Thursday, March 15, 2007

Kottou Cardi

I finished my niece's Kottou Cardigan earlier in the week. This sure was a cute little pattern, but it's knit with Koigu yarn on size 4 needles so you never feel like you are making any progress! And I must admit I was a bit worried about the sleeve shaping. The entire lower portion is knit in one piece, then folded to make the asymmetrical flaps and THEN stitches are held and picked up on both the front and back. The shoulder/upper sleeve seams don't have to be sewn because they are bound off together with a three needle bind off which means that the only seams to be sewn are the lower sleeve seams! Yesssssss! I hate sewing seams. And I was pretty sure as I was knitting a huge rectangle (the lower portion of the back and front sides) that I would run out of yarn and of course I had already thrown away the labels with the dye lot numbers on them when I wound the balls! I did have some left over though for the scrap stash. All in all, I am very pleased with this little sweater and I just saw my niece this weekend and she will have some room to grow into this little project!

Pictured here is the first of a pair of Mrs. Beeton wrist warmers that I started at Knit Night over at Brenda's the other day. We watched Borat and I think I was the only one actually working on something because we couldn't bear looking away from the movie! That is my hand in the picture (Summer, my usual hand model, was not here tonight) and it is quite tricky holding still AND taking the picture. These knit up quite quickly, but I must admit that I'm not mad after Rowan KidSilk Haze yarn! It's kind of like knitting AIR! It was hard to keep the stitches joined on the three needles so I always had a bit of a ladder at the junctures. These are cast on with beads strung on the KidSilk Haze for the first row and then the Shibui Izu is used for the main body. A second set of scallops is knit with the Silk Haze and then joined to the main body with a three needle bind off. The Izu yarn was just lovely to work with! I see they have a line of variegated superwash sock yarn. Hmmmmmm. I might have to acquire some of that!

No comments: