Lundish

Blue Daisies is now finished, hoorah hooray!  When I'd blocked it, I realised that it was about 4" longer than I intended it to be, so I took a chunk off the bottom and used it to knit a double-sided neckband, which worked beautifully and gives it a lovely structure.  I then decided that it didn't need a button band, and have just put a single button at the neck instead and left the rest open.

It's perfect - light and warm and pretty and drapey - and I am having to resist the urge to wear it every day.  Pictures soon!

So, my next trick is a colour-work yoke jumper, which is coming along nicely.  In fact, I've reached the stage of yoke-knitting:

The yoke is my own design, based on traditional Fair-Isle patterns:

I have 400 stitches in the round with the arms and body joined, which gives me 20 repeats of a 20-stitch pattern.  The pattern is 50 stitches deep, so over that fifty stitches I need to narrow from 400 stitches 200 stitches: each pattern repeat starts with 20 and narrows to 10 stitches. Next job, working out where my decreases are going to be!

I've called this Lundish because I started very roughly with the Radio Times's Sarah Lund sweater, although I've moved a very long way from that now.  I'm excited about it, though!  It should be ready perfectly in time for the weather to get colder.

Blue daisies

I've been working on two things since I finished the Pink Ginger.  The first is my Lundish jumper, a bottom-up Fair-Isle yoke jumper which was inspired by ... well, you can probably guess.  It's on Ravelry here.  I knitted about 7" of it and then decided it was April and time to knit summer things.

So for the last couple of months, I've been working on a very light top-down raglan cardigan, made in Zitrone Filligran:

It's a skinny little top-down raglan with a very simple daisy lace patter. The idea was to make a very light little wool cardigan that could be stuffed into the corner of a bag and easily layered under light summer jackets, which is what I do with all my cardigans.

Tragically, that is 100% of the two skeins - well, I have about 2.5m left. This is a problem as it definitely needs a neckline knitted onto it, and probably a buttonband as well. The plan was to finish it off properly, with a double-layer neckline and buttonband for structure. Unfortunately … there is no more yarn. And I can’t think of anything that’ll go with that petrol blue. I mean, I can - obviously red, orange or bright yellow would be the natural choices, or else a slightly lighter grey-blue - but I wanted it to be a plain and neutral cardie that would go with anything. I’ll probably wear it with lots of colours.

Currently thoughts are to get a cream/natural yarn in a similar weight and use that for a neckline and buttonband, or to do get some natural-coloured lace trim, or to get some very light silk-scarf fabric in a similar dark blue, cut it into bias strips and use that to face the neckline and buttonbands. My concerns with each course of action are:

Can I get natural lace weight yarn in the right weight? And if so, would I sew a solid neckline and buttonband or find a lace pattern?  (Answer: yes, Purl City Yarns has the exact same yarn in cream. Hm.)

If I use manufactured lace, will be too heavy and change the hang and fit of the garment?

So very Jigsaw-circa-2008.

So I don’t know. Thoughts?

Pink Ginger, finished

It's been so long that Blogger's user interface has completely changed.  Hmm...

Anyway, some finished objects!  First of all, my Pink Ginger jumper.  I am slightly alarmed at how precisely the finished jumper matches the original MS Paint picture!

(OH GOSH I wish I was better at taking pictures of myself.  I would love to be one of those bloggers who always posts beautiful pictures of what they've made and how they wear it, but I never know what to do with my face or arms.  And I'm not a very good photographer either.  Perhaps I will get better now we've got the fancy new camera!)

I finished this sometime around March, I think, although it’s taken me ages to get some photos of it. It hasn’t quite found its place in my wardrobe yet - it wasn’t quite warm enough for most of the winter, and I assumed it would be too warm for summer. But we’ve had such a rubbish summer that I’ve started wearing it a lot - it’s the perfect light jumper to pull on at weekends with cotton trousers and a vest top.

 Lots of the astrakhan left - I keep thinking it would make a lovely soft toy for a small child, and then imagining the hell that complicated increases and decreases would be in bouclé…