marker to mark beginning of round, and then knit in a 1×1 rib reversible cable stitch:

Rows 1-3: K1 p1 all the way around

Row 4: *Put 4 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 P1 K1 P1 from left hand needle, and then K1 P1 K1 P1 from cable needle, then K1 P1 (four times)*, repeat from * to end

Rows 5-7: K1 P1 all the way around

Row 8: *K1P1 (four times), put 4 stitches on cable needle and hold to back, K1 P1 K1 P1 from left hand needle, and then K1 P1 K1 P1 from cable needle*, repeat from * to end

This made a thick, lovely, wavy fabric:

Blocking it, however, really pulled out the fabric quite a bit, revealing the cables (and adding quite a bit of length).  The unblocked measurement was 22″x5.5″ (for a 44″ circumference) and the blocked measurement was 28″x6″ (for a 56″ circumference).  I sort of like the look of the fabric better pre-block, but the truth of the matter was that it was too thick and bulky to look right as a cowl and didn’t easily double up around the neck.  Here is the finished cowl:

These photos were taken in a 5-minute window between rain showers, so are not the best, but you can see from the above one that the pattern is truly reversible so that the back and front sides are the same.

Alas, one quickie was apparently not enough to assuage the instant gratification urge, so I dove back into my stash yarn pile, and came up with a skein of Noro Kureyon.  I decided to knit the Campout Fingerless Mitts pattern by tante ehm, which is available for free.  Here is the finished pair of mitts:

I decided that I wanted to be clever and use up every last bit of yarn from the skein, so I knit the two mitts at the same time (more or less) pulling the yarn from one end of the skein for one mitt, and from the other end for the second.  First, I cast on and started knitting the first mitt using the end from inside the skein:

Then, I put the stitches on holders:

Then I cast on the second mitt using the end from the outside of the skein:

(Ignore the red yarn which was used as a provisional cast-on.  The mitts are constructed by starting with the garter stitch band around the top, grafting the two ends together and then picking up stitches and knitting down in stockinette stitch.  If I knit these again, I wouldn’t bother with the provisional cast-on and grafting; I would just sew the two ends together.)  I then continued to knit the second mitt, pulling the yarn from the outside of the skein:

The whole point of this exercise was to make the mitts as long as possible without needing to break the yarn, or wasting any yarn.  I needn’t have bothered: towards the end of the second mitt, I encountered a knot in the yarn:

I decided to stop the second mitt just before the knot, and thus had to end the first mitt at the same length; without the knot, both mitts would have ended with this dark blue colour around the end.  As an aside, there seem to be two types of approaches to knitting with Noro.  The first approach always tries to make the colour changes match, so that both mitts would have the same colour progression, or both sleeves on a pullover, etc.  This involves buying more Noro than you need, and cutting out the bits you don’t want and coordinating the colour runs across the garment.  The second is to let the colours be and just knit.  This is the approach I prefer, and leads to mitts that don’t match.  I kind of like them that way.

Now that I’ve got this out of my system, I hope to go back to my longer projects with more enthusiasm.  I’m heading off to Cornwall for a few days holiday.  Given the grey and rainy weather, there should be plenty of time to knit.

At least something got done around here

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I have finally finished knitting something!  It is far too long since I last had a finished object to show you.  My Viajante, a sort of cross between a poncho, a shawl and a cowl, is off the needles and duly blocked.

When I first tried this on, before blocking, I must admit to despair.  It lacked the beautiful drape and was much too tight.  I looked sort of like a purple sausage with fringe.  But blocking did something extraordinary to the fabric, resulting in a light, sheer, fluid fabric that is really gorgeous.

I have a very stupid look on my face in the below photo, but love the way the pond grasses look through the sheer lace:

This is not the sort of thing I usually wear.  The shape of it is really different.  I suppose it is a kind of statement piece.  It is also not all that easy to wear:

It is also a bit of a pain to knit.  I found it to be endless, and slightly soul-sapping.  I spent four months on this project.  That is one-third of the knitting year; which to my mind is a big commitment for one project.  However, despite it being slightly on the edge of my fashion comfort zone (where to wear it?  how to wear it?) and a fairly annoying (albeit easy) knit, I find myself totally fascinated with it.  You really have to feel the fabric to appreciate it.  This is my first time using Wollmeise Lace-garn; its fans are legion and vociferous, but I can see why.  It feels great.  It is so silky and has a magnificent drape.

The thing that sold me on Wollmeise, however, was when I washed this prior to blocking.  Not a single drop of purple bled into the wash water.  Not a drop!  The colour is so gorgeous, so rich and vibrant, and it didn’t bleed at all.  I have been veering away from colourwork after my colour bleeding disaster reported in this post, but now I think there is more colourwork (and more Wollmeise) in my future.

This post is very photo-heavy and word-light.  I am afraid that this represents a compromise due to my new commitments.  I promised myself I would spend most of the day studying.   But, I can comfort myself with this thought, at least something got done around here!  I’ll end with the gorgeous shot below: isn’t it just perfect?

Neon lights

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This will be a post with lots of photos and few words.  The entire crew here at Knitigating Circumstances has been felled by the flu all week, so words are not flowing freely.  Despite this, however, I have managed to do all of the finishing on my Neon cardigan.  The verdict: this is one fabulous knit!

The pattern, by Joji Locatelli, is really well-written and comprehensive.  I have made few modifications:  I knit the sleeves flat, added one set of hip increases (could have made more), and put in 12 buttons instead of 8.

Despite having made some really stupid (and fairly comical) wrong turns while knitting this (documented on these pages), this project turned out great.  I really think it is the perfect summer cardigan.

This was my first time using Plucky yarn and I can’t say enough good words about it.  I really like the feel of it – it has bounce and loft, but mostly I am crazy about this colour – Kissin’ Valentino.  I definitely see some more Plucky in my future.

Until the last minute I didn’t think it would fit.  In a postscript to my last post, describing my hilarious attempts to block this, I ended up re-blocking the whole thing.  This did the trick.  I won’t take it off until October!