Denim Joy

Almost two months ago I knitted another Kim Hargreaves's cardigan - Joy. It is one of my most favourite patterns and knitting it with this delicious Drops Muscat 100% cotton was truly joy. The cardigan is a surprise present, which is the reason I'm posting about it so late.

Two months later I have almost forgotten the modifications I made. I knitted the body seamlessly and elongated it a bit, my gauge was different from the pattern, so I made my own calculations - and I made the button holes much smaller than the described in the pattern. And did I mention that this is my third Joy and I still don't have one for myself :)

Pattern: Joy by Kim Heargreaves
Yarn: Garnstudio Drops Muskat  100% cotton, 450 g
Needle: 3.5 mm, 4 mm
Time to knit: one month

This must be one of my most favourite photosessions ever! We were hiking in Rila today and I had brought the cardigan with the dress and the shoes in the car for an eventual photosession. And then on our way back I noticed this field with rolls of hay. What a perfect scenery!

Rila in the background, rolls of hay in front, love it!

Purple Christina

A quick photo session of the purple Christina I knitted for my mother. My model Gaby is S and the cardigan is size L, so it is a bit big on her, but still I think it is much better presented on a living person than flat on the bed.

Pattern: Christina by Kim Hargreaves
Yarn: Drops Muscat, 100% cotton, 320 g
Needle: 2.5 mm, 3 mm
Time to knit: 3 weeks

The yarn Drops Muskat is very beautiful, high quality cotton, very durable and with satin shine and it was joy to work with it. My dyeing job turned out well done, I alternated two skeins all over and I believe the final garment is pretty homogeneous in color. I washed all of the knitted parts, some twice and there was not a hint of bleeding, so I'm sure the dye is permanent. All in all - I'm very pleased with this cardigan, I hope it will get lots of wear from my mother this spring and summer.

I am actually so in love with this pattern, that I am tempted to knit another one for Gaby in a color of her choice. To me this is a timeless pattern.
Discretely peeking under the cardigan is Gaby's new shirt I sewed for her last week :)

WIP: Purple Christina

Last year in July I came upon a sale of bright pink Drops Muscat cotton yarn and I grabbed 8 balls of it and overdyed it in black to move the color to variegated dark purple. The yarn was intended for my mother, but as she is not a very keen knitter, she asked me to knit a cardigan for her, using the yarn. Years ago I had knitted two Joys by Kim Hargreaves - one for Gaby and one for my mother and she still wears her Joy with pride and erh, joy :). So what she had in mind was something similar, and my immediate idea was - Christina by the same designer. I love the pattern and I'm a little surprised that it has been forgotten - the last finished Christina on Ravelry is from 2017.

I'm well ahead in my knitting, with one back and two sleeves already done. I've blocked one of the sleeves and what a difference blocking makes to this texture! I can't even imagine how uninformed I was in 2012 - I didn't block my Christina and it shows in the blog pictures. Thankfully now I know better - not only do I block my finished objects, but I try to knit big enough gauge samples and wet block them before taking them into account.

Because the yarn is hand dyed, I alternate skeins, knitting two rows with one and two rows with the other skein. It slows me, but it does make a difference and provides a more smooth transition from skein to skein. The picture below shows the difference in size and texture between the blocked and the still not blocked sleeve.

I'm off to cast on the right front :). I should be able to finish the cardigan in time for the warm spring and summer evenings ahead.

Edda

I've been thinking of knitting Edda for quite some time. What stopped me were the short sleeves and the lack of buttons. However the best interpretations I saw on Ravelry were without buttons and with elbow length sleeves, so this time I opted to go with the mainstream. The result is a soft and comfortable summer cardigan which can be donned on at home in the evenings or on my way to the supermarket in the morning. Yes, it's mine :), though Gaby is kind enough to pose for this photosession. And because she is such a good girl, I might lend it to her if she wants it :)

Pattern: Edda by Kim Hargreaves
Yarn: Lanoso Alara 50% cotton 50% acrylic, 220 g
Needle: 4 mm
Time to knit: appr. 3 weeks with long breaks

For my version of Edda I followed in the steps of Bunny-B - as my needles were smaller and my gauge quite different, I decided to knit the two fronts and the back together, based on the instructions for the M size and aiming at the S size. For the sleeves I cast on 41 sts and increased to 51 sts, adding one stitch to each side every 10th row, for a total of 60 rows to top shaping.

Swedish Bread with Cream Cheese and Dill

I'm continuing my culinary experiments in international breadland with this super delicious Swedish bread. The egg, cream cheese and butter give it extra rich flavour and make it the most tasty bread I've made so far.
My source - labrex from a popular Bulgarian culinary forum.

Ingredients: 500 g flour, 7 g dry yeast, 1 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp sugar, 100 ml milk and 100 ml water, 150 g cream cheese, 1 egg, 2 tbsp melted butter, 2 tbsp chopped fresh dill (first crop from my "spice garden").

Add the yeast to the warm milk and leave for 10-15 min. Sift the flour and add the milk with the yeast and the other ingredients (the cream cheese must be with room temperature) and mix soft and elastic dough. Leave to rise until its volume doubles. Spread into a rectangle 1 cm thick and fold into a form. Place in a rectangular baking tin (mine is 28 cm x 8 cm x 8 cm) and leave to rest for 10-15 min. Glaze with milk. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 C.

This bread is ideal for sandwiches with all kinds of cheese, fish or ham.
I found it super delicious with butter, feta or yellow cheese and slices of cucumber.

Definitely recommend it, my husband keeps asking me when I am going to make it again :)

And meanwhile - I cast on Edda. I'm knitting it in one piece, following Bunny-B's notes, as I got the same gauge as hers on 4 mm needles. I've got only about 200 g of yarn and the garter stitch eats it very quickly, so I'm not sure how long (if any) sleeves I'll have, though I would prefer them to be at least 3/4 in length. But we'll see how it goes.

Camelia Sweater

 
Last autumn I knitted two Kim Hargreaves' Camelia hats in a self-drafted slouchy version. Gaby's hat was knit in a black cotton-viscose yarn, which I've bitched about ever since I tried knitting with it two years ago. But I've written about the limited yarn choices around and, despite the nightmare of a knitting process this yarn is, the knitting it produced for Gaby's hat is very light and drapey and I kept imagining it in the form of a late summer / early autumn sweater. So some three days ago I cast on Camelia sweater. I took the initial design, which is a clever play with the basics - knit, purl, k2tog and yo over 48 rows and doubled it along the same lines to 96 rows. According to my preliminary estimate I'll need two repeats of the chart for the body parts.

The yarn is as intensely distressing as ever, splitting and tousling, but I'm knitting on in my ridiculous tradition to cast on a summer sweater in autumn. I suppose there's some obvious psychological explanation for it, a desire to hold on to the just ended summer, but it doesn't matter. And maybe I'll even wear this sweater soon.