tea time cardigan

the satisfacion of actually finishing something is enormous! last week when i’d weaved in all ends and tried on my new cardigan i felt an incredible sense of acomplishment. it actually fits! perhaps i shouldn’t sound so surprised, but i am. sometimes i am still amazed that i can actually create wearable things.

tea time cardigan

pattern: “tea time” from rowan classic summer, book 11
designer: martin storey
yarn: rowan ryc cashcotton dk
colourway: apple
yarn source: jenners in edinburgh
needles: 3 mm and 4 mm
modifications: i added one extra row at the beginning of both fronts, back and sleeves. i also made three quarter sleeves instead of short ones. i made slightly larger buttonholes, because i wanted larger buttons than the pattern called for.

back of cardigan

the yarn is very nice and soft to knit with but to wear it turns out to be a total disaster. it pills like mad, i have to pick long worms of fluffy pill off of it after each time i’ve worn it. i’ve worn it about four times since i finished it and it has already started to stretch out of shape. it’s fanastically soft and comfortable to wear, must be a dream for people who doesn’t like rougher yarns, but i will not buy this yarn again. i still have three balls left and will probably use them for baby clothes for one of my friends’ little toddlers. must be perfect for babies, it’s fairly warm and doesn’t itch at all.

posing in my new cardigan

the pattern is fairly easy, but of course it might take some effort to make all ribbed edgings look nice and even. if i were to knit this pattern again, i would make one other modification: i would make the buttonholes on row three, not four, on the buttonhole band. altogether it’s a very nice pattern with a nice fit.

i will definitely continue wearing it, as i said, it’s very nice and soft and fairly warm. i really like the colour, too, but it’s highly unlikely that i will use this yarn again for adult clothes.

a detail of the buttons

and one final photo:

cardigan in rowan ryc cashcotton dk

happy knitting!

 

the thing about gauge

a week ago i cast on for a slipover (vest) in a lovely brown shetland yarn by bc garn. i made a swatch, like i always do, washed it and blocked it to be sure that the finished thing would be the exact right size. so far so good. the thing is that quite often my gauge changes while knitting. it gets looser. it’s as if my hands start to relax after while and then my knitting gets looser. this is really not a good thing if you want your knitted clothes to come out in the intended size. i started out with 52,5 cm at the beginning of the back piece, and after a while, the width of my knitting now measures 55 cm. i was supposed to have 24 stitches to 10 cm, and it’s now 23 stitches to 10 cm. that doesn’t sound like it would make such a huge difference, but it does. it’s made the back piece 2,5 cm (1 inch) wider that it’s supposed to be. terribly annoying. no choice but to start ripping…

anyway, i hope it will turn out nice in the end. here’s what i’m aiming at:

 

argyll slipover for stefan

and this is what it looks like when i’m trying to figure out my gauge:

 

checking my gauge

i have a finished object, by the way, i’ll try to take some photos of it later today.

happy knitting!

 

yarn experiences across the pond

i spent almost two weeks in usa about a month ago, everyone at my office went there for a seminar. a good opportunity to take a few days vacation and have some fun also! and any journey is an opportunity to do some yarn spotting of course, and i brought some real goodies with me home. in saratoga springs (upstate new york) i came across a wonderful yarn shop called saratoga needle arts which i recommend whole heartedly. they had lost of nice yarn, but i especially fell for a locally produced yarn which apparently is producd by the woman who owns the shop! the breeds sheep and the spisd the wool, isn’t that just wonderful! it’s a lovely grey wool, and i have some ideas about making a top down raglan, but i haven’t decided on the details yet. here’s the yarn:

romney cross wool from edge of yonder farms

there’s even a photo of the lovely sheep from which the wool was shorn

after saratoga springs, we went to boston, where i met up with stefan, but i unfortunately did not have the opportunity to visit any yarn shops there. but, after that we went to new york and one of the things at the top of my list was of course to visit purl! where i ended up with these lovely yarns:

five hanks of rittenhouse by manos del uruguay

two hanks of solid coloured koigu

two hanks of variagated koigu

and the whole lot in a lovely tote bag from purl!

i also visited brooklyn general store in, well, brooklyn, of course! i didn’t buy any yarn there, but i found two lovely books by elizabeth zimmerman. classics than no knitter can do without! i just love her writing! the booklet by jared flood was purchased at saratoga needle arts. i really like his patterns, and he is such a brilliant photographer.

lovely knitting books

i have loads of photos from my journey and i did see a lot of other things a part from yarn, of course, but for now i’ll leave you with the lovely yarns that now grace my stash!

happy knitting!

 

autumn inspiration

i’m making some progress on my tea time cardigan, i’ve finished the left front and started the right. it knits up fairly quickly since it calls for 4 mm knitting needles. it’s nice to knit with somewhat larger needles for a change. but i prefer 3 mm or 2,5 mm most of the time. anyway, here’s the obligatory progress shot:

tea time progress

the latest issue of interweave knits arrived a couple of weeks ago, and i really liked several of the projects. i will probably not knit all of them, but i felt really inspired to plan for some nice autumnal knitting in the coming months. for those who know me also know that my favourite season is autumn. to me, that’s when the year begins. in this respect i really miss school. it was so much more obviuos then. new pencils and books that i would use during the coming year. often some new clothes to wear for the first day of school. he morning air is slightly chilly. and the beautiful display of colours as the leaves are turning from greens to yellow, red, orange and brown. and later in the autumn you find frost on leaves on the ground and ice on puddles. we’re soon there…

from interweave knits fall 2009

from interweave knits 2009

from interweave knits 2009

i haven’t bought the latest rowan magazine, number 46, but there are some lovely things in that one too that made me want to fill my knitting basked with wool, wrap myself in a blanket with a cup of tea beside me (or a small glass of sherry) and some knitting in my hands.

from rowan magazine no 46

from rowan magazine no 46

from rowan magazine no 46

from rowan magazine no 46

from rowan magazine no 46

from rowan magazine no 46

speaking of rowan, even though i do like some of their design, things have just not the same since kim hargreaves left them. i know i’ve mentioned this before, but i really think it’s a great loss to rowan. luckily for us kim hargreaves-fans, she has continued designing and her pattern books are available through rowan stockists, but primarily from her own website. if you haven’t exlpored it before i recommend that you take a look. her latest booklet “precious” is just out and there are loads of lovely things in her simple, elegant style. when you enter the site you can also find links to her previous booklets.

i’m looking forward to an autumn filled with knitting!

 

garden green

whenever i add a new yarn to my ravelry stash i always check that wonderful function “pattern ideas” to see what other people have used that particular yarn for. even if i have an intended project for that yarn, you never know, you might come across a pattern that might be even better. i had no intended project for the ryc cashcotton yarn that i bought in edinburgh, so the pattern search function was even more welcome this time. after browsing a number of pages with suggestions, i fell for the tea time cardigan from the rowan classic summer brochure.

rowan classic summer

i already owned the brochure and i’ve found that classic summer has a number of very nice patterns, but this particular one has caught my eye before and i’ve menatlly added it to my to-do-list a long time ago. well, now i had the yarn, so all i had to do was cast on!

tea time cardigan

and what can possibly be lovlier that knitting a pretty summer cardigan in a summer garden environ.

garden knitting

i’ve actually knitted a bit further than this, i’ve reached the part of the right from where the sleeves will be set in.

the yarn is lovely to knit with, but i’ve read that it does pill quite a lot. i’m not surprised at that, such soft yarns often do. but i’m not discouraged, it will make an incredibly soft little cardigan. that might be a bit to warm to wear in the summer though!

 

ships* everywhere

i’ve spent two wonderful weeks in uk. one week in cornwall and one week in scotland. it was very difficult to muster any enthusiasm to go home, i can tell you. i had a wonderful time. all the time. oh, i’ve been to england many times, but never to cornwall or scotland. i couldn’t possibly say which parts i loved best, all i know is that all the places that i visited during these two weeks, i will visit again! i didn’t buy much yarn, although i did find some nice yarns here and there, because most of it you can get over the internet. but i did buy two small skeins of the locally produced yarn from shilasdair when i visited isle of skye. i bought it at the tourist information shop in portree, because it was difficult to get to shilsdair without a car.

aran yarn from shilasdair

by chance i happened upon a rowan yarn sale when i was in edinburgh, everything on sale was at half price, so i bought a whole bag (10 skeins) of rowan ryc cashcotton in a lovely yellow-green colourway. it will probably make a nice soft jumper some day

rowan ryc cashcotton

what i really loved about both cornwall and scotland was that there were sheep everywhere. we travelled by train, so we did get to see a lot of the countryside. i don’t know if most sheep are kept for the meat of for the wool, but i did see a fair amount of sheep that had obviously been sheared, so i suppose that some of them are kept for the sake of the wool. i tried to take photos of them, but it’s not so easy sometimes when the train is speeding by qiute fast. here is one attempt:

scottish sheep

beeing a huge harry potter buff i was obviously thrilled to ride the train over the glenfinnan viaduct! when we arrived at mallaig the jacobite steam train (used in the films) was waiting at the station, so i took some photos of that too:

the “harry potter” viaduct

the jacobite steam train

*in the unlikely event that you aren’t a terry pratchett fan: “ships” is the plural of “sheep” in the nac mac feegle lingo in his books about tiffany aching (which are his best works ever written, in my opinion)

 

elspeth

this turned out to be quite a nice little bolero. i think it will look better together with a nice dress, but these photos will have to do.

the elspeth bolero

pattern: elspeth from rowan 37
designer: laura long
yarn: ecobomull from marks & kattens
yarn source: marias garn
needles: 4 mm
crochet hook: 3,5 mm
modifications: none

the intended yarn for this project is really rowan calmer, but i’ve knitted with that yarn before and wanted to try something else. also, the yarn i chose is more eco-friendly, so i thought i’d give it a try. it’s ok to knit with, but i’m not crazy about it. it is soft to the touch on the ball, but i think it knits up a fairly stiff fabric. it’s also quite heavy, so it might not be a good substitute yarn for calmer in other projects. calmer is a lot more elasic than this yarn (which isn’t elastic at all), so i needed to go down from size 5 mm needles to 4 mm needles. it was fairly easy and fun to knit, but i’m not 100 % satisfied with the shape of the garment. the crocheted edge tend to flare a bit, too. i suppose i cuold have used a smaller crochet hook, but the yarn is quite thick and my crocheting skills are really at beginner level, so i went with the intended size. all in all, i’m quite happy with it anyway, but i don’t know how much i’ll use it. i have a lovely summer dress that has a bit of 50’s look to it, that this would look great together with, so the next time i want to wear that dress, i have a nice little bolero to go with it.

here are some more photos:

detail of lace pattern and sleeve

and this is the back

 

i’m crocheting!

which is quite unusual. but – it’s fun! i need to do this more often. anyway, it’s only on the edge of the elspeth bolero that has been hibernating for a while. but now good friends; it’s actually finished! i’ll upload photos tomorrow (hopefully) together with my comments on the pattern and yarn. this is a small taste of what’s to come:

crocheting on the edge

 

i’m singin’ in the rain

we’ve had such cold and rainy weather here for weeks, it feels more like autumn than summer. the urge to knit warm jumpers rather than thin and airy summer thing is overpowering. it’s a good thing that my present wip is knit up in merino wool, albeit a short sleeved little thing. it is a slow knit, however. i’ve been very good and kept myself to this knitting for weeks now and i am making progress, but not as fast as i’d like. the knowledge of the fact that i will have to re-knit the entire back is also a bit demoralizing. my fingers are itching to start a new project. but i really want to see this jumper finished, too, so i think i’ll be able to restrain myself from casting on. which would be the first time in history, probably.

back, to the left, is too big and will be re-knit

yesterday was the annual world wide knit in public day and my plan was to join up with my knitting group, sthlm knitters, for some public knitting in the centre of stockholm at mariatorget, but alas, we were again forced inside due to the cold and rain. luckily, maria – proprietor of the excellent yarn shop marias garn – gave us space and coffee at her shop. we had a wonderful day but were all sad about being forced indoors. june can be beautiful in sweden, but too often also rainy.

wwkipday in stockholm 2009

 

try again

i’m one of those knitters who has a few ufo’s.  ten of them right now. and six wip’s. i don’t think that’s a whole lot. i’ve seen people on ravelry who have a lot more than i do! but i’m not here to make excuses, what i wanted to tell you is that one previous ufo is now a nice and healthy wip! i have picked up the old short-sleeved diamond stitch sweater (ravelry link) by sarah dallas from vintage knits! i’d already finished the back, but i fear that it’s turned out too big. but i’m not messing with that part now, i finished one sleeve today and i’ve just started on the front. with smaller needles. so there’s hope for the old jumper yet!

first sleeve

the jumper itself is based on an old pattern (provided by yesterknits) that sarah dallas has adapted to modern sizes and yarns. i’m using rowan 4-ply soft. the book provides very small images of the original designs, and the one for this pattern looks like this:

original to the left, new version to the right

so, in this case sarah dallas has stayed fairly true to the original. some of the other patterns in the book differ more from the originals.