12 May 2007

bothar raglan

As promised, the finished Raglan Road:






raglan road



That's my own pattern, knitted in Sirdar Indigo Pure Cotton Denim DK on 4mms. I had 500g, and I've one full ball and a few bits and pieces left.

And I love it! It's easy and sexy and soft, the perfect long-sleeves for summer. As soon as it warms back up again, I'll wear it tied loosely over waistless dresses. And I'm going to take it with me in August when we go to Portugal to stay with my girlfriend's cousin: I'll shove it in my bag when I'm wearing sandals and a long patterned maxi-dress, and then pull it on an hour or so after sunset, as we sit out drinking local wine and listening to the crickets and talking rubbish. The indigo dye is also supposed to face and change as it gets washed, so the lace pattern will become more pronounced.

Definitely a success!

10 May 2007

progress report

So, Raglan Road is finished, and Josephina is begun.

Raglan Road took longer than it really ought to have done, because I kept changing my mind about how to do it. First of all, because I wanted to seam as little as possible, I knitted a flat, single-piece body, and two sleeves in the round:






raglan road part one, blocking



But then I decided that I didn't even want to do that much seamer, ripped it back to the beginning of the raglan shaping - keeping twelve stitches from each sleeve and each side of the body live - and started knitting the yoke all in one:




raglan road reknit



Shortly after I took that photo, I realised that I'd actually got one arm slightly closer to the front than the other, so I ripped back down to the sleeve and body join again, and reknitted. This time it stuck! I finished the underarms by putting the 24 stitches from the body and the sleeve alternately and casting them off, and did a plain cast off around the back of the neck. And here she blocks:




raglan road, final blocking



And ooh, let's have a close up of that lace:






I've also knitted a long i-cord and threaded it through the holes just above the end of the lace pattern, and it is actually totally perfect. Pictures of the garment being modelled will follow, when my glitzing girl comes back from Germany and takes them.

All I need now is for the warm weather to come back.

***


Meanwhile, I've made a start on Josephina:






josephina



And - well, what do you think? That's the "skirt" part, which will fall from just under the bust to the top of the hips, and has a short row every two rows, so it's double the width at the bottom that it is at the top. The mercerised cotton has brilliant stitch definition ... which is not actually a good thing, because it makes it extraordinarily difficult to get the ends of the short rows to blend in. I haven't decided whether the garter stitch side or the stocking stitch side is the right side yet, but it's a problem on either. There's always a gap or a knot, no matter how I do it or how much I fiddle with it.

I'm going to persevere with it - that's on 2.5mm Addi turbos, but it's knitting up faster than you'd expect - but I have a sneaky suspicion that this would actually work much better in a wool, or a wool blend. Perhaps I will end up re-making it as a winter top, not a summer one?