Month: March 2016
Double First
Earlier this week, I finished this amazing Askews Me Dickey cowl from Stephen West for my good friend Alex, and I couldn’t be more pleased at how it turned out! This project is a double first for me, it’s the first time I knit anything from (the VERY popular) Stephen West, and it’s also is my very first brioche stitch project.
Although it felt a little strange at first since I’ve never knitted brioche stitch and also because I don’t knit very often with more that one color at once, I must admit that I loved every single stitch of this amazing cowl; the pattern was easy enough to follow for a first-time brioche knitter, the yarn and pattern combo was perfect and the construction of the cowl itself was very interesting. As a bonus, the pattern also features my all time favorite I-cord bind-off. Sweetness! All in all, I had a lot of fun making this project, and I can foresee many a brioche stitch in my future. I actually loved this cowl so much that I think I’ll make one for myself one in a different color some time this year, I’m very much looking forward to it!
Yarn A: 1 skein of worsted weight merino yarn, hand dyed by the lovely Yana from Artfil
Yarn B: 1 skein of Berroco Vintage yarn in black
Needle: 4.5mm caspian circular needle
Oldies but Goodies
Every once in a while I think it’s important to go back to older projects that have been hibernating in your closet for a while and see whether you want to give the yarn a second life as a different project or, in this case, give it the last push it needs to cross the finishing line.
Last winter, I had two pregnant friends who were about to give birth and I must say that I went a little baby crazy – I started all sorts of baby things, some of them I finished and some of them I didn’t. Among other things, there was a cute gray Knotted Openwork baby blanket that was about 60% done – I fell in love with it all over again. It’s an easy stitch and I can always do with more mindless knitting so I decided to give it a shot and try to finish it. And I did! I’m so happy 🙂 One year later there’s no baby in the making anymore, but I can always keep it safely for the next, who knows?
In other news, my Feather and Fan lace sweater pattern has finally been released, thank you all for your support 🙂
Camilla love
I’ve been wanting to make myself a Camilla Pullover from Carrie Bostick Hoge for the longest time, but it seems like I always had too many things on the needles or couldn’t find the right timing. Let me tell you folks, it finally happened in February. Yes, I now have made myself a gorgeously fuzzy, fun and comfortable Camilla Pullover out of some Patons Classic Wool Roving yarn in the Low Tide colorway. Yay!
Let me tell you guys though that although I loved every stitch of this beauty, I struggled quite a bit throughout the process, and for all the wrong reasons, too.
The story starts back in 2013 when I bought 4 skeins of this yarn, not knowing yet what I wanted to do with it. A little while after, I fell madly in love with this gorgeous, gorgeous Camilla pullover pattern and thought it would be a match made in heaven with the yarn I had so I got really excited, until I realized I didn’t have enough yardage to do it. I tried convincing myself for months (if not years) that I could simply make the pattern work with a different yarn (after all it was not even the right weight!) but I simply couldn’t get it out of my head – I’m stubborn like that sometimes.
I looked at every local yarn store but couldn’t find the same yarn in this color anymore, the only option was to purchase it online on Joann’s website. So after a little while, since that project had been haunting me for a long time, I decided to finally order a couple skeins of it so I could reach the required yardage and start the project. Since it’s a commercially produced yarn, I was sort of hoping the color would be a close match to the one I had in stash because there was just no way I could find skeins of the same dyelot, but when I got them, I realized the new skeins were significantly lighter than the ones I had. Sigh.
Now had I been wiser (or just less eager to start), I simply could have waited to get the new skeins to start and then alternate old and new skeins throughout to make the color difference disappear – but I totally didn’t do that. I was so excited about the project that I started it before receiving the extra skeins, and was already almost almost at the armpits when I got them. I didn’t want to frog the entire thing so I did what I could, and when you look up close, you can notice that the body is darker, the sleeves are lighter, and the yoke is somewhat of a hybrid of the two. Oops.
All in all, I don’t really mind it so much and it surely won’t prevent me from wearing the heck out of it for the remainder of the cold season, but lesson learned, folks! I’ll be more careful from now on to avoid this kind of (totally preventable) issue. Had anything similar ever happened to anyone of you guys?
Crafty Effie 