Sunday, September 30, 2012

Japanese Maple

My knitting mojo has been a bit low lately.  I suspect it is partly due to the craziness at work leaving me pretty wiped out at the end of the day.  Not bad craziness, just crazy busy, and a lot of extrovert activity, which always wears me out.  One of the things I have been doing in an attempt to revitalize my knitting mojo is working on some of my older projects, but this weekend I decided to start something new.  This yarn was the first offering in Zen Yarn Garden's Quasi Yarn Club, from May 2011.  The color is Japanese Red Maple, and it was offered in Serenity Silk, Serenity 20 and Serenity Worsted.  I picked up 4 skeins of Serenity Worsted, but then was faced with the dilemma of what to knit with it.  I finally knit a swatch up with it earlier this year and just fell in love with the color.  The picture does not do it justice.  I knew that I wanted something simple and elegant that would let the yarn be the star.  I have been searching the pattern database and have found a lot of possibilities, but none of them were quite right.  Then this past week I decided to reknit my Fresh Ink cardigan as a raglan pullover and that got me thinking.  I've always wanted an elegant little raglan pullover with a wide stand up collar, reminiscent of something Audrey Hepburn would wear.  So, I got out my swatch, did some math and started knitting.  I am ready to slip the sleeve stitches on some waste yarn and start knitting the body.  I am going to weigh my skein before I do that, and figure out how much yarn I am using so I can do some more math and figure out how long I can make it, and how long I can make the sleeves.  I want to use up every yard of this lovely yarn.

Pattern:  my own
Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Serenity Worsted in Japanese Red Maple (200 yds, 115 g)
Needle:  US 7, 4.5 mm

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