Eden - Post Blocking

And here is Eden after blocking.  I did not do a full wet block, I just didn't want to wrestle that much wet wool.  Instead I laid it out on my blocking board and sprayed it to dampen it.  It doesn't saturate the way full wet blocking does, but that also means that I didn't flatten out the front edging and it dried quickly.

For comparison, here is the shot of the front before blocking.

Spraying is a bit more time-consuming but I do like the results.  I don't need the blocking to even out my knitting, just to open things up a little.


Pattern:  Edin by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn:  madelintosh Pashmina Worsted in Kilim
Needle:  US 7 (4.5 mm)

Eden - Finished!

I finished this up this morning.  These are pre-blocking pictures.

There is a fair bit of variability between the first and second skeins that I used, but I am okay with it.  The fit is perfect and it is warm and cuddly.  I picked up extra stitches under the arm, which gives me a little more room in the sleeves.  I added extra decreases to get back down close to the stitch count for the cuffs called for in the pattern.  I did a k2, p2 rib instead of the k1, p1 rib the pattern called for because I prefer the look.

And this is all the yarn that I had left, not even enough for another row, which makes this the perfect project in my book, because I hate leftovers.


Pattern:  Edin by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn:  madelintosh Pashmina Worsted in Kilim
Needle:  US 7 (4.5 mm)

Eden - Sleeves Done

After I finished the knitting on Elizabeth Woodville I picked up Eden again and quickly made progress - one advantage of knitting with worsted weight yarn.  This is after I had worked 2 skeins of yarn.  At this point I switch to working on the sleeves.

When I ordered the yarn there was a disclaimer on the web site (Jimmy Beans) that colors could vary even in a single dye lot (there is no actual dye lot listed on my labels) and they would do their best to match the skeins, but I will confess that I was not expecting quite so much variation.  It certainly was not apparent when the skeins were lying next to each other.  I noticed it a little when I started knitting with the second skein, but I figured it was just some natural variation in the skein.  I did think about ripping out and using one of the other skeins but I really didn't feel like it, and ripping back would have been a bit of a pain because I spliced (un-plying each skein and re-plying them together) the new skein into the old and had already woven in the ends.  I like to do that as I go along so I have less finishing when I'm done.  I decided it would just have to be a design feature and kept going.

The light isn't very good here today - overcast and rainy, but here it is with both sleeves done.  I have already started knitting the body again with my final skein.  I have some leftovers from both sleeves - for each sleeve I started with a fresh skein.  When I picked up stitches I actually picked up more stitches along the underarm than just the cast on stitches.  This gives me a little more room in the upper arm than is called for in the pattern and also prevents holes.  I did have one little hiccup when I was working the second sleeve.  When I picked the stitches back up from the scrap yarn they had been placed on I missed a strand on one of the stitches - picking up only 3 of the 4 plies of the yarn.  Needless to say I didn't notice it until I had knit a lot of the sleeve.  I thought about it for a little while and then ended up raveling that one stitch all the way back and fixing it.  The hardest part was just making sure that I had the right stitch.

Pattern:  Edin by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn:  madelintosh Pashmina Worsted in Kilim
Needle:  US 7 (4.5 mm)

Eden - Collar started

Back in August I had to travel to California for business and I wanted to take along a knitting project so the weekend before the trip I quickly cast this on and got as far as getting the collar established.  In the end I decided not to take it.  I'm not sure I took any knitting with me, as the trip was a quick one, what I refer to as a Blitzkrieg trip, fly in the night before, go to the morning meeting and take a red-eye back home.  I threw this project into an empty project bag, which quickly became buried in other yarn acquisitions.  This weekend I did some stash cataloging and unearthed it and decided to at least give it the dignity of a project page and a blog post.  It may have to wait a little while before I pick it back up again, but at least it won't get forgotten again.

The yarn is madelinetosh Pashmina Worsted in the color Kilim.  I saw it and fell in love with the color and bought enough to make a sweater.

The actual name of the pattern is Edin, by Bonne Marie Burns, but when I was setting the pattern up in knitCompanion I misspelled the name and never bothered to fix it, because the yarn feels like paradise.  It features my favorite construction techniques - top down, raglan, collar/front band knitted as you go.

Pattern:  Edin by Bonne Marie Burns
Yarn:  madelintosh Pashmina Worsted in Kilim
Needle:  US 7 (4.5 mm)