Camelia Tee - Finished!

After finishing up Chart 4 on Galadriel's Mirror I really didn't have the brain power to start Chart 5 so I picked this back up and finished it off.  Some mindless knitting was exactly what I needed.  I still have 8 grams left of the first skein, so I could have done a couple of more rows, but I liked the length and I didn't want to be sweating out the bind off.  This took 700 yards, or 161 grams of yarn.  Now I have another way to use up leftovers.  It is a simple pattern and could be easily modified into a tunic, and one could always add more lace or cables, or whatever else tickles your fancy.

Project:  Camelia Tee by Anna Nilsson
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Marici Fingering in Dusk on the Fjord
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Camelia Tee - Yoke Done

After I finished up skein 6 I put the yoke on a longer cable and pinned it out to check my progress.  I wanted to make sure that my gauge and dimensions were okay.  Things look pretty good, so I switched back to my shorter cable and kept going.

I finished up skein 5 and started on skein 4 before I reached the end of the yoke and started working the body.  After I had worked a couple of rows of the body I pulled out the center of my skein 4 yarn ball so I could do the finish work on the sleeves - 2 rows of stockinette and an I-Cord cast off.  I weighed the ball before and after finishing the sleeves so I would have an idea of how much yarn I would need to work the I-Cord cast off for the body.  Now I'm on the boring part, just endless rounds of stockinette.  Depending upon the length I may add in a few increases to provide some shaping on the lower half.

Project:  Camelia Tee by Anna Nilsson
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Marici Fingering in Dusk on the Fjord
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Camelia Tee

When I test knit Snow Queen I received an exceptionally generous set of yarn.  Typically the six skein sets are 300 grams, mine was 378 grams.  I used 208 grams for Snow Queen, which left me with 170 grams of yarn.  At first I thought I would do another one of my color study shawls, but 170 grams is a lot of leftovers.  It comes out to over 700 yards.  There are a lot of things I could do with that much yarn.  I did a pattern search and came up with the Camelia Tee, a sweet little top down tee with raglan shaping and a lace panel on the shoulders.  Once I finished up the test knit I was working on I cast on.

The pattern calls for a provisional cast on, and then going back, picking up those stitches, knitting two rows and doing an I-Cord cast off.  Piffle, says I.  I will just do an I-Cord cast on.  The I-Cord cast on is lovely, but it is a bit tedious.  You work it by casting on 3 stitches and then working into the back and then the front of the first stitch, then knit the other two stitches.  Slip three stitches back to your left needle and repeat.  For most of it I actually detached the left hand needle from the cable, only re-attaching it when the I-Cord got long enough that it was getting close to the end of the cable.  The I-Cord cast on has a wonderful advantage, you can easily rip back if you make a mistake because those cast on stitches are not going anywhere.  I had to rip back several times.  First I messed up the set up row with the increases so one of my sleeves was coming out wonky.  Then I tweaked the lace chart by removing all of the purl stitches, but realized after working through the chart that I wanted to keep some of the purl stitches because I was losing the texture, and I noticed a mistake - a spurious yarn over.  I finally have it the way I like it.  I'm working it from the darkest color to the lightest color.

Project:  Camelia Tee by Anna Nilsson
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Marici Fingering in Dusk on the Fjord
Needle:  US 4 (3.5 mm)