Caterpillar bling !

What is on my needles ? 
Bling addiction ! every row is sparkling with  shimmering metallic lurex ..color combination you would never think of unravelling in each row added..
My lovely lovely caterpillar !!

Florence at last !

I've only now finished Florence by Kim Hargreaves. Now this was one troublesome cardigan. Many things went wrong here and five days ago it was ready to be pushed away to the back of the wardrobe never to see the light of day.



I chose the yarn to be a rowan cashcotton 4ply in pale dull blue contrasted with the black glass buttons I've ordered from Kim herself. I've only had few balls so got the rest in a different dye lot. That was the first problem. The subtle change in color mid sleeve was a sore to the eye so in the end knitted 3 sleeves. :(

The other serious problem was that the sleeves caps were way too large for the armhole so sewing them resulted in funny crunched up shoulders. The neckband I picked and knitted had too many stitches in it so the neck line was way too wide, floppy and made the shoulders seams flop to mid arms. Not an attractive look !

I went defeated to my Southsea knitting group and my lovely dear friend Caroline volunteered to take the monstrosity home , rip the sleeves out and reknit the caps much smaller (by third) to fit the armholes.

I then sew back the new sleeves , frogged the neckband and picked it again, tight.

So, here I am at the back of my garden in this grey wintry day. My wellies are on and I'm splashing about in my brook .

Happy days !!!

Yes pleeeeaase !

Check the galvanised Cardigan from the preview of interweave knits winter 2010 edition.

knitted to the bone !

I stumbled across this - The meditating skeleton :)

Pea vines shawl

Here is the lethal pea vines shawl by Ann Hanson. This shawl is not for the faint hearted. This shawl is also anti-social, it doesn't like people and small children talking and playing around it.
But if you behave nicely to it, give it your full attention it will reward you with some stunning views.

I chose to make the petite version which used less than 300 yards of the hand dyed seriously-gorgeous knit witches green yarn, a lovely Lacy cashmere mix which bloomed beautifully after blocking.

This is a close -up of the unblocked shawl. See how intricate and entangled everything looks?

You start the shawl from the widest part and gradually decreased stitches on the side panels going on towards the point of the triangle , then you just graft both side of the edging to create that point. All the difficult long rows are at the beginning when you are at most enthusiastic and the pattern kind of relaxes towards the end. I would strongly recommend using lots of stitch markers between the repeats.

The iPhone camera is convenient to use but it does not do justice to the color depth and the photo quality. Also the photographer is kind of under-age, he he, my daughter.

I'm now thinking about those gorgous hand warmers..

Mother of pearl buttons

Bought those beauties in a little haberdashery shop in Palma. They are carved from mother of pearl shell. Are'nt they lovely?

Chinook Shawl

Here is a shawl with an eye catching pattern. From a beginning row of eyelets, the lace pattern grows to resemble rippling waves or fish scales. It is a kit supplied by knitpics , the designer is Nina Isaacson. Knitpics does not export to the UK so I had to send it to Kansas where my sister lives. The kit's cost at the time was only $20 and includes 5*50g balls of lace weight all different mixtures of alpaca, silk and merino (Alpaca cloud, Shadow, Gloss Lace, Shimmer)-Absolute bargain ! The yarn is held double ,so at times the yarn needed to be taken from both center and outer ball. You can see the flowing , graduating pool of color starting from a light faded heather to a stronger shade of lilac, purple and dark berry.
The pattern is really easy to remember and knit and my mind already thinks ahead about the possibilities of incorporating it in cardigans..

Here is a loser look, isn't this pretty.. :)