Winter Wonderland Cowl - Cast On!

Once I got the dress on the blocking mats I cast on for the matching cowl.  While for the dress I started with skein 24, for the cowl I’m starting with skein 1, and will use skeins 1-10.  The pattern calls for repeating the chart 11 times (vertically), and I may actually get that many repeats out of the remaining yarn, but whatever I get, I get.  I’m on skein 3 and almost halfway through my third repeat, and will use as much of the yarn as I can.  After the last patterned repeat 5 rows of garter are worked and then the bind off, so I have to keep that in mind as I get close to the end.

Pattern:  Githa by Linda Marveng

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering

Needle:  US 2.5 (3.0 mm)
 

Winter Wonderland Dress - Finished!

Fresh off the blocking mats.  I have tried it on and it fits pretty darn well, all things considered.  The length is good, a few inches above my knees, so I can wear it with my leggings to work.  I could have shortened the armholes as they do come down a little further than I typically like (although they do that on the pattern), but I will be wearing a camisole underneath so it will be fine.  The drape of the fabric is really quite nice, and the fit around the hips and legs is good.  It definitely came out longer than I thought it would, which is good, when I tried it on before blocking I thought it was pretty sexy as it fit a bit closer and was a bit shorter.  I cannot say that my gauge swatch lied as I really didn’t do one for this pattern, I just sort of winged it, and really lucked out.  I do not recommend that approach, and am busily swatching for the next Linda Marveng pattern, but I was being lazy on this one and figured if all else fails I can always rip back and reknit.  I will now use this as a swatch, and will probably swatch on smaller needles with some leftover yarn (I had a few grams left of skein 11), as I may want to knit this again.  This version took about 300 grams of yarn, perfect for The Unique Sheep fingering weight Gradiance sets, and if you want a matching cowl it looks to be a good use for an Advent set.

I used skeins 24-11 (going from left to right in the picture below):

Pattern:  Githa by Linda Marveng

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering

Needle:  US 2.5 (3.0 mm)

Multivalence - Finished!

I finished this up back on December 20, but needed to get a good picture (or at least one with a kitty in it).  The final clue did take a while to complete, all those double crochets!  But it was easy to memorize.  Blocking wasn’t too hard.  I pinned a tape measure in the center and used that to try to make sure that I pulled evenly all the way around.

I pinned in the vertices from clue 11 as I did not want to distort the loops in clue 12, and I pinned every vertex at the base of each of the 106 loops.

It is hard to get a picture that does it justice.

Pattern:  Multivalence by Janica York Carter

Yarn:  Expression Fiber Arts Luster Superwash Merino Sport

Hook:  3.5 mm (E)

Multivalence - Clue 11 Done!

Once I finished up Advertence, I turned my attention back to Multivalence.  I had started clue 11, working through the first 2 rounds before setting it aside again for other projects.  I finished up clue 11 Sunday night.  I actually started working clue 12 using the same yarn color, working the first round, and then decided to switch colors for the final round, but discovered an error I had made in the first row of clue 12 when I was about three quarters of the way through the final round.  When I ripped back to fix that error I discovered that I had made an error earlier in the pattern as that first round no longer ended correctly.  I did some checking and discovered an error I had made in the final round of clue 11, that my error in the first round of clue 12 masked.  So I ripped back and fixed that and decided to do all of clue 12 in the same color.  I also modified the way that I’m working the first round of clue 12, which I like better, I don’t think I was doing the loop in the first round correctly.  So, all in all, it was a good thing that I had to rip back.

Here is a close up of clue 11 that shows the stitch pattern a bit better.

Pattern:  Multivalence by Janica York Carter

Yarn:  Expression Fiber Arts Luster Superwash Merino Sport

Hook:  3.5 mm (E)

Advertence - Finished!

I finished this on December 17.  Blocking was easy, I just laid it out on the blocking mats and smoothed it into shape.  The garter stitch edges do ruffle, the edge at the end of the right side rows ruffles much worse than the edge at the start of the right side rows.  The edge that is in the picture is the one at the start of the right side rows.

Here is a shot of clue 11, which I didn’t blog about, I finished it on November 26 and snapped a quick shot of it on my daybed.

And clue 12 before blocking.  I thought about doing the last 20 rows in the Purple Chive (the light color), but decided not to.

You can definitely see the edges ruffle in this before blocking picture, and blocking only helped a little.  It also appears that the needle size I was using was a US 5 (3.75 mm), which I didn’t discover until I was all done with the cast off and was putting the needle away.  I have found a few instances where the wrong size needle was put away in the zip lock bag (I mostly use Addi’s, and keep the zip lock bag they come in to store them in), so I checked the size before putting it away and was surprised to discover it sized as a US 5, not a US 4 (3.5 mm).  I like the fabric, so it’s all good, and it explains why I didn’t find a US 4 needle zip lock bag with a 32 inch length in my little stack of empty needle zip lock bags.  Who knows how it all happened, given that this project has been going on for almost a full year.

Pattern:  Advertence by Janica York Carter

Yarn:  Expression Fiber Arts Mirage Sport

Needle:  US 5 (3.75 mm)

Winter Wonderland Dress - Body Decreases Done!

It has been a while since I posted about this project, but I have been making progress on it.  This has been my easy knitting project that I stick in my work bag.  I put one of my Knitting Barber cords on the needles so I could spread it out and get a sense of the size.  At this point I have used up eight 20-gram skeins from my Advent set, so I have plenty of yarn.  I think I will make this point the waist and work another eight inches before I start the armholes and neck shaping.

Pattern:  Githa by Linda Marveng

Yarn:  The Unique Sheep 4 Ply SW Merino Fingering

Needle:  US 2.5 (3.0 mm)

Guava Vest - Finished!

I finished up the vest back before Thanksgiving, on November 23, but then it needed to block and I really wanted to get a picture of me wearing it, but just haven’t been able to, so here is one on my dressmaker dummy.  It does fit me quite well, and is warm.  The yarn is Aran weight and I knit at a fairly tight gauge, so the fabric is solid, but not overly stiff.  The stockinette fabric has a very smooth feel.  The yarn is 100% merino, but I don’t think it is superwash, based on the way my yarn tails were behaving.  The yarn is Plenty by Purl Soho, and the pattern that it was intended for was called the Ribline Vest, which was a sleeveless top with sort of raglan shaped sleeves, a mock turtle neck, and a split hem.  After working almost the complete top I decided it really wasn’t the right pattern for the yarn.  A sleeveless top that is not intended to be worn over something in Aran weight yarn?  That just seemed a bit odd to me.  Next I cast on a pattern called Llif, which was a vest with some nice cabling, but I didn’t like the way the cables did not organically grow out of the ribbing on the bottom, and I didn’t feel like figuring out how to make it work.  I also felt that the dark yarn was not going to show off the cables to their best advantage, and I really just wanted a basic vest.  Then I found the Guava vest pattern, which was in Portuguese, but Google translate to the rescue there.  I uploaded the PDF and got a translated PDF in return.  There were a few oddities that I had to work out, but nothing insurmountable and I am very happy with the result.

Pattern:  Goiaba by Svetlana Zholobova

Yarn:  Purl Soho Plenty

Needles:  US 7 (4.5 mm), US 6 (4.0 mm)