A purple key sweater

Made using this pattern.

This is adorable and I definitely need to make more!

Cabled and green

Remember that box of yarn that came in the post last November? Some of it has become a cardigan.

This is Metro by Connie Chang Chinchio, a pattern I fell in love with as soon as I saw it in Twist Collective. Those three-quarter sleeves! That understated cabling, growing from ribbing, flowering briefly, and dissolving back unto that whence it came! The seamless construction! That casual-but-pretty, throw-on-with-any-outfit charm! Perfect.

And then there was that WEBS special of free postage for Knitting Daily subscribers, where they forgot to add ‘US addresses only’. Forty dollars worth of international postage at no charge? Yes, please. I wanted to make this a trans-seasonal cardigan and so set out in search of a good wool/cotton blend yarn (having read somewhere that fibre composed of 50% wool and 50% cotton is greater than the sum of its parts). A user review pretty much made the decision for me: ‘Just buy it. You won’t be disappointed.’ And the winner is Spud & Chloe Sweater.

That anonymous reviewer was totally right. This yarn would be a bargain at twice the price. When you’re knitting it feels like wool, soft, bouncy and without the crispness that cotton and cotton-blend yarns often have, but it’s cool enough to wear in spring and autumn. And according to the manufacturers you can machine wash and tumble dry it (though of course I’ve no plans for any such sacrilege). It’s marketed as a children’s yarn and most of the colourways are pretty strong, but if you can go with that it’s amazing. I would definitely use this again and again.

Knitting such a beautiful, cleverly-constructed pattern from such fantastic yarn was a joy. I hate seaming and tend to choose patterns that allow me to avoid it, but raglans often don’t flatter broad shoulders. Metro’s sleeves are picked up around the armhole, the cap shaped with short rows, and the sleeve worked in the round. I’d heard of this sleeve technique and was anxious to try it. Now having done it twice (once for each sleeve, see) I am convinced this is the only way to knit sleeves. Ever.

The only modifications I made to this pattern were to graft the shoulders instead of using a three-needle bind off, and to knit the sleeves to fit my long arms instead of to the written measurement. I’d be very tempted to make this again, and the only thing I’d change is the size. You’ll notice it looks fairly snug on me, which is a result of the evil gauge gremlins changing my gauge between swatch and garment (again). However the difference wasn’t enough to make it unwearable so I decided not to frog.

Pretty damn awesome, if I do say so myself. Everything about this was good: great yarn, fun to knit, great to wear, good-looking, and a pretty good fit. My green metro is ravelled here.

My favourite FO this year

Is without doubt my purple Liesl cardigan. You can tell by the silly grin on my face!

I’ve been wanting to knit this for ages, so I’m understandably ecstatic that it’s done. The pattern is Liesl by Ysolda Teague, and I used the beautifully bulky, squishy single-ply Freedom Wool by Twilleys of Stamford. It’s a thicker yarn than the pattern calls for—something I didn’t realise until I swatched—but luckily that meant I just had to knit one size down to get the size I wanted. A nice change from having to knit several sizes up for my owls sweater. And I’m in love with the buttons too—purple-dyed shell, which I got at Tangled Yarns when I was in Brisbane in September. They aren’t exactly the same tone, but they match the yarn better than these photos suggest.

The thick woolliness of the yarn I used has made my purple Liesl warmer to wear than I expected, but this means it will just be a Spring-and-Autumn cardigan instead of a Summer-evening cardigan. Given the number of cardigans I’m planning to knit in the next few months, I’m pretty okay with that.

A slight word of warning if you choose to use this yarn: it’s soft, and squishy, and smooth, and almost the opposite of itchy, but being a thick single it’s loosely spun and does develop something of a halo pretty quickly. I’ve heard it’s easy to felt too, but I’m being anally-retentive-careful with this cardigan so that shouldn’t be an issue. I’m hoping it won’t pill too badly, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

In the meantime, cue more silly grins at the lacy prettiness, more sly snuggles of the epic softness, and many, many boasts of the general purple loveliness. And probably a good deal of wearing it, even when the weather’s really a bit too warm.

Owls progress

I accidently left my secret knitting at work last weekend, which allowed me the guilty pleasure of working on my owls jumper for two blissful, deadline-free days. I got as far as joining the sleeves to the body!

And now it’s looking much more like a real jumper, and less like a random collection of tubes. I’m about to finally start the owls themselves, so this is definitely the home stretch.

It wasn’t until I started the chart that I realised I haven’t twisted a cable in ages…hardly ever in fact. The few times I did it, I can’t remember it being such a hassle—but still, maybe I should make a few practise owls first.

Of course, now that it looks like I might actually be able to wear this in the foreseeable future, the weather has become warm and delightfully springy. And completely unsuitable for the wearing of jumpers one has spent ages knitting. However this is Canberra, city of unpredictable weather. This time last year someone scoffed at me knitting a scarf, but two weeks later I was wearing it. We’ll see.

A sleeve knitted is a sleeve gained

In which our heroine attempts to justify her selfish nature as it pertains to knitting.

I’ve had a rather busy weekend, which made me feel the need for some simple knitting. This meant I finished one of the sleeves of my owls jumper at long last.

I think I’ve said before that this has so far been a really pleasurable knit. I’m really looking forward to being able to wear this jumper too—at least two mornings a week I curse my wardrobe for its lack of owls jumpers, which would be so handy and yet so stylish in this continuing terrible weather. Given these two facts I feel like I could have knit this jumper in record time—perhaps as little as two weeks—but alas, there have been more important knitting deadlines to attend to. Still, when you’re as selfish as me, it does you good to knit on projects for yourself every few days. It keeps the impetus up for everything else.

I should say that my secret knitting is rather pattern-heavy, that it’s not just the fact that it’s for someone else that makes me want a break from it now and then. Just so I don’t sound like a completely self-centered whinger. But I am quite proud of it, and I’m looking forward to being able to show it to you. It’s on its way, but it’s comforting to know that so is my owls jumper.

I like seamless knitting

I’m almost halfway through my owls jumper and loving it to bits. I’ve wanted to knit this for ages, and now it’s proving a very enjoyable project as well as a means to an end.

I’m particularly fond of in-the-round, seamless construction, as like most knitters there’s nothing I hate more than seaming. And being able to try garments on while they’re still on the needles is pretty damn sweet.

The seamless sleeves are at the impressive stage of looking more like oversize wristbands than sleeves as such. I think the 5.5mm dpns give them a rather hardcore look, don’t you?

Unfortunately I’ve had to put the owls jumper aside to work on my more pressing time-sensitive knitting, but I’m determined to finish it before it’s too warm to wear it.

(Excuse the rubbish photos by the way, but there’s only so much I can do with dark brown yarn at this time of night!)