Drops Poncho

My latest sweater - poncho, a pattern by Drops Design. The original is a striped poncho, knitted on bigger needles, but I soon found, that it ran too large for me, so I followed most of the numbers for the smallest size, though my needles and my gauge were smaller and it came out perfect for me - not too baggy, but still roomy enough to be a poncho and allow for another top to be worn under it.

The yarn is again Italian bobbin yarn, new to me. It is 60% merino, 20% silk buret and 20% polyamide. It is quite different from other merinos I've knitted so far - much coarser, sturdier and with almost none elasticity, which actually makes it quite suitable for an outer garment like a poncho. I had 300 g of it and knitted it literally to the last centimeter. To do this, I knitted the poncho from the neck to the splitting of the sleeves, then I did the sleeves, added a ribbed neck piece as the original open neck was a bit too open for me, and then proceeded to knit the body until I ran out of yarn.

I knitted the ribbing of the hem twice - initially I made it like the pattern instructed - adding 48 stitches to the rib to make it flare. But I did not like the wide and floppy look it gave the poncho, especially on the back, so I ripped off the wide rib and reknitted it with the same number of stitches I had for the body and on smaller needles (from 4 mm for the body to 3.5 mm for the rib). Now the rib pulls the poncho close to the body and I love the form it keeps.

The original design features two colored stripes, but I wanted to have my poncho monochromatic, so I replaced the color stripes with textured stripes. I played with several ideas until I decided on these groups of rows of slip stitch horizontal bars. I am pretty pleased with how it came out, though perhaps other arrangements of the structural rows could have been also quite effective.

Pattern: 207-18 Seashell Search by DROPS design
Yarn: Filatura Papi Fabio Tecla, 300 g
Needle: 4 mm (body), 3.5 mm (ribs)
Time to knit: three weeks