Whisper cardigan progress

This is what one hank of Malabrigo lace gets you if you are knitting the medium size of the Whisper Cardigan by Hannah Fettig.

The entire back, the ribbing, a bit of each of two sleeves and about 4 inches of the body. Not too shabby. I've got an entire hank to go, so I should be able to make this as long as I want and still have enough for the sleeves.

I'm going back and forth on the yarn though - it's knitting up into a lovely fabric, but it felts together if you look at it funny. Or don't look at it and just leave it sitting around for a couple of days. Folks, this stuff felts if air gets on it. Initially I was extremely unenthused by this state of affairs - who wants a sweater that's felted and worn looking before it's even finished? - but it does produce a really lovely halo on the yarn, and fills in the gaps in the stitches caused by knitting laceweight on 4.5 mm needles. I think you can see that in the photo - the section on the top of the picture is slightly felted, while the bottom part is "new", and therefore less felted.

So...I'd say the jury is still out (I certainly wouldn't knit anything for someone that would ever get used with this yarn) (or give it to someone who didn't understand the Finer Intricacies of Handwashing Your Woolens), but I'm thinking it will be ok in a cozy, lightweight layer of a sweater for me. Stay tuned...

Commuting knitting

I went back to work yesterday, and noticed a serious shortfall - I have no commuting knitting. There I was, on the train to Waterloo, with no mindless or small knitting project in my bag.

You'll be glad to know that this shortfall has since been remedied. I've had a couple of skeins of Malabrigo Lace marinating in the stash for about three years now, and it's time to convert them into a Whisper Cardigan.

This is one of the few instances when I've bought the yarn with a project in mind and actually ended up casting it on. True to form, I am modifying the every-living Bejeebus out of this pattern. After looking at the schematics, I decided that I wanted to have the option to make the body and the sleeves a bit longer. I've only got 2 skeins, so I've decided to start from the middle of the back and knit outward to the sleeves (instead of starting at one cuff and knitting across). I'll put the stitches for the sleeves on holders, and knit the rest of the body as long as suits me, then go back and finish the sleeves off.

That's the plan at least. But knitting laceweight on US 7/4.5 mm needles makes for quite the change from 3-ply handspun on 6s!

Button, button, who's got the buttons?

Last night I finished off sleeve #2 of my Garter Yoke Cardigan, out of the Timber Romney I spun during last year's Tour de Fleece (thanks very much BBC online rebroadcast of the men's triathlon!). Today I laid that puppy out on the coffee table and had a good long think about buttons.

I pulled out my (admittedly not very large) button stash and pawed through for some possibilities. First up was the way plain option.

Plain, purple buttons. These look pretty good - they match the darker purple stripes pretty well, and are a good contrast with the more yellow bits.

Choice #2:

Some domed brown buttons with a stripe. Also a good choice, but a bit too big for the buttonholes. Onward...

Some engraved metal buttons. A better size choice, but I don't like the metallic against the handspun. The sweater is such a warm, autumnal palette, that the metal clashes pretty badly. One more option:

These are some gorgeous glass buttons that Mermaid gave me a while back, and they work surprisingly well (at least I'm surprised). They are mostly blue, with bits of pink, purple, green and grey. I really like how these look, and they are the best of the whole lot. However, there is one wee problem...

That pile there is the sum total of these buttons that I've got in my stash. Said button band requires ten, count 'em, 10 buttons. Bollocks! I guess this is a good example of an instance in which blindly following the pattern spacing for buttonholes is not necessarily the best plan if you have limited buttons in your stash.

The upside of this whole fiasco? I get to go back to the local button store tomorrow...result!

FO: Mini-oak cardigan

Pattern: Little Oak Cardigan, by Alana Dakos, from the Coastal Kids collection
Yarn: iKnit or Dye Superwash Merino sock, 366 m/100 gr, 1 skein in "Bachelorette". I ended up using about 3/4 of the skein, so maybe 280 meters total? I'll have to weigh the remainder to be sure.
Needles: US 3/3.25 mm circulars, for a gauge of 28 sts/~40 rows per 4 inches.
Start/finish: 17 July - 2 August 2012 -- gotta love the baby sweaters for (mostly) instant gratification!
Comments/mods: This was a really nice pattern. Worked from the bottom up, easy stockinette body, fun yoke pattern at the top. I like the development of the oak leaf pattern at the top - it wasn't clear to my mind's eye how that was going to end up looking, but I really like it.

The pattern was pretty straightforward, but I did run in to one minor issue (mostly of my own making): the pattern is laid out with the chart on the second page. What isn't clear however, unless you read ahead (which you should always do, and I didn't, so it's my own damn fault), is that there are some shaping instructions for the body before you start the chart. What I did was knit the body and the sleeves, start working the chart, and then discovered the shaping instructions and started doing those. We'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that I didn't actually need to do any shaping for the size I was knitting (6 months) and just say that this is a pattern for which it would behoove you to read ahead and make sure you understand what supposed to happen when.

Yesterday, the girls and I went out on a button-mission. I'm happy to say, I am once again living close to a yarn store, and this one happens to have a fabulous selection of buttons stashed away in the back. They helped me pick out some lovely silvery buttons with red edges, which work really well with the yarn.

The yarn: this was one of my long-neglected club yarns for the iKnit Sock club that I've mentioned before. It ended up as a lovely subtly variegated fabric, nice and soft and cozy, but hopefully washing-machine friendly. I will be recommending the delicate or wool cycle to the New Mum, but I think this is going to be a great sweater for the wee lad-to-be. Who now has full permission to arrive at any moment, because his sweater is done. His blanket, on the other hand, is a big plastic bag of yarn in the attic, but he can't wait until I get that finished, or poor N will explode!

Hello August!

Hello strangers! Ehem...my apologies for promising to attempt blogging about things other then the Tour de Fleece during the month of July and then promptly disappearing for four weeks. In the interim, I went to the Pyrenees for a week and packed up/moved house/started unpacking, so it's all been a bit nuts.

The Pyrenees were lovely, the weather was just the antidote to British Summer (TM), the "real" Tour (the cycling version that is) was spectacular, and while continuing to spin, I started a wee baby sweater for a baby due tomorrow.

This morning, I wove in the last ends on the buttonband, and this teensy tiny sweater is now blocked and drying.

The pattern is Little Oak, the child sized-version of the Gnarled Oak Cardigan by Alanna Dakos, from Coastal Knits. A great, fast pattern (hooray for 6-month sized sweaters!), with enough interest in the yoke to keep it from being too boring. I'll give more details when I find some buttons and get it ready to go off to the Wee Lad for whom it is destined - hopefully finding buttons this afternoon will mean that he will realize it is time to evict himself ASAP, as his poor Mum is getting quite uncomfortable. However, I will hold off on button shopping until after I meete her for our dog walk this afternoon - I really don't want her going in to labor on Wimbledon Common!