Abalone finished

I'm very pleased with it, it fits right! I was so scared that it'll be too small.

Yarn : silk/merino singles, colour : Opalite
Needles : 5mm
Size : small
pattern : my creation :)

I'm totally in love with the yarn, it's so soft and I still can't get over the colour, perfect for me. Subdued, but with a bit of life to it (this is about as much colour as I can wear, my clothes are strictly black, gray, white, taupe and blue only as jeans, beige very occasionaly...I'm hopeless.)

Such a neat little thing it is, perfect for autumn layering.

Amelie II

Yarn : handspun, heavy fingering, I blended two colours, off pink with dark brown at the yoke
Needles : 3mm
Time to complete : 4 days!!! just in time, as Amelie and her mommy went to Latvia and I hear it's pretty cold there this time of the year...
Size : 2 - 4 months, fits just right

I think she likes it!

Sewn steek

First, I marked the centre stitch with fabric marker that is water soluble (click image to see it bigger)

Then I started machine stitching just half a stitch from the marked line. Sewing machine is set to loose tension and short stitch. You can do a crocheted steek, but I wasn't using particulary 'grabby' yarn and I was afraid that everything would become undone, so I went for a safe option.

I sewed down both sides of the line, the stitching is almost invisible from the right side

but it can be clearly seen on the purl side. (I have a wonky machine so I have few extra loops of sewing thread there...)

So, that's done, onto cutting... Cut precisely between the two 'halves' of a marked stitch.

The dreaded first cut, but aaahh it's not unraveling.

and here we go, steek done! It wasn't half as bad as I've expected.

A close up of the cut edge. Pretty neat.

Then I went ahead and started picking up stitches for the neck border.

The finished cardigan.

Have you ever tried steeking? How it went?

Abalone

new project on the needles! It will be a vest/short sleeved cardigan. I can’t get over the colour, I’m absolutely mesmerized by the ever changing pearlescent hues.

I’m using my silk/merino singles yarn. I’m making size S and the whole thing is made out of little over 3 skeins of yarn. It’s a quick knit too, on 5mm needles the fabric grows rapidly.

I’m trying to keep it simple, so it has stockinete body with garter stitch trims, the only ‘fancy’ touch is an i-cord bind of, which gives it nice finish.

I’ll have pics of the finished item soon, I hope I’ll finish today… Maybe I’ll release a pattern? Will see how it goes…

Jumper for Amelie

So Amelie got her jumper today. I did a classic Elizabeth Zimmermann seamless raglan (oh, how much I love her patterns) The only modification I did is that I started the sleeves on more stitches, since it's for a baby and I've thrown in few stripes. It still has pretty much adult proportions... I used Pure cashmere yarn (Hedgehog) held double in Malice colourway.


It turned out pretty big! Perhaps for next winter...
The writing on the hem was tricky. I tried carrying the darker colour yarn on the back of the hem by the means of 'trapping' which is a technique for doing intarsia on a piece of circular kniting - Meg Swansen explained it on one of the dvds they did with EZ (I think it was Knitting Glossary). Basically you carry both yarns at the same time, all the time. But the dark colour yarn was peeking through to the right side and it looked weird, so in the end I cut it on every row and had to weave in a lot of ends. But it looks neater.

So this jumper is for next year therefore I'll have to make another one (or two) for this year, one that is slightly smaller... Because Amelie is being such a good girl, she deserves to be wrapped in wooly goodness!