Finished: Judy's Grandmother's Baby Sweater by Judy Spector

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Nope, it's a baby sweater!


My sister is pregnant with her third child (her first son) and I thought it would be fitting to knit something for the li'l one. Because I think colour-coding babies is stupid and even harmful, I refuse to knit blue for boys and pink for girls until they are actually old enough to request such colours. Since the sweater incorporates a honeycomb stitch pattern, yellow yarn seemed to be most appropriate.

The yarn is Novita Tennessee (100% mercerized cotton) in a warm yellow colourway that has now been discontinued. It's been awhile since I knitted such fine yarn, and it seemed to take forever, even for such a small garment! Stitch for stitch, I think the cardigan I finished last had more of them!

The pattern is Judy's Grandmother's Baby Sweater by Judy Spector, published in Greetings From Knit Café by Suzan Mischer. It's a cute pattern with minimal seaming (yay!), but like I said, it seemed to take an eternity, which is unusual for baby items. Perhaps it was the honeycomb pattern; I kept making false starts and frogging the first 10 stitches or so of many rows as I had difficulty keeping track of which row of the pattern I was at. All in all, it's nice that it's a bit different from the ruffly, cutesy baby sweaters that pattern books are full of. In fact, it has almost a Japanese kimono feel to it, don't you think?

As an instant gratification project after such a fine-gauge one, my next item will be knitted out of super bulky wool. Doubled. Woo!

(P.S. Does it make me a bad person that I saw some yarn that I had never paid attention to at the LYS*, noticed that it was heavily discounted and only then frantically tried to figure out what it would be good for? I ended up buying 10 skeins.)

*) Local Yarn Store, for the uninitiated.

A charade

What could this be the first half of? Hit me with your best guess!


(Ravelrers need not apply, it's cheating! :-))

The correct answer to be revealed in my next post!

Finished: Short-Sleeved Cardigan with Ribbing by Stefanie Japel

One of the best things about Ravelry is the fact that it lets you compile a list of patterns that you intend to knit (a so-called "queue"). This yellow cardigan had been sittin' pretty at the top of my queue for awhile - in fact, ever since I got Stefanie Japel's book, Fitted Knits. I remember clicking "Not Interested" time and time again when Amazon suggested this book to me, but in the end I gave up and bought it. And just as well, as while several of my knitting pattern books have maybe two or three patterns of interest to me, I currently have four more projects from this book in my queue. Waiting patiently, as those in queues do (my queue is currently 40 items long, so it could be a long wait).

Thus, last week when I got home from Tampere (where I attend university two days a week) and having finished Rowan Minn on the train, I jumped at the opportunity to finally start this cardigan. The weather in Finland has turned decidedly autumny of late and I wanted something warm and snuggly. I got the yarn in June and it's been sitting in my yarn box, singing sweet yarn siren songs (the mythical creature kind, not the fire alarm kind). To be fair, the pattern yarn, Cascade 128 (100% Peruvian Highland wool), is not amazing. It's chunky and coarse, but my, it is indeed warm. Mental note: wear a t-shirt underneath.

The main mod I did was lengthening the sleeves, obviously. The thought of knitting a heavy cardigan out of bulky wool and leaving the sleeves short - and I do mean t-shirt short - just didn't make any sense to me. Originally I was going to make them full length, but as I went along, the 3/4 length seemed more appropriate. Dare I say the sleeves have a slight 1940s vibe to them?

SLEEVE MODS FOR 3/4 LENGTH:

Rnds 1-13 as per pattern
Rnds 14-40 knit
Change to smaller needles.
Rnds 41-48 purling and knitting rows as per pattern
Rnd 49 k11, k2tog, k11, k2tog, knit to end = 36 sts
Rnds 50-65 k2, p2 ribbing (one rnd more than in pattern)
Rnd 66 knit
Rnds 67-74 purling and knitting rows as per pattern
BO.

A row counter is extremely useful in making sure the sleeves match (also to get the right number of ribbing rows).
The finished sleeve length is 32cm from underarm to sleeve edge (20cm in original pattern) and falls to match the bottom edge of the body. Doing the sleeves like this will add approximately half a skein to the yarn requirements.

Once again, I am not 100% satisfied with my product. To be sure, it is better than the Favorite Cardigan, so I'm getting there! However, the cardigan is a wee bit baggy just above the waist ribbing, which does bother me. I might try and see if I can come up with a way to tighten it across the back.

When I started this project, I kept thinking "Oh, I should make an entry in the blog about this" and track the progress. However, this being another top-down project and of bulky yarn too, it was such a quick'un that I really didn't have a chance.
My next project will be different again: the yellow theme continues, but the size and weight will be much smaller. Wait and see!

Finished: Rowan Classic Minn by Martin Storey

I have a bad habit - I tend to buy the cheapest thing I can find if it means I can get more of other things. Sometimes this works out (both my wedding gown and wedding ring cost a fraction of what was budgeted for them, and I wouldn't change them for anything!)... and sometimes not (I bought two cheap hair straighteners before giving up and buying the good, expensive ones). My fiancé likes to remind me: the best I can afford, not the cheapest I can tolerate.

When I decided to finally knit myself a scarf (a first), I decided to apply his theory and make it a scarf to end all scarves. I wanted it to be something that I would wear for years and years to come. Soft, luxurious, warm, no matter the cost. The pattern I chose was Minn from the Rowan Classic AM to PM booklet (also Suuri käsityölehti 10/2007), designed by Martin Storey.

When a friend of mine from Australia, David, visited Finland last summer, we took a walk around Helsinki and had lunch under the awning of a café, watching people hurry in the rain. When the weather cleared out, I asked him if he'd accompany me to a yarn shop to buy yarn for my scarf. He did, and the product of such a shopping trip was 9 skeins of vividly red Garnstudio DROPS Silke Alpaca (80% baby alpaca / 20% silk). The yarn set me back nearly 50 euros, but it being the softest yarn in the shop, I had to have it.

I didn't get started on the scarf until February this year after finishing a few scarves for other people for the past winter. Mine could wait; I had the rest of my life to wear it. It was slow going, mostly due to periodical project hibernation, the frogging of half of the scarf at one point (one of the cables was going the wrong way, and This Would Not Do) and misplacing the needles on our trip to London.

Yesterday, however, the scarf was complete. It is the softest, warmest thing you could ever wrap around your neck. I can't wait for November!

Finished: Veera's Hello Kitty Sweater

I finished Veera's sweater a good while ago, but I haven't gotten around to taking photos of it until now. After finishing the sleeves as per the pattern, I measured them, unpicked the bound off stitches and added another four or five centimetres. I also made the body quite a lot longer; It doesn't hurt to err on the side of big with a growing girl! In general, I was surprised how small the pattern was, considering it was supposed to fit a 6-8-year-old and Veera is only turning 5.

I am rather pleased with the result; the Hello Kitty face (which I lifted from a scarf pattern) is recognizable and fun with the fluffy yarn. It was a pain to stitch on, but a good exercise in working with different kinds of yarns. The Novita Jasmin mentioned in the previous post really didn't work with this, so I ended up using black Novita Nalle (75% wool / 25% polyamide) instead. When I bought the main pink yarn for the sweater, I had no idea how many skeins I should get. I ended up getting 5, which was a lucky guess - I had half a skein left at the end.

Now I'll wrap the sweater up in wrapping paper and put it away until December. Let's hope the birthday girl likes it!