Black Maluka Cardigan

I've finished Gaby's cotton black cardigan, incorporating the Maluka shawl pattern. It's a fairly simple cardigan, intended for summer evening and early September school days. The yarn - Drops Muskat, is nice to work with, but attracts dust and threads, which are rather visible on the black texture, so I don't think I'll use it again.

Pattern: Maluka Cardigan (personal pattern) incorporating Maluka Shawl,
inspired by Carolyn's fitted cardigan
Yarn: Drops Muskat 100% mercerized cotton, color 18, 400 g
Needle: 3.5 mm (Maluka border), 4 mm stockinette body
Time to knit: 10 days

Things I would do differently:
1) Add 3-4 cm length to the body;
2) Front and back curve fitting (probably, I'm not quite sure about that);
3) The seamless body tends to twist, it would probably be better if the fronts and back were knitted separately with provisional cast on and the Maluka border added afterwards.
4) The stitches of the beginning and the end of the Maluka border could have been left live (provisional cast on) and then incorporated in the buttonbands. There were too many ends to be weaved in and cotton is not very pliable.

We were so very lucky to photo shoot the cardigan in the morning, while the sun was out. Only an hour later it's pouring again ... :(

Black & Gold

Just to say hi! I'm here, occupied with the usual - children, work, house :)
I've resumed knitting the cotton/viscose summer sweater I started last autumn, inspired by Gaby's black Camellia. The process is very slow on 3 mm needles, the splity viscose thread makes the yarn difficult to work with. But I like the result so far and I'm almost finished, half way through the second sleeve.

And though if you ask me I would claim that I don't like black much, I've bought a new sweater worth of black cotton. I've been meaning to knit for Gaby a little black cotton cardi for school, so far I've got my eye on this interesting pattern from Verena 01 2014:

After which I think I'll knit this latest Vogue Knitting pattern, I'm totally smitten with this summer cardi:

And on another front, I can't help myself but tell you how proud we all are with our clever girl - not only did she reach the final round of the National Olympiad in Biology - she won the first place in the junior group! That's really, really huge - ranking first among students from all over the country, most of which study Biology as a major subject (her majors are Mathematics and Programming). Regretfully I don't have pictures from the Olympiad and the prize award ceremony, which was held in Momchilgrad.

Just a picture from the site of her school, with her teachers and other participants from her school in the final round of the Olympiad: