FO: Ishbel

 

What is it about February that makes me want to knit shawls? This seems to be a trend for me every year and I don't really know why that is. This project was more of a case of a yarn I really wanted to use and I had ear marked this pattern for it. 2 weeks later, I had a finished shawl, lol, which feels incredibly fast for me.

This is the notorious Ishbel pattern by Ysolda Teague. I've had the pattern for years in the Whimsical Little Knits book but I had never bit the bullet. I've made 2 other Ysolda patterns, but never a shawl, so something about that just felt right when I was hunting a use for this yarn. The yarn was given to me when I friend gave me 2 huge buckets of good yarn, but sadly this one had no button band so I have no idea what it is. A burn test showed that this is sock yarn - it feels like a merino nylon blend to me - but it just had the most beautiful tonal pink color. 

I wanted a nice lacy pattern that would shine in this mostly solid colored yarn and I think this project was just the ticket. I did run into trouble simply because I was mindlessly knitting the top stockinette section and didn't pay enough attention to the yarn overs at the edges. I missed 3 yarn overs, which made my stitch count off by the time I needed to set up for the lace. I had to redo the first 6 lace set up rows seriously like 4 times. This had to sit in time out for a few days I was so frustrated, but I finally realized what I needed to do for it to line up and then it was smooth sailing ... until I reached the last row. I was knitting merrily along and I thought I would have enough yarn, but I ran out about 6 inches from the end and still needed to bind off. I was able to tink back about a foot and use a smaller needle for that last row, which enabled me to just barely squeak out that full row, then I dug in my stash for a complimentary yarn I thought would work for this. I settled on Knit Picks Stroll in Jack Rabbit Heather, which I think actually makes me like the shawl even more. It's a nice frame for the edge and is still neutral enough to go with whatever I want to wear this with. 

So that's my Ishbel Shawl! I had a lot of fun making this, despite the small set backs, and I still really love this yarn. It's too warm to wear this now, but I look forward to having it next time it cools off :)

FO: Liesl Cardigan

 

This sweater was my quickest make to date - I completed it in 6 days! - and it was just the fun little jaunt that I needed at the time. 

This was very much a case of yarn before pattern. My stash has become ... I mean ridiculous doesn't quite encompass how much it has grown in the last year lol. I bought bunch in the Hobby Lobby clearance this spring (because they were 75% off or more) and then about a week later I was given two big Rubbermaid tubs stuffed full of amazing yarns. So exponential growth has occurred. I always like to have 1 fingering weight sweater sweater and 1 worsted weight sweater on the needles at any given time. I had been going on my Susan Shaw vintage cardigan, but I didn't have a worsted one for quite a while. Being obsessed with linen this year, I pulled out the skeins of Coton et Lin by Yarn Bee that I grabbed for so cheap in the spring clearance. Because I was buying this yarn on clearance, there were only so many skeins of each color available. At first I thought I was going to make a striped cardigan with all the colors, but I had 3 skeins in the Apple Cider colorway and I started searching for patterns that would stay within that yardage. One of the patterns that came up was the Liesl by Ysolda Teague. I've had this pattern on my list to make for years and I just never took the plunge, but to discover that I could make a full sweater with just 540 yards sealed the deal. I decided to cast on that weekend.

This pattern is a lovely feather and fan stitch design that is knit on size US 10.5 needles (the pattern called for 7mm, but I don't have that size in my set, so I just used the 6.5mm, which is size 10.5). Because the yarn and needles were so large and this was so lacy, this worked up shockingly fast. I thought I was starting an ongoing sweater project, but the pattern was so fun to knit that I finished this entire sweater in 6 days! Definitely a record for me.

I finished this so fast that I didn't even bother to think about closures. The pattern does give instructions if you want to add buttonholes, but it's kind of an optional thing so I just didn't worry about it. I decided to sew on decorative buttons and then use snaps. 

I sewed one snap under each button to obscure them, but sadly the plastic snaps I used are terrible. I need to go back and change them out with vintage metal snaps. I may also add one additional snap to close a bit further down. The buttons are just vintage random ones from my thrifted stash I've had for ages. 

While I was making this and when I first finished it, I thought I would wear this a ton through the summer. Sadly, that has not been the case. It's a great light weight sweater, for sure, but it's still just been so stinking hot here that I can't even think about wearing an extra layer. Even if it's linen. It's still worsted weight, after all. I know I will wear it a lot once it cools down and I factor sweaters back into my wardrobe rotation though.

So that's my Liesl sweater :) Unexpected in  many ways. It's the fastest I've ever made and not the overall cheapest, but it's the cheapest I've bought yarn for in a conventional store (i.e. not in a thrift store). I really love how it turned out and I would absolutely use this pattern again if I have a limited amount of worsted yarn I want to make into a sweater.

Summary:

Yarn: 3 skeins of Yarn Bee Cotton et Lin - $4.47

Pattern: Liesl by Ysolda Teague 

Notions: 2 buttons, 2 snaps - from stash

Time: 6 days

Total Cost: $ 4.47

FO: Kerfuffle Ishnana Cardigan

I'm so excited to show off this sweater! Please excuse the photos - this color is really difficult to photograph - also please excuse my mountain of sandbags behind me in the pictures, lol. Ah, Florida post hurricanes, right? Anyway, let's get on with the fun part: the sweater!

It all started with the yarn. I have a tendency to go down the rabbit hole of Ravelry yarn selling on occasion (if you never have looked, I absolutely recommend it!), and this yarn was a great find when browsing the Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock listings. I loved the color of the yarn and I loved the price - $35 for 3.27 skeins. If you're at all familiar with this yarn, you'll know that's a steal of a deal. I just looked it up on yarn.com and it goes fro $27 per skein. So half price for a color I loved sounded pretty swell. I bought the yarn in January of 2016 and it came from a knitter who had recently discovered she was allergic to wool (let's all have a moment of silence for this poor soul). So her loss was my gain, and I grabbed a sweater's worth of lovely yarn for half price :) Around the same time that I found this yarn, I also discovered the Ishnana pattern by Ysolda Teague. I loved the cables and design, and if I went for a more fitted look than the pattern example I knew I could swing it with this yarn. Done and done! 

The pièce de résistance of this pattern is undoubtedly the back. Just look at that cable pattern! I remember when I began this pattern (it is knitted from the bottom up) I had a hard time adjusting to the cable chart since it's a longer chart then I have worked with before, but I quickly adapted to it and I really missed knitting the cables once they were finished. Oddly enough I knitted a nice chunk while my husband watched Game of Thrones in the background, and this cable design feels very in line with that show to me. Very regal, I guess.

But the party doesn't end with the back! Take a look at the sleeve! This is the fanciest sleeve I've ever knitted, and I just love them. The pattern includes 2 different options for the fronts and the sleeves, both using the same cable pattern on the back. I loved the back so much and I wanted to continue the cable design all over, so I chose the cables in each place. The other design is lovely too, so I may end up making that one day as well.

Even the cables on the front have a little something extra to them. I did not even notice this until I really got into knitting this, but the cables undulate and wave across the front of the sweater! How cool is that? I kept trying to explain this to others while I was knitting, but it was very difficult to show until the button bands were attached. Since I knew I was cutting it close with my yarn, I switched up the construction and knit the body followed by the button and neck bands only then moving on to the sleeves. It turns out I could've been a little more free with my yarn usage, and I do wish this was just a little bit longer, but being a bottom up cardigan it was very difficult to tell if I was going to have enough yarn, so I skimped. This is a very nit picky thing though as I love this sweater. I really do need to get better at accurately anticipating the measurements I need with the length though as this has happened before. This is why I prefer top-down sweaters, lol. Anyway, moving on...

I tried to get a photo that showed the subtle color variation in this yarn, but it looks so much nicer in person. The other reason I love this yarn is the color name: it's called Kerfuffle! How great is that?! This is a hand dyed yarn, so while the overall color is a gray-ish purple, there are little bits that are more charcoal or more purple or lighter purple, etc. I totally LOVE the colors. I feel like this is the perfect amount of color variation. Because of these subtle colors I know I can wear this sweater with a lot of other colors - I can help it look more gray, more purple, more blue, etc.

As this is a very fitted sweater, I knew I needed to back the button bands. I used some silver colored rayon petersham ribbon since it was the best color I had on hand to coordinate. I like the result. I machine stitched the button holes and then sewed the ribbons to the sweater button band by hand. I also lucked out with the buttons. Earlier this year I bought a gladware bin full of buttons for $5 at The Sewing Studio, and these iridescent purple ones were included. I tried several button styles from my stash (even some that were metal with celtic knots to accent the cables), but I liked how these were the right color and somewhat clear so they blend in well and let the knitting be the star.

And as with all my sweaters, this is realistically how it will be seen out in real life. I like this just as much open or closed, which is always nice. I started this sweater in May and finished it on October 1st, so this is the fastest I've ever finished a fingering weight cardigan. Grant you I did set this aside several times, and I even made an entire sweater for the Outfit Along in between working on this, so I could definitely get it done faster if I really worked on it diligently. Much better than my last one though that took me a year, lol. I'm thrilled with my new sweater, and I'm excited to soon have weather cool enough to wear it! I love this pattern and definitely recommend it (and it's a real bargain considering you get so many options) and I love this yarn. Now I love the sweater :) Yay knitting!

Summary:
Yarn: 2.87 skeins of Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in the Kerfuffle colorway - $35.00
Pattern: Ishnana by Ysolda Teague
Notions: 1" wide Petersham Ribbon in Gray - $3.00, 8 purple-gray buttons - $0.10, purple thread - $0.25
Time: 4.5 months
Total Cost: $ 38.35

FO: Bronntanas

As I said in my last post, my sister asked if I could make her a few more hats to combat the West Virginia winter. After agreeing, that project turned into 3 hats, lol. Marisa bought the yarn (during one of Craftsy's awesome supply sales) and I did the work. These 3 hats worked out to be very well timed since I got "Flu B" and basically couldn't do much of anything for over a week. This was at the end of January and these 3 hats gave me projects that were relatively simple for my flu-filled-brain to handle and I never had to be bored while hanging out on the couch :) 

To decide on patterns for hats, she gave me a general idea of what she wanted and I sent her pictures from my Ravelry library to pick from. The first design she settled on was Bronntanas by Ysolda Teague. It's a lovely cabled beanie with slouch that I've always liked, plus I've never actually made up any of Ysolda's patterns before, so this was a nice opportunity to give her a a try. 

This design has an all over cable design that comes out a kind of honey comb style. Now, the eagle eyed among you will notice that my hat seems more like stripes of cables ... and you would not be wrong, lol. I seriously had to restart this hat 3 times because I didn't pay close enough attention to the pattern, and it wasn't until I was halfway through the second cable stripe that I realized why it wasn't looking right - The cable chart has 19 rows and after the first go through of the 19 rows you are supposed to go back to row 9 and work through it again ... and I just kept going 1-19 with 4 rows stockinette in between. Whoop! I was more than halfway finished with the hat at that point, and after being so sick and frustrated with my own oversights 3 other times I was not about to redo the entire hat again. I knew Marisa wouldn't notice the difference since the main pattern is the same and that it would still look good - it's just not exactly like the pattern sample. So I just kept going! This did mean that I had to keep trying it on for length to make sure I got the required slouch.

After a thorough explanation of yarn and fiber content and heat retention and wash-ability, my sister decided she wanted these hats made of superwash wool. When Craftsy had Cascade 220 Superwash on sale for $8.50 per skein, I knew it was what we needed. I love using this yarn - it's such a work horse and always turns out nicely. Marisa decided for this particular hat to be made with the charcoal colorway and I like how it turned out. I did make sure to block the hat just to get the cables to lay nicely, and I decided to finally try blocking the hat on a balloon which worked wonderfully. It was pretty funny to keep blowing up and deflating the balloon with a tape measure around it until it was the right size, lol. Worth the effort though.

I really like the garter stitch brim on this hat and that it's looser around the face. I also really like the slight slouch it has going on. Just a casual hat with a cute pattern all over. What's not to love? Even though I didn't make it just like the pattern, I can definitely say (well, reluctantly admit is more like, lol) that my mistakes were my own fault for not reading through the pattern better. I would definitely recommend this for a cute but not difficult design.

And here is the hat in action on Marisa's  tubing trip somewhere in West Virginia. She's happy, I'm happy, and I'm no longer sick, lol. All good things. Yay for cute cabled hats!