Frankie in Progress

Mini Icarus

3 skeins (=183 m)of Phildar Phil Soie 100% pure silk are transformed into this little scarf.


I followed the instructions for Icarus Shawl by Miriam L. Felton and modified it by leaving out numerous pattern repeats.


I love the combination of yarn and pattern. The color is warm and the silk makes a fabulous shiny look.



I've thought about knitting the Icarus Shawl for a long time, and now I'm convinced that I want to knit another one full size.

Mindless Summer Knitting

It's finally time for summer knitting. And once again I fell in love with several Kim Hargreaves designs, one of them being Frankie from the spring/summer collection Breeze. This is my swatch for Frankie


I purchased a yarn kit - indluding buttons - directly from Hargreaves' s website. It went smoothly, a very good reason to do it again sometime.



The yarn is Rowan Pima Cotton DK - deliciously soft cotton yarn. Right now it's all about stockinette stitch, very straightforward and mindless knitting. Frankly speaking!

Marlene

I finally finished the Marlene socks by Cookie A. from Knit.1 Magazine. They are knitted with Shibui sock yarn, which Karin gave me. She and I had a little Shibui knitalong. (She finished her socks over a month ago.)



I love the golden semi solid color (called Honey) even though you can't predict exactly how the color turns out. On these socks the color expression changed at the foot. I like the color on the cuff best as there is a better blend of light and dark.



It was a real pleasure to knit with this yarn using 2.5mm Knit Picks dpns. Lucky me, I have more Shibui Sock in my stash.

Digging Out My Summer Tweed

I've started knitting a cardigan using the highly popular February Lady Sweater pattern as a guide. I wanted to try knitting from the top but not doing raglan increases. Instead I'm doing a rounded yoke. Also, I'm considering to knit the body in St st rather than using the lace pattern.




The yarn is Rowan Summer Tweed (70 % silk and 30 % cotton), a birthday present from Karin. She gave it to me last year in August and now is the perfect time to use it. I'm thinking about adding some big buttons, maybe these white ones... I'm not sure.

Reckless Raglan Alpaca Project

Time to blog about the alpaca project.



This pullover was an attempt to make a rather simple knit with a few details, namely the ridges with reversed stockinette and the shape of the sleeves.




I had 6 skeins of Berroco Ultra Alpaca in my stash, 2 of each of the three colors. I never got to the point when I was 100 percent sure of how to place the colors, I just knew that I wanted broad stripes and that the stripes of the sleeve weren't going to match the ones on the body. I simply rushed into it and didn't plan where to change the colors before i knit it. Maybe I should've done that. Well, next time perhaps.



I had to rip the collar a couple of times as it didn't turn out as I wanted. Pretty much because I hadn't decided on anything specific! I first thought about making a big collar, which somehow would've matched the sleeves, but instead I ended up making it rather tight. (I can ditch the kerchief then.)



Overall I'm pleased with the result. I already use it outside in the rather cold spring chill.

New inspiration

As I wrote in my last post I participated in the knitting class taught by Britt-Marie Christoffersson. Katie asked how it was, and well, it was awesome! It was great inspiration and it made me want to try and think about knitting in a slightly new way. I'd like to experiment more with knitting than I do at the moment. During the class we all tried out different stitch patterns, which Britt-Marie had used in the exhibition. Here's how my swatches turned out. I didn't pay that much attention to the color combo - I wanted to just knit as much as I could while having Britt-Marie around helping out.






















I think that these swatches have helped guiding me in the direction of more experimentation and exploration. Now that would be fun!