September 2008

An Interlude with Mittens

Thursday, September 04, 2008

After finishing the Ravelympics Cinnamony and before continuing with the green Tailored cardigan, I feel like taking a break with some smaller project. I was going through my Ravelry stash over the summer, putting up pictures of pictureless stuff, even the leftover skeins (yes, I'm anal that way), and noticed that I had lots of small balls of different colors in this worsted-weight yarn. Colors I wouldn't normally wear on their own but might just work together in some small accessory. Like mittens.

I'm not really into the whole Latvian mitten or Selbuvotter thing, maybe because I haven't tried it myself. And most of those patterns are for fingering weight yarn anyway. I'm not really experienced with stranded knitting so I better start small, or big, as it were. I did find some great worsted-weight patterns, picked one, played around with the colors a bit and voila: Burning Hearts Mittens.

Project: Burning Hearts Mittens (Ravelry)
Pattern: Heart Mittens (Ravelry) by Ansku
Yarn: Novita 7 Veljestä in black, orange and red
Needles: 3.5 mm dpn's
Mods: picot edge; omitted the ribbing and instead did three repeats of the first heart pattern (with the middle row mirrored); black MC all through the mitten; 2 CCs (red and orange)

And I totally get the infatuation with stranded knitting now. It's so mesmerizing watching the picture emerge little by little, row by row. I want more!

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Tailored Cardi Love

Monday, September 01, 2008

After finishing the cabled cardi I still had some balls remaining of the yarn. The DROPS Tailored cardigan had been in my queue for a while and seeing villapeikko's version made me want to knit it even more. A few yardage calculations confirmed me that I had enough of the now-discontinued colorway and off I went. I took the cardi with me when I went vacationing, knitting it on car trips and what not. And boy was it a quick finish. It's taken me significantly longer to blog about it than to knit the piece. :D

Project: Tailored Cardi #1 (Ravelry), cast-on: July 4 2008, cast-off: July 30, 2008
Pattern: DROPS 97-18 Tailored cardigan (Ravelry)
Yarn: about 6.5 skeins (316g/935 yd/855 m) of Novita Wool in colorway #192 (dark teal)
Needles: 3.5 mm circular
Mods: I couldn't get gauge so I took stitch counts from size S and measurements (in cm) from size XS; moss stitch borders instead of garter stitch; knitted body in one piece; top-down seamless set-in sleeves with short-row shaping

I love those flared sleeves. And look at these buttons!

I'm so pleased with how this turned out that I'm already knitting another one, this time in apple/pistachio green. Hence, More Tailored Cardi Love. I want one in every color! :)

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