less spinning, more sweatering

I have yet to learn how to use my wheel, unfortunately. However, I started this cardigan a week ago, and it’s quietly becoming my new favourite thing to knit. This is Bellevue (a name which, as an aside, is kind of rad. My grandparents used to live on a Bellevue Ave!), in Malabrigo Sock. I’m enjoying the yarn – it’s a little finer fingering-weight than I usually go for, but it’s nice and soft like Malabrigo tends to be, and the colour is lovely. Good blues always get extra points in my books. This yarn is also plied, so I have high hopes that it won’t be quite as felty as the Malbrigo singles I’ve worked with in the past.

The lace portion at the bottom of the body I found a bit fussy – I don’t know why, because I’m used to knitting lace on hundreds of stitches in fingering-weight yarn, and the lace pattern is actually really easy to memorize, but I guess doing it while I was in “sweater mode” instead of “shawl mode” made it harder. (Also, it’s been brought to my attention that I did the decreases on the purl side wrong, because I’m bad at reading – Laura’s version of this lace is much, much neater.) Now that it’s done, though, I really like the look of it.

so i’ve got a question: do you want to have a slumber party in my basement?

I’ve had a pretty calm first week at school, so the knitting has been going pretty quickly. I managed to turn my skein of pretty, pretty Mini Maiden (50/50 wool/silk! omg!) from this:

Into this.

And in a little less than a week. The pattern I’m using is the Shetland Triangle Shawl () which, according to Ravelry, everyone and their dog has already knit. On the one hand, this makes me feel very unspecial and boring, but on the other it lets me exploit the power of Ravelry to my advantage, which is awesome.

For instance: the pattern calls for ten repeats of the main lace motif, and then to begin the edging. But other people have already used this pattern with this yarn, and discovered that if you want to use up the entire skein, you can get away with twelve repeats. I realize this is not new news to anybody, but the fact that a website exists where I can figure this out is still, like, the coolest thing ever.

Does anyone know if there’s some sort of Ravelry for sewing? I fear I’ve been spoiled.

Song of the Entry: Ke$ha – Your Love Is My Drug (Listen)

fo: featherweight cardigan

It’s done! My sweater! It’s so done.

Pattern: Featherweight Cardigan! I knit the size small, but it’s possible I could have sized it down a little – the finished product is a little wide for me in the shoulders, and has a tendency to slouch off and look a little baggier than I’d like.
Yarn: Malabrigo Lace, in Azul Bolita – close to 2 skeins. (I bought three, and worked from two simultaneously from the sleeves, but I think my leftovers add up to a full skein.)
Needles: 4mm Addi Lace circular

I did a little bit of modifying to this pattern, but really not a lot. I had big plans, when I started, to knit this up from the collar with a hood, but by the time I got there I was just so sick of knitting laceweight yarn, I couldn’t bring myself to make it an even bigger project.

As a lot of people on Ravelry have mentioned – and as should be pretty obvious from the design of the pattern – the collar will curl, since it’s unbordered stockinette. I tried to fix this, a little bit, by adding in a half-inch of Feather and Fan lace to the edge of the collar. I saw a lot of sweaters where people went all-out with this, bordering the cuffs and the hem the same way, but I wasn’t together enough to think of it until the cuffs and hem were already knit, so – my sweater isn’t quite that pretty. Such is life.

I am, however, a little in love with it all the same. It’s so soft, shockingly warm, and so light it feels like I’m not wearing anything at all. (Possibly because, as you can see, it barely touches me anywhere. So floaty!) I definitely forsee myself getting a whole lot of use out of this.