Thursday, May 19, 2011

Weekend Knitting

I went away last weekend and I might have overdone casting on new projects, without finishing anything!


Clockwise from left: Reef from Ondine, Tuesday from Blue Monday, Breaker from Ondine, and the sleeves of Mandarin from Chinoiserie, all by Louisa Harding and all in Adorn Yarns Cotton Cashmere, except Tuesday which is in Adorn Yarns Silky Merino DK. Now I just have to finish them!

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Skipper!

Well, it's been a while and I have been knitting, but I've also been doing plenty of unpulling. This yarn started off as Kim Hargreaves' Patsy from Touching Elegance, and I had knitted quite a bit of it, but I just wasn't happy with knit, so I unpulled it. And then I saw the new Louisa Harding books and I fell in love again with her patterns and bought a pile from the UK. The first project is Skipper from Ondine, which took quite a bit of tweeking to get the fit right and hence more unpulling. The body to the underarms is a size 10, the fit across the front and back (the same) is a size 12 and the length of the arm hole is a size 14. I also lengthened the body and the sleeves until they felt right for me. Here's the outcome:




The three big cable up the front and back (I reversed mine to that they were on my right hand side) are very dramatic (and easy) while showing off the beautiful yarn from the Wool Baa (Adorn DK wool/silk mix). 


And for those of you that care that's what a canon 135mm f2L lens at f2 and closest focussing distance (0.9m) looks like. New favourite lens...thanks Roo!


Next project on the needles is Louisa Harding's Mandarin from Chinoiserie, another beautiful pattern and one I've been thinking about knitting for a while. As the body is knitted in one piece to the underarm, the bottom fair isle pattern is knitted in one piece, that's 217 odd stitches of fair isle per row and I'm managing one row a day! Lucky is a cotton cardigan, I should have it finished by summer! The yarn is from Wool Baa, this time DK Cotton Cashmere and taken with that new lens again...