Archive for the ‘Finished Projects’ Category

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What is what

April 16, 2010

Something is blocking.

I think I may need to do something with the button bands.  I’m trying not to be hyper critical of myself, but I’m not the best at picking up stitches, and I think it looks a little odd in parts.  We’ll see what happens when it’s dry!  The buttons, however, make me want to sing.  (And I have seven left, so hooray for red buttony goodness!)  I had imagined wooden buttons at first, but now I feel like I should have known that red was best.  Now to name it.  It looks a bit like blue ice, but who knows!

Another thingy: do you remember the too-big sweater coat I made ages ago?  And then felted to death?  I’ve hung on to the sad remains ever since, hoping to find a purpose for them.  And today I finally found that purpose.  Keep in mind before you look at the picture that I am not a very good seamstress.  And keep in mind that I took a perfectly excellent tutorial and tried to make it in a rather different way because I didn’t have the materials called for.  So with all that in mind, check out this sheep pillow!

I used this tutorial, which, if followed using flat wool felt and not crazy thick felted sweater that makes your sewing machine cry real tears, will result in the most adorable sheepy pillow ever in the history of sheep pillows.  Eleanor’s birthday is Sunday and Eleanor’s headboard has a lamb on it, so this pillow seemed like a fab idea.  Of course, that was before I made the sewing machine cry.  “E1!” it screamed, “E6!  Don’t make me do this!”  (The E’s are error messages.  Since I never seem to know where the English manual for the machine is, these little cries in the dark leave me worried, but mostly perplexed.)

Other random stuff to know:

I joined Twitter.  I don’t get it, and most of my (I am NOT going to use their cutesy little lingo) posts are just random stuff I’ve thought of, but there will be occasional knitting content.  If you have Twitter, and you think you’d like to see more of the contents of my brain, you can follow me here.  KnittingKninja was taken, so I’m KHanleyCardozo.  Hanley Cardozo, by the way, does not fit in their surname box, so I’m Kristen Hanley on there.  My name is too much for Twitter.  Too much for a lot of people, if I’m honest.  I did the double barreled surname when I got married, but since I did it without a hyphen, people constantly think that one name or the other is optional.  But yeah, I’m on there, and I feel old because it confuses me.  Doesn’t stop me from trying to use it, but I’m constantly bewildered.

Also, also, I am very, very bad at keeping content new and exciting in my Ravelry group.  I love participating in active forums, but I’m not good at being in charge of one.  If you’re someone who’s on Ravelry a lot, and who likes to be in charge of things, let me know if you’re interested in being a mod.  I’d be very happy to have some help!   On a similar note, I’m having a lot of trouble keeping up with the other group I started, Color Coordinated, and think it would be better led by someone who is not me.  I’d be happy to hand over the admin reins to anyone who thinks loves color and who is better at starting threads and keeping them active than I am.

If my speed picks up at all on pattern production, I may start a Facebook group as well.  However, since, as mentioned, I’m not very good at keeping content fresh and fun in a group setting, I’m putting this off as long as possible.

Posted in Finished Projects, Kidswear, Knitting, Miscellany, Sheep, Sweaters | 6 Comments »

Daily photos

April 7, 2010

Finished some things last night. New things start today.

Posted in Clothilde, Finished Projects, In progress, Photography, Shawls, Shrugs, Yarn | 2 Comments »

Only photos

April 2, 2010

Keyboard still broken.  Avoiding words with forbidden letters.  Only photos, today.

Posted in Finished Projects, Kidswear, Knitting, Miscellany, Nifty Stuff, Photography, Sweaters, Yarn | 1 Comment »

Veyla

March 26, 2010

And they only took me 25 days!  I knit like the wind, baby.  I’m just going to give the straight up stats here.  Liam’s been sick this week, and has been waking in the night and we’re all like zombies, as a result and I’m afraid actual paragraphs are beyond me.

Pattern: Veyla, from Whimsical Little Knits 2
Yarn: Malabrigo Sock, in color Ochre
Yardage: using my awesome new scale, I can assure you that they used 132 yards of yarn.
Needles: Knit Picks fixed circulars, U.S, size 3
Modifications: None at all.  This is a very well written, fun pattern, and the only thing I did to change it in any way was to bind off fairly tightly.  I find that mitts often tell me to bind off loosely, and I regret it if I do.

These are so pretty and comfy.  I love the yarn and pattern both, and I’m so glad I made them!

Posted in Finished Projects, Knitalongs, Knitting, Mitts | 3 Comments »

Round up

March 24, 2010

There’s been some secret knitting in the past few days.  I’m trying to rearrange my schedule around the fact that I won’t have Sunniva out when I’d planned, and I thought I’d work on getting some smaller projects done quickly, so as to be able to release a pattern sometime in the spring, whether Sunniva is done or not.  So that’s quietly underway, and I’m getting a little excited about the possibilities.

There’s been some less secretive knitting as well.  I finished up my Milkweed Shawl, and that was a nice, fast, mojo-returning project.   I stuck it on a chair in the backyard and took some underwhelming pictures today, but rest assured, it’s super pretty and snuggly in real life.  The pattern is fun to knit, and the fact that it’s all garter is kept from becoming boring by the fact that there are those columns of lace to deal with throughout.

The yarn makes me ridiculously happy.  It’s so cheerful and fun to work with.  It’s squishy and soft and the colors are beautiful.

I also finished (well, except for sewing in the ends) one of my Veyla mitts.  This pattern goes quite fast when you sit down and work on it for more than a few minutes at a time!

I cannot tell you how much I love this pattern.  For serious and for true.  It’s ridiculously clever, with every little detail well thought out and considered in order to give you the prettiest possible result.  These are not going to be the most practical mitts I’ve made, but they will, no doubt, be the prettiest.

Speaking of mitts, my aunt was in town recently and mentioned (and proved) that she’s worn some mitts I made ages ago until they are quite literally falling apart!  She really could use some more mitts, so that’s on my to-do list now.  The mitts I made for her were based on the simple Fingerless Garter Mitts in One Skein, but knit in worsted yarn rather than fingering weight yarn.  I’m thinking something similarly simple, but slightly different this time round.  Maybe Susie’s Reading Mitts, or Ysolda’s Garter Stitch Mitts.  Heck, maybe both!

Also in mitt news, the Dos Emerald Mitts I made that were confiscated by Mr. Kninja continued their Yankee Swap existence when a visiting friend tried them on and didn’t want to take them off.  We gave them to him and now he will not have to freeze his hands when painting out of doors.  Win!  I’ve had people ask me if fingerless mitts actually make sense as a garment, and my answer is a resounding yes.  They’re fabulous for when you still need your fingers free, but your hands are a little cold.  And they look so cool.

Posted in Finished Projects, In progress, Knitting, Mitts, Shawls | 4 Comments »

Meet ups and projects galore

March 7, 2010

So, I got only about halfway through my Stitches recollections in the last post.  Stitches wasn’t just about the purchase of beautiful yarn, though that was certainly a draw.  No, both before and at Stitches, I got to meet up with some wonderful bloggers and Ravelry friends.

Several days before Stitches I went up to Stash to meet up with Huan-hua of Feather and Fan, and Prachi of Adventures of a Desi Knitter, and we lingered over the pretty yarns, chattered, and had warm drinks at the Starbucks right next to Stash. I’ve been reading Feather and Fan for years, and it was so nice to meet Huan-hua in person.  And while I’m new to the Desi Knitter blog, I am really enjoying it, and Prachi is a really warm person!  (This goes back to my previous post – everyone I met recently was really nice, and there are only so many ways to say this.  So, you know, some day I’ve got to meet up with a really mean knitter, just to throw you all off base.)

I have to confess that the amount of nice yarn at Stash actually got me so flustered that I ended up leaving empty handed.  They’d just gotten in a shipment of Madelinetosh Tosh Sock, and I kept picking one color or another, and then setting them back down.  And then I’d spot some other yarn I just had to have on the wall, and ultimately, I couldn’t pick anything!  I know I’ll go back soon, though – I love Stash!  I’m lucky, because there are a number of nice yarn stores near me, and they all have rather complementary stock.

At Stitches, I ran into a number of the ladies from my closest LYS, K2Tog, and then met up by appointment with Lina of Photo.Knit.Dog.  Lina was wearing her Multnomah in bright green Wollmeise, and I have to tell you that I am now itching to get my hands on some of that yarn.  It was so bright, and so pretty!  Lina was very sweet, and came with me as I dithered at one booth after another, chattering away like a mad monkey at the very fact of getting to talk with an adult!  Between the rain, illness, and school holidays, I’ve had a lot of time with my children lately, which is good on the one hand, but makes me a little stir crazy for adult company on the other.  This meant I could not. shut. up.  Lina knows a lot about a lot of yarn brands I hadn’t tried, and it was great to have her opinions when I was trying to pick out yarns for my various projects.  We then found Sarah (limejuicy on Ravelry) and some of her friends, and had a very lovely time chatting and showing off our purchases and talking yarn.  Sarah, Lina, and I all ended up purchasing the same shade of Becoming Art Cielo fingering, too!  I had ridiculous amounts of fun before I had to catch my train back.

Train catching was a whole different adventure!  It was raining pretty hard, so I put all my yarn in my waterproof Webs bag and tied it closed.  Then it was wandering out in the rain to try to find the train station using walking directions printed out on the internet combined with spoken directions from the concierge at the hotel.  The train station is quite close, but it’s not easily visible, so there were a number of moments of deep suspense as I spotted a building I thought was right and got close enough to discover myself at a fire station.  I made it in plenty of time, though, and then it was a pleasant train right north and home, working on my new sweater all the way and occasionally taking out my new yarns to admire them.

And that was Stitches!

I couldn’t resist trying some of my new yarn right away, so I knit a Side Slip Cloche, from Boutique Knits, with my Jacob/Alpaca yarn.  I need to get a modeled shot, but in the meanwhile, see?  It’s so fuzzy and wonderful!

Warm as Hades, too.  It figures I’d knit the warmest hat I now own just as the weather is lightening.  I love it, though!  The yarn, it is a dream.  It feels really sturdy and strong, and it looks and feels beautiful knit up.

Currently on the needles: Veyla, for the Malabrigo March KAL!  If you want to join in, come on over to the Malabrigo Junkies group on Ravelry.  I’d be glad of the company!

Also a new sweater for Knitting Kninja, and after a bit of thought, I’ve decided to document the design process in future posts.  The sweater is called Sunniva, and I’ll tell you more about it next time!

Posted in Finished Projects, Hats, In progress, Knitting, Stitches West | 6 Comments »

Lifesplosion!

March 4, 2010

So behind!  Stitches and the end of Ravelympics came in quick succession, and I met up with a bunch of wonderful people and now I’m leading a Malabrigo March KAL (join us!) and working hard on a new pattern.  And I’ve blogged about none of it.  Because I’m sporadic that way.  Now I just need to work on convincing people that sporadic is a synonym of wonderful.

Right!  First things first.  I finished my second Ravelympics project, the blue fingerless mitts mentioned last time, and they were promptly claimed by Mr. Kninja, who loves them and squeezes them and calls them George.  He has worn them a lot since I finished them and it is because they are squishy and warm and utterly fantastic.  Malabrigo, dahlinks, please, please, please release Dos next? Please?  It’s such a nice yarn to use.  I suspect that it will ultimately pill, but the ply makes it sturdier than the Worsted, and oh my goodness, it is plump and wonderful.  Also, it has not grown the way my Worsted sometimes does.

Let us speak of M1 for a moment.  There are, of course, many ways to make one in a knitting pattern.  I have a favorite way, and I used it on these mitts.  I’m very happy with how the increases look around the thumb, so let me see if I have a picture that better displays these increases.

There we go.  OK, the increase I like to use is one mentioned by Elizabeth Zimmermann in one of her books, possibly more than one, but I definitely learned it from EZ.  As far as I know, it does not have a mirror increase, so there’s a small disadvantage there, but I think it’s neat and clean enough that it looks good in all situations.  Using the right hand needle, you pick up a stitch below the next stitch on your left hand needle and knit into the back of this stitch.  It’s very similar to a M1L increase, but it’s slightly neater, and results in an almost invisible, tight increase.

Yeah, yeah, mitts, you’re thinking.  Fine.  But where are the pictures of yarn??  You are so impatient.  Here they are!

I realize that compared to some other folks, this is a pretty modest haul, but other than in buying sweater quantities of yarn, I have never bought so much yarn at one time, ever, in my whole life.  It was largely thanks to the generosity of some of my favorite knitting buddies that I was able to get this yarn, so I am very, very grateful.

I shopped with a purpose.  There were a few projects I was looking forward to and I wanted to get yarn for them.

The above is Becoming Art Cielo Fingering in New Moon (Light).  Isn’t is gorgeous?  I’m not usually very good at working with yarns that have a lot of colors in them.  I like tone on tone variegation.  But Becoming Art yarns make me so so happy!  Lisa, the talented dyer, manages to work colors that are very different into a harmonious whole, and her yarns knit up beautifully.  I made a Clothilde for my mother in law some months back in this same base, and the bright purples and browns and pinks just sang.  I got to meet Lisa, and she’s as nice as her yarns.  At the time that I made my Clothilde, I thought that the yarn would work really well for a Milkweed Shawl.  This yarn is for a bright autumnal Milkweed for me.  I don’t know when I’ll have time to knit it up, but I cannot wait.  The colors mean that every stitch is going to be a pleasure.  The Fiber Fix has a lovely selection of Becoming Art yarns, too, and I’m really coveting the Outlaw and Wicked shades for future projects.

This is Little Red Bicycle Snowflake Sock in Cthulu.  Yes, it really does look iridescent in real life.  It reminds me of fly eyes.  I almost didn’t see this gorgeous skein when I was in the Femme Fatale/Little Red Bicycle booth, but luckily my eye fell on it before I headed out with the wrong color in hand.  One of my big goals for the year is to knit a pair of fingering weight socks and finish both of them.  With that goal in mind, I was looking for a wool/nylon blend sock yarn in a color so inspiring, I’d have to finish my socks because I’d be so eager to work with the yarn.  This is my sock yarn.  I am in love with it.  And Didi of Little Red Bicycle is awesome!  I’ve actually been following her on Ravelry for a while without connecting her to her yarn, so it was really cool to meet her and to see the gorgeous stuff she’s been making.

Which brings us on to Femme Fatale, in the same booth!  Liz of Femme Fatale is also the designer of the Traveling Woman and Saroyan shawls (and other pretty things), so you may be familiar with her work.  The above is some lovely Lilith Sport in Poison Sleep.  I was blown away by the blues and reds of the Femme Fatale yarns.  This skein is for an exchange.  It’s a full 400 yards, which I thought was pretty darn awesome!  I was lucky enough to go into the booth in a slightly slower time, so I could stop and chat a bit.  It’s going to get a bit repetitive as I keep saying how nice people were, but yeah, everyone I met was really freaking nice, and Liz was no exception.  Perhaps next time, yarnies, one of you should punch me in the face to stand out in the later blog entry.  ;)

Miss Babs Yummy Toes in Violet and maybe Peony, maybe Dahlia? shown with Malabrigo Sock in Violeta Africana, not purchased at Stitches.   These little skeins are for the colorwork in Eleanor’s Paper Dolls Sweater.  I’ve had the main purple color for a while and known that she wanted pink dolls and white or pale purple flowers, but I was reluctant to purchase whole skeins of sock yarn in pale purple or pink.  I just don’t think I’d use them up.  Now Nora gets her PonyPrincessGirlyGirlyGirly sweater and I don’t have to try to find a use for yards and yards of princess pony colored yarn.

Toots LeBlanc Jacob/Alpaca 50/50 Blend–Worsted in White.  I have already used half this skein to make a hat, to be shown in a coming post.  It’s so scrummy.  In the skein and knit up, it’s very soft.  Oddly, while knitting it, it felt very hard on my fingers, but because of the lanolin content, my fingers actually softened while I was working with it.  The resulting fabric is strong and warm, but also very soft.  I love it.  It’s a sheepy wool, very satisfying to use.  And I love my hat.

Malabrigo Twist, in Paris Night and Sealing Wax, for a hat for Mr. Kninja and a chance for me to try Twist and see whether I think it will work well for a sweater.  Not much to be said.  My love of Malabrigo is well known and this looks to be a very nice yarn, very squishy and soft.  I am hoping it will not pill as much as Worsted, since it’s plied.  We shall see.

I have more I want to write, but this is getting crazy long!  I’ll conclude in a second post!

Posted in Finished Projects, Future Projects, Knitting, Miscellany, Mitts, Stitches West, Yarn | 2 Comments »

Birthday knit, mitts, and Stitches

February 25, 2010

Say that three times fast!

My little sister’s birthday was yesterday.  I had previewed her birthday present on here, but hadn’t dared show a finished picture in case she happened along and I ruined the surprise!  (Which is my wont, anyway.  I get so excited about gifts that I bubble and giggle and give everything away right then and there.)  The present was, of course, a Liesl, and seriously, women in my life, look out, because this is just such a fun, fast pattern that I think it’s going to be my go-to gift for a while.

Erin wears a lot of black, which looks great with her coloring, and I wanted to make her a fun and bright spring cardigan to wear over her black wardrobe.  I knew it had to be bright magenta, but bright magenta turns out not to be that easily come by.  Apparently the world is not clamoring for crazyhappyfuntimes yarn of wackiness.   Happy for me, I stumbled along the Blue Moon website and found the Backstabber colorway.  The photos on the Blue Moon site are a little washed out, but Flickr is a great resource in this respect.  Backstabber it was.

The pattern is fast and easy and awesome, and I’ve already talked about that here, so I want to talk a little about the yarn.  The yarn is Luscious Single Silk (LSS), and it’s a single ply silk/merino blend.  It’s very, very soft, and you get 500 yards to a skein, which makes it a great deal.  I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I think I’ll use it again, but I think it’s worth noting that there are some problems with this yarn. Or rather, not so much problems as potentially problematic characteristics.

The Sundara Aran Silky Merino (ASM) I used for my own Liesl was also a worsted weight silk/merino blend.  Since I used both these yarns for the same pattern in quick succession, it was difficult not to compare them, although the Sundara costs more than twice as much.  It’s like comparing apples to apples that were grown by monks and lovingly sprinkled with the tears of orphans each morning so that they can charge you $5 an apple at the store.  Or something.  But the first difference I noticed was the color.  Although the LSS is bright and beautiful, it is not as saturated as the ASM.  There’s a different dye process, of course, and they’re not meant to look alike, but I had expected the yarn to look more saturated with color than it was.  (This doesn’t show up in the finished photos, really.  Check the side by side comparison shot below to see what I mean.  The colors are very different, but the LSS looks softer.)

Second, the yarn itself is different.  I don’t know how well it shows in the above photos, but the ASM is spun more tightly than the LSS.  I think this is pretty important with a single ply.  When I was knitting with the ASM, it felt pretty strong to me, and I never felt too worried that it was going to break, or that I was mistreating it.  The LSS, on the other hand, untwisted very easily, and as I was sewing in the ends, it actually separated and came apart.  I think the knit item is strong enough that it’s not a worry there, but it does look like it will show wear more quickly.  I think Liesl’s not likely to be worn in any harsh ways, so I’d use it again for another Liesl, but for a pullover or a mitt or anything that will undergo a lot of friction, this is a serious consideration.

I don’t know if this is the yarn or my skills and equipment, but in the winding there was an unusual amount of tangling.  I rewound from the cake, which is my usual solution when the first winding doesn’t go well, but even then it twisted and snaked and knotted and tangled, and there was a lot of rewinding by hand.  I am not sure why this happened, but it may be worth a mention.

With all of that, it’s a nice yarn, and I liked working with it!  I sound like I disliked it, but really, it’s gorgeous, inexpensive, and luxurious, and I’m glad it’s out there.  I do think, though, that it’s helpful to note potential problems for other knitters.  One more shot!

I’m almost done with my Azul mitts.  The pattern’s fast and easy and pretty, and while I thought of it as rather feminine, Mr. Kninja is angling to get the mitts for himself, so it may suit dudes as well as ladies.  (It may just be the color, though.  The Azul Profundo looks a lot like this color we both favor for vintage cars.)  It’s not an especially fleshed out pattern, so I wouldn’t recommend it to a knitter making mitts for the first time, but it’s a free pattern and it’s not going to be difficult to follow for anyone familiar with the process of knitting mitts.

Finally, my schedule for Stitches!  I’ll be there most of the day on Friday, wandering around the market, looking tall and probably bewildered.  If you see me, come over and say hi!  I may be there Saturday morning as well, depending on how my back feels after Friday.  So, so excited!

One last thing.  I’ll do a separate post on this shortly, and add a button to the sidebar, but if you like both Arabella and Clothilde, you can now purchase them together for a more than 20% discount.  Both shawls are available for $10 on Ravelry, under the name Two Ladies.  As I say, I’ll make them available here, too, shortly.

Posted in Arabella, Clothilde, Finished Projects, In progress, Knitting, Mitts, Sweaters, Yarn | 7 Comments »

Movin’ right along

February 1, 2010

Footloose and fancy free!

Firstly, here’s a project I never really documented on here.

Liam wanted a stocking cap with a long tail, red and purple stripes, and a yellow or black tassel.  The boy knows what he likes.  I made this back in November, when I was still in bed with flu, and never really got a decent picture of it.  Although there are plenty of good striped stocking cap patterns out there, I didn’t use one.  I looked at a seamed cap I had been given back in high school and modeled it on that, placing all the decreases at the back, like a seam, even though I knit it in the round.  The yarn is Cascade 220, and I was so pleased to find a red and a purple that contrasted so well.

As you can see by the disintegrating tassel, it gets a lot of wear.  I’ll say this: when I let the kids design their own clothes, they really do use them.

I’m calling this hat Smee, after the stocking be-capped character in Disney’s version of Peter Pan.  His cap was neither striped, nor so long, but there’s something about this brightly colored silliness that calls to mind cartoon pirates.

As does this photo.  Boyo didn’t want his picture taken.  You may recognize the infamous Rainbow Jacket, which he’s also wearing.

In December, the epic struggle with Gabriel’s long (long, long) suffering sweater ended when I finally finished the damn thing.  It’s intentionally sized too large, as one of the problems that was ongoing in making the sweater was the fact that he just kept growing.  The child is ten years old and over five feet tall, and he doesn’t grow in spurts, but rather continues steadily on, just getting bigger and bigger and bigger.  He wore the sweater off to school today, and I snapped a quick and terrible picture of him wearing it, standing in front of the heater to warm it before he left.

The crease down the middle from how it was folded really adds to the terrible photograph effect.  I used Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Seamless Hybrid recipe, with cables up the sleeves and onto the shoulders, which doesn’t show in this picture.  Gabriel wanted a blue sweater with brown edges on the sleeves and the collar, so that’s what I did, using Knit Picks Telemark.  If I never use that yarn again, it will be too soon.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, though it’s a bit scratchy, but I had so many things go wrong with this sweater that I’ve got an overwhelming conviction that my yarn was cursed.  The sweater shown here is at least incarnation number five in the same yarn.  And even it, as straightforward as it was, had a bunch of things go wrong that required huge amounts of ripping.  As a result, while it’s not the most attractive thing I think I’ve ever made, I think it’s the project that left my needles with the most personal satisfaction I’ve ever had about a knitting project.  I just wanted never to have to knit it again.

Here are the cables, from an older photo.

Posted in Elizabeth Zimmermann, Finished Projects, Hats, Kidswear, Knitting, Sweaters | Leave a Comment »

Oh, that’s right, I have a blog

January 16, 2010

I can’t believe we’re two weeks into the new year and I haven’t posted here!  I have so much to catch up on.

Wrapping up 2009, while it was not the best year I’ve had, I feel pretty good about things and very hopeful as we look toward the future.  I’m a combination of cynical and optimistic generally speaking.  This past year had its downs, but it’s also the year I finished up what I hope are the last of my college requirements for transfer.  I discovered that I like math.  And on the knitting front, I feel like my skills improved and that I have a better plan for going forward.

My birthday was on January 6th, and as a birthday present to myself, I dropped everything I was working on (more on that later) and cast on for Liesl.  I am a huge admirer of Ysolda’s work, but I have to say that I did not fall in love with Liesl right away.  I thought it was pretty and then thought no more until Emily posted pictures of her Liesl and I knew that someday, I would have to make one, too.

After Clothilde went live, I put aside a little money for some Sundara Aran Silky Merino.  At the time, the only way to order it was in the mass updates that sold out pretty fast, or from the Year in Color, and I was waiting for the perfect color, which showed up in September.   Arabian Nights, the most gorgeous brown and purple yarn you’ve ever seen.  I ordered two skeins and then waited the long wait until November, when it shipped.  But it was well worth the wait, and I was so so glad I chose that particular shade when it arrived.  It is amazing in real life, all these deep shades running into each other and each more beautiful than the last.

I was going to swatch, but I’d only ordered two skeins, and I was worried about the yardage.  I decided to order another skein for swatch purposes.  That took a while, because I am the Indecisive Queen of Indecisiveness.  I wanted a color that I could use for gifts, so I dithered and dithered and finally ordered some purple and blue yarn.  Then there was the wait for that to arrive.  Once it got here, I swatched using my size 10 needles.  I have begun to think I’m a loose knitter, so I thought perhaps I’d need to go down in needle size.  But no, size 10 was too small, and 11 too big, so I had to order needles, which I did, in several sizes, from Knit Picks.  Then it was the waiting game again.

The needles arrived on my birthday, so I dropped everything and swatched immediately.  I had purchased 6.5 mm needles and also the 7 mm needles called for in the pattern.  Lo and behold, I got gauge on the called for needles!  I was glad of the 6.5 needles, though, because I wanted a neckline between the ones shown on the pattern.  I cast on for the wide neckline using the 6.5 mm needles and switched to the 7 mm after 22 rows.

I was ill for a bit, so I didn’t knit as fast as I usually would, but even still, the sweater was done in four days.  And even that would have been three days if I hadn’t been so tired.  This is a genius pattern.  It breezes along like you wouldn’t believe and it’s never boring.  The lack of waist shaping isn’t a problem because of the stretchy lace, but I was surprised to find that the bottom belled when I blocked it and it essentially created a waist.  Oh, and I used about 1.75 skeins.

I love this thing.  My first FO of 2010.  It’s not really the right weather to wear it yet, but I like being prepared.  This will be a great spring cardigan.

The pattern is very easy to follow, as written and this yarn? It is amazing to work with.  Although it is single ply, the silk content grounds the merino, creating a very soft and warm fabric with incredible drape, and thus far, no pills.

I have a very long torso, and this hits just where I wanted it to.  Again, I’m plain shocked that this is possible with so little yarn.  This is the perfect pattern for a more expensive yarn because you need so little of it.  And if the Sundara ASM is a little rich for your blood, Blue Moon Fiber Arts offers a very similar yarn that’s $32 for 500 yards, Luscious Single Silk.

This is my first Liesl, but it will not be my last.  This pattern strikes me as great for gifts.  More detail on the yarn and knitting on Ravelry.

Goals for 2010 next time!

Posted in Cardigans, Finished Projects, Knitting, Sweaters | 8 Comments »

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