Lorna Suzanne Cardigan - Finished!

So, I did end up staying home from work on Monday.  After seeing Bruce off to work, I went back to bed and slept until noon, which is actually highly unusual for me.  In the afternoon I decided I needed some fairly easy knitting so I pulled this project out.  I have been focusing on finishing this one up because I want to cast on another project and I had finished every thing except the collar and button bands.  Monday afternoon I started on the collar.  After finishing up the collar and scoping out the button bands, I decided that I wanted to knit the button bands before I knit the collar, and that I wanted to block the whole thing before I did either.  So, Tuesday morning instead of exercising, I ripped out the collar and blocked the piece.  By Thursday afternoon it was dry and I started on the button bands.  I had to make them a little bit wider to accommodate the larger buttons.

The buttons are Czech pressed glass buttons that I picked up at Bead & Button several years ago.  I traded about half a dozen of my woven scarves for a bunch of buttons.

Pattern:  Lorna Suzanne Cardigan, by Ellen Mason
Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Superwash Worsted in Midnight Plum, 4.8 skeins (960 yards)
Needles: US 5, 6 and 7 (3.76, 4 and 4.5 mm)

Project Updates

I spent most of last week working on this shawl, which I am calling Tart Berries & Honey.  It uses up the rest of the Tart Berries gradiance colorway that I had left over from my Through the Looking Glass shawl.  For the border I grabbed the leftovers from my Golden Phoenix.  I am almost halfway through the border.  The yarn is Luxe, by The Unique Sheep.

I also finally cast on the latest offering from the Light and Dark Lace Club, the Forever shawl by Ruth Greenwald.  It is knit in Pelusa Lace from Zen Yarn Garden in the Scarlet Letter colorway.  I can only work on this one when I have really good natural light, even my Ott light by my knitting spot doesn't quite cut it by itself.  I am not sure why, but on this one I have trouble reading my lace.  I am thinking it is a combination of the dark color and the texture of the yarn, which is kind of curly.  I am about halfway through the first clue.  The knitting is pretty easy, and I like the wider edging and central spine.  The second clue has already come out, but this group is pretty easy going, so I don't feel any pressure to finish this clue quickly.  I am thinking about adding some beads to the second clue.

I have also been working on my Lorna Suzanne cardigan.  I have about 6 inches of the body done.  The yarn is Superwash Worsted by Zen Yarn Garden in Midnight Plum.  It looks very purple in this picture, but it can look very much like dark red plums.  It really shows the berries in the lace motif, and I love the slight variegation of the color.  I am using my new Addi Lace clicks with the longer needles and I love them.  I have a set of the original Addi Lace Clicks, but the fact that the needles were shorter than the standard length that I am used to bothered me, and they feel a bit awkward when I use them.  I am planning on using the shorter needles when I join the sleeves to the body, though.  I think they will make it easier to knit those first couple of rows where it is a bit tight getting around the sleeves.

Yesterday afternoon and evening I pulled out my beads and worked on this project, which I started a long, long time ago (last year sometime?).  The project is the Edelweiss Necklace by Melinda Barta, in the October/November 2009 edition of Beadwork Magazine.  When I picked this back up again yesterday I had about 2 inches of the herringbone, now I have about 8 inches.

Lorna Suzanne Cardigan - Two Sleeves and the Beginning of a Body

The other thing that I wanted to get done this week was finish the second sleeve for my Lorna Suzanne Cardigan and start the body.  I actually started the body sometime in the past week but I just finished the last 10 rows of the second sleeve this morning.  I knit my swatch on size 7 (4.5 mm) needles, but when I knit the sleeves they came out with a tighter gauge (as is often the case when knitting in the round).  In fact, the first part of the sleeve that I knit on 12 inch circular needles came out with almost 20 stitches per 4 inches (my gauge swatch has 18 stitches per 4 inches) and the part of the sleeve that I knit on 16 inch circular needles came out at 19 stitches per 4 inches, which is actually the gauge called for in the pattern.  So when I cast on for the body I went down a needle size and used size 5 (3.75 mm) needles for the garter stitch border, and size 6 (4 mm) needles for the stockinette stitch.

Lorna Suzanne Cardigan - It's a sleeve!

A good friend of mine who has recently started knitting wanted to try knitting a sweater and asked for a little help from me, so I suggested that we find a pattern that we both like and do a knit along.  The sweater we picked is Lorna Suzanne by Ellen Mason.  I picked a yarn from my stash that I bought some time ago back in 2009 as a sweater pack - Zen Yarn Garden Serenity Superwash Worsted in Midnight Plum.  I knit my gauge swatch and cast on a sleeve.  I always like to start with the sleeves because they give me a chance to check my gauge on a larger piece and to see if I really like the way the yarn is working up.  The sleeve is supposed to be three-quarter length, but when I had knit that far I tried it on and decided that it would look better full length, so I kept on knitting, and increasing until I pretty much used up the ball and the sleeve had conveniently reached an appropriate length.