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!

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?

josephina

Not much to report on the knitting front, friends - I have about six inches left of the second sleeve to do on raglan road, and then it will just need blocking and sewing up. My thesis writing schedule is having a detrimental effect of my knitting, and no noticeable effect on my thesis. Oh well! Onwards and upwards.

But in the midst of this soulless and lonely work, something bright and cheerful arrived on my doorstep: the yarn for josephina! Such are my powers of indecision that I ended up buying both the Garden Flowers silk/cotton mix and the Empress crochet cotton, on the grounds that I am not, after all, the kind of girl who couldn't possibly find a use for 500g of randomly coloured summer yarn:




600g of Empress Crochet Cotton





375g of Garden Flowers, 70% Silk & 30% Cotton, on 25g spools



Eeeee! So pretty! And also, so utterly tiny: whichever one I use, I will have to double it, which is easy in the case of the Garden Flowers, as I have doubles of all the various colours, but harder in the case of Empress, which will need to be wound onto something else. I think I will look for yarn winders on Ebay.

I am leaning towards Empress for Josephina, and some skinny little cardigan in Garden Flowers, but who can say? Swatches coming right up!

raglan road

Wandering around Ranelagh and Donnybrook the other evening, we noticed that there were places where the ground was starting to look dry: we've had over a week, I think, of sunny days, and spring is quite definitely in residence. Wool has been put away, and I am dreaming of cotton, linen, viscose and silk. Summer knitting!

I've made a healthy start on the Sirdar Denim cardigan that I mentioned nearly a month ago:






raglan road



The guiding principle of this knit seems to be to avoid seams as far as possible: I've knitted the body in a single piece, and have started one of the sleeves in the round, so the only thing I'll have to sew will be the raglan seams. The lace around the bottom is, er, "borrowed" from Knitty's Soleil, but on a 12 stitch repeat rather than a 10 stitch one.

My gauge is all sorts of wonky: I originally knitted this yarn on 3.75mms, I think, and rather tightly. It's now on 4mm Addi Turbos and very loose, but not quite evenly so. I am hoping that blocking it will work the usual miracle, and I'll have a lovely drapey fabric. Fingers crossed!

Meanwhile, I am looking for yarn for my next project, Josephina:




Josephina



Named because it will (if I can find the yarn) be a top of many colours. At least five, and possibly six or more. The top piece will made the same way as my doomed Cannibal's Sack Sweater Dress, as a top-down raglan. The "skirt" part will be knitted horizontally using short-rows, so it really swings. I'm going to do it in reverse stocking stitch, using nothing bigger than DK, and possibly 4-ply or smaller.

I'm looking for yarn on Texera, which has many some utternly fabulous yarns for wonderful prices. But. The brightest, most beautiful colours (Good Fortune, Double Top) come in 250g cones and cost £7.20 each, which would mean that I would only be able to do it in two colours. Kilnsey (DK), Monaco (Aran) and Provence (DK) are all cheaper, but the colours just aren't as brilliant.

The best bet might be Garden Flower Silk (70% silk, 30% cotton), but it's tiny, tiny yarn - 1000m to 100g, where DK is around 160m and 4-ply is 340m. On the other hand, if it comes in 25g spools, then I can hold two or even three strands together. Or there's Empress, which is 3ply. What do do, what to do?

cold enough

Hullo Blogspot! Goodness, it's been a while, hasn't it? Sorry for the absence: I left my camera in London at the beginning of February, and have only just got it back.

In the meantime, there's good news and bad news: 7000 words of my thesis and two job interviews - hurray! - but it hasn't left much time for knitting. All I have to show for myself is another four inches of fairy knitting:





Past the waist and onto the increases: another two inches and I'll be making the sleeves! Perhaps by autumn ... ?

The only other thing I've worked on, the cannibal's sack sweater-dress, has come to a sad halt:




cannibal's sack sweater dress



front and back lace details



I still love the idea: the abbreviated raglan sleeves are great, the lace leaves are lovely, the colour matches my green eyeshadow and it's flattering from certain angles. But at that gauge, it's too bulky, and the yarn is too heathery and too busy: it needs to be so much sleeker. All the fashion mags are talking about this season's sack-shaped dresses, but my sack sweater-dress isn't going to see the light of day.

So the poor yarn will be ripped again, perhaps destined for Knitty's French Market bag. If I still fancy a sleeveless, non-sack sweater-dress by the autumn, I'll perhaps try something similar on 4mm needles.

Right now, though, despite the fact that Ireland has chosen to celebrate St Patrick's Day with a new ice-age, my thoughts are turning to summer. My denim Sirdar is probably going to be something like this:




A light, breezy summer cardigan for pulling over cotton dresses. It's based on one I've seen in Benetton, which actually has horizontally knitted sleeves, but I'm not going to bother with that. Lace around the bottom, stocking stitch everywhere else, raglan sleeves, a deep v-neck, and an i-cord drawstring at the waist. Roll on summer!