French Poncho Modeled

Ta-da! The poncho in action. Gaby wore it to school yesterday morning and we met at noon to take a few photos of the new knit on her way back home. I am very pleased how this poncho turned out and I hope it'll get lots more wear this winter and spring.

Pattern: Ponchoby Bergère de France 
Yarn: Macas 60% Baby Alpaca, 20% Merino, 20% PA, 430 g
Needle: 4.5 mm body, 4 mm rib and I-cord
Time to knit: 3 weeks

Poncho By Bergère de France. Modifications and Details

On Tuesday I blogged about my work in progress - the Poncho by Bergère de France, some of the modifications I had already done and some planned and I said I would take a break from the poncho to knit some legwarmers in the yarn I had dyed that day. But approaching the end of Part 1 of the Poncho my knitting mojo kicked in and with the rows significantly shortening I soon found myself knitting faster and faster to finish it quicker. I also noticed that I'll have some yarn left and I could do the legwarmers in the alpaca and make them a set with the poncho. As I did quite a lot of modifications on Part 2 and I believe they might be of interest to other people planning to knit this beautiful free pattern (one of the best ponchos out there, IMHO), I'll try to sum them up:

Part 1:
1. I cast on 384 sts with provisional cast on, knit 4 rows of St st and with 4 mm circular needle. Changed to 4.5 mm circular needle and began with the pattern - 25 sts for the cable part and 23 sts for the stockinette sections. My first decrease was as per instructions - on the 15th row from the cast on row.
2. For Part I I followed the instructions and made the decreases on every 8th row until I was left with 224 sts - 200 sts for the 8 Cable parts (8 x 25) and 8 x 3 sts in the St. sections. I knit 5 rows on the remaining 224 sts.
3. I also made the decreases to slant to the inside of the stockinette section and not vice versa as in the pattern.

Apart from casting in the round and reducing the stockinette section by two stitches, which led to less width and 8 rows less in length (one less decrease), I pretty much followed the pattern in this section.

(I forgot to take a close-up picture of this part in the day time, thus the different color)

Judging by the work done by other ravelers  on this pattern and my calculations, Part II comes too wide and not at all high necked as in the pattern photo. So I made the following changes to the pattern:

Part II
Do the decreases, meanwhile continuing with the cable pattern.
1. Row 1 - Decrease each 3-st Stockinette section into 1 st: 224 -> 208 sts
2. Row 2 - knit 208
3. Row 3 - Decrease the one knit stitch, that remained in each St section. The two purl st columns are now combined into one 4 stitch column: 208 -> 200 st
4. Row 4 - Knit 200 sts
5. Row 5 - Decrease one purl st in each four purl column. Now you have 16 cable columns, divided by 16 3-st purl columns: 200 -> 192 sts
6. Rows 6 to 12 (a total of 8 rows) - knit 192 sts
7. Row 13 - Decrease one purl st in each 3-st purl column: 192 -> 176 sts
8. Rows 14 to 20 - knit 176 sts
9. Row 21 - Decrease one purl st in each 2-st purl column: 176 -> 160 sts
10. Rows 22 to 28 -  knit 160 sts
11. Row 29 - Decrease the last purl st in each 1-st purl column: 160 -> 144 sts
12. Rows 30 - 34 - knit 144 sts

In this part the purl stitches are done with and the decreases are made within the cables:
13. Row 35 - decrease one stitch in each 9 sts cable: 144 -> 128 sts
14. Rows 36 to 40 - Knit 128 sts
15. Row 41 - decrease one stitch in each 8 sts cable: 128 -> 112 sts
16. Rows 42 to 44 - knit 112 sts
17.  Row 45 - decrease one stitch in each 7 sts cable: 112 -> 96 sts
18. Rows 46 to 48 - knit 96 sts
19. Row 49 - decrease one stitch in each 6 sts cable by knitting two knit stitches as one purl stitch. Now your have sixteen 4-st cables divided by 1 purl stitch each : 96 -> 80 sts
Change to 4 mm circular needles:
20. Rows 50-52 - knit 80 sts
21. Row 53 - Decrease every other purl stitch. Thus you have eight sections of cables, divided by a purl stitch. 80 -> 72 sts.
22. Rows 54 - 69: knit 72 sts, continuing the cables every 8th row
23. Row 70: cast off. I used 2-st attached I-cord.

Part III - The Sleeves

As my cast on stitches were alive, I knitted the sleeves seamlessly attached to the body by picking up the 25 sts of the cable + 3 sts on each side of the cable + 9 sts cast on with provisional cast on = 40 sts total. I knit 33 rows of 2x2 rib, 1 row of 1x1 rib by switching stitches, 1 row of double knit and I cast off using invisible cast off. This is a stretchy, yet very neat method to prevent sleeve rib ends from flaring.

After knitting the two sleeves I cast off all of the provisional cast on stitches of the body and the sleeves in one continuous 2-st I-cord.

The above description is more like a recipe rather than complete instructions. You have to figure out the cables for yourselves and your gauge might be different than mine or may be the same, but on different needle sizes. I got the same gauge as in the pattern: 16 sts x 22 rows in St st for a 10 cm square and one 9-sts cable is 5 cm on 4.5 mm needles.

Modeled photo-session - coming soon, I hope!

And who said adults can't have fun - I wound up my newly hand-dyed yarn on the cone, left from the alpaca, using my daughter's pottery wheel. The result isn't exactly spectacular, but it was fun :)))

WIP - Poncho by Bergère de France

This is my current project, that I've been working on very slowly for two weeks now - Poncho by Bergère de France. I'm knitting it with my Baby Alpaca cone yarn on 4.5 mm circular needles. The first rows of 384 stitches, approx. 260 cm long, gathered on 60 cm circular needle were a torturous slog, but it's a breeze now. So far my modifications - as many others on Ravelry, I modified the pattern to knit it in the round. In the original it is knit in two parts, which are then sewn together - completely unnecessary. And knitting in the round makes it possible to purl all the time, which is my preferred method of knitting, as I knit with the yarn held in front. For this purpose I knit it from the wrong side and of course I had to modify the cables, so that they would appear as per pattern on the right side. i also modified the decreases to be slanting toward the stockinette stitch part, and not in the opposite direction, as is in the pattern.

My gauge was spot on - 16 sts and 22 rows on 4.5 mm, but I cast on 16 sts less - 25 sts for the cable section, but 23 instead of 25 sts for the stockinette stitch sections between the cables. My daughter is slim and only 5'4", so I'm trying to make it smaller than the given dimensions for the S/M size.  I'm almost at the end of Part 1 of the poncho, tonight I intend to put the stitches on a longer cord and try it on on Gaby to determine how long should the poncho be and how to proceed with the decreases. The pattern states a length of 76 cm for the S/M size, but I think 65 cm would be enough, so for Part 2 I'll probably make my decreases on every 6th row instead of every 10th row. 

I cast on with provisional cast on, as I haven't decided yet if I want a curling Stockinette stitch end or an I-cord. I'll pick up the stitches and cast them off, meanwhile adding the cuffs seamlessly to the body. The yarn - it's very soft and warm, this will be a very toasty poncho, it's a pity I didn't start it earlier to be ready for the cold January days, but there'll be other winters too :))

And something else - I hadn't dyed yarn for more than a year. This is a skein of white 100% wool, 100 g = 220 m, dyed with yellow, red and brown acid dyes for wool and silk. The color is slightly nuanced burnt orange / brick, which I love so much. I'm planning a pair of cabled legwarmers / boot cuffs for Gaby, they'll be a nice break from the monotonous work on the poncho.

Cone Yarn

One of my New Year Resolutions was to buy new and more interesting yarn, other than the usual Turkish yarn, available in our yarn shops. I did actually have something in mind - an online shop, offering Italian cone yarn. And yesterday my first cone yarn arrived - it's Macas 814, 60% baby alpaca, 20% merino and 20% PA. I ordered it in three threads and one uncut cone.

I was afraid that knitting the non-twisted threads would be a problem, but my small sample so far proved me wrong. The yarn is very soft and easy to knit and I can't wait to finish my current projects to start experimenting with it.

 The intended result would be this interesting design by Bergere de France, available on Ravelry:

Baby alpacas are so cute and the yarn does look like the soft coat of small alpacas:

But while the cabled poncho is in my dream plans, in the real world my knitting year began with a false start. We had a fortnight of very cold weather and Gaby asked for a long and warm cowl. So I bought 300 g of thick Merino Bulky and knit a big round cowl in Fisherman's Rib - the bigger, the better, I thought. And it's a total fiasco - it's too bulky and uncomfortable and it actually doesn't keep her warm enough, so I'll be ripping this and reknitting it into smaller and tighter cowl, haven't decided on the pattern yet:

And right after the cowl I started also a hat in an almost matching denim color, some remnant 80g from Gaby's tunic. I'm not sure if it's the yarn or my tighter knitting, but I started the hat with the usual 96 sts for 2x2 rib, as in several hats made with the same yarn, but in other colors, and having knitted almost half of the hat I found it to be too tight to be comfortable. I decided to abandon it altogether and to start it again in another color and with some minor modifications of the chart. So far I'm pleased with the new beginning, hope to be able to blog about a successful FO soon :)

Debardeur

Pattern: Debardeur by Bergère de France
Yarn: Alize Lanagold, color 568 petrol green, 300 g
Needle: 3.5 mm rib, 4.0 mm body
Time to knit: a week, give or take
 

Although I knit and unravelled quite a lot, actually I knit the entire front twice, the process was very enjoyable and I'm satisfied with the result. It's a present for my father and I constantly wavered and reconsidered the size, I hope I've made the right decisions and it will fit him in the end.

The color on all of the photos is off, but nothing doing. It's darker and greener actually. The vest is still unblocked on these photos, which is probably visible, but I wanted to photoshoot it on the ground first and then wash and wet block it.

Because my yarn is much thicker than the prescribed and my gauge was completely off, I used only the chart for the cables and recalculated everything else to fit my own gauge and measurements, with only 3 repeats of the cable rapport.