Secret Garden Cropped Cardi

SECRET GARDEN CROPPED CARDI FREE PATTERN
 

Yesterday Gaby and I organized a quick photosession of the little black cardigan I knitted for her this summer. As I mentioned, Gaby spent the summer in a two months' practice at Cambridge university, so I had to improvise the fit, trying the cardigan myself. I should confess that I am as pleased as punch with the general outlook and the fit of the cardigan on her, it's better than I imagined it to be!

I am taking part in a Design Along voting on Ravelry, so I wrote the pattern for the cardigan for size S and I'm offering it free here. I thought I could grade it for other sizes, but that would require testing and I simply don't have the time for such a big endevour. However if size S suits you or if you are experienced enough to grade it to your desired size, I'm happy to provide the pattern.

Pattern: Secret Garden Cropped Cardi
Yarn: Performance Cotton Gem 330 g
Needle: 3.25 mm, 3.5 mm
Time to knit: two weeks

My husband proposed the name Secret Garden, as the columns of ssk and yo looked to him like the steel bars of a fence, through which you could see the cables (trees) of a garden.

WIP: Mitered Square Afghan

Just a few photos of my mitered square afghan. As I mentioned in this post about cotton dyes, I have a lot of cotton-acrylic balls of yarn, remaining from other projects and I intend to make them into an afghan / cover for the settee on the balcony. The yarn is YarnArt Jeans and it is a very nice soft Turkish blend of cotton with premium acrylic, very popular for baby blankets in Bulgaria.

But the best thing about the blanket is that I got to experiment with all kinds of methods for applying dyes. Of all of the above 18 squares only three were made with the original yarn, all others were dyed with cotton dyes, some with full immersion, some with dip dyeing for a gradient, some with a resist twist, some were speckled and cooked in the microwave and the latest batch  (the first four from right to left) was powder speckled with low immersion on the stove. I've placed the original ball of yarn above each miniskein to show from where I've started creating the color. The first and the last miniskeins were made out of the light yellow color and these are the last yards of this ball.

And these two squares in the middle are probably my most favourite so far, I think I want to try to speckle sock yarn in similar colorways:

Cotton Dyes

I finally opened my cotton dyes and did some dyeing. I had two balls of white yarn, about 80 g, unraveled from old projects. I knew the yarn was rayon and probably some acrylic, and because rayon is made out of cellulose I supposed I should be able to dye it with cotton dye, as it is intended for natural cellulose fibers like cotton, linen and hemp. I skeined all of the yarn and dip dyed it in purple dye.

I had thought that all of the yarn was the same, but the dyeing revealed its different origins - one of the balls was from an older purchase and it had larger viscose content, so it took more of the purple color, while the other ball had more acrylic content and it took less of the dye.

Here the difference is quite noticeable:

The two balls wound separately.

And because I had quite a lot of dye in the pot, I decided to overdye a ball of neon blue cotton-acrylic yarn. First I dip dyed it in the remaining purple and then I made a new dye bath of burgundy dye and dip dyed it in it from the other end. I'm quite please with how this cotton-acrylic yarn took the dye - the original color and the new color.

I decided to use the newly dyed yarn to make a mitered square cover for the settee on the balcony. I have plenty of scrap cotton-acrylic yarn and I bought three more colors of cotton dye, so it'll be fun. The only thing I have yet to decide is whether to knit all of the squares separately or to connect them as I go - lots of pros and cons in both directions, but I feel like I'm leaning towards the separate knitting and rearanging them by colors and connecting them when I finish the knitting.

Sea Nymph Modeled

And here it - the promised modeled photosession of Sea Nymph. The sweater is mine, but Gaby will wear it occasionally, like this weekend :) Anyway, it fits her marvelously and does look better on her slender body.

Pattern: Sea Nymph by Drops Design
Yarn: Charlotte, Bulgarian cotton-viscose, 300 g
Needle: 3 mm
Time to knit: exactly one month

Modifications:
Because my yarn and gauge were very different, I used only the general idea and the chart for the lace and did my own calculations for the raglan and the body. It's a simple raglan sweater, so recalculating everything to fit me was not that difficult and I am happy to report that I knit it in one go, without any ripping - a genuine miracle for me. Despite my dislike for the magic loop method I knit the sleeves in the round, so the sweater is entirely seamless.

I finished the body symmetrically to the beginning, which is the most logical decision, instead of the rolling stockinette stitch edge, as in the pattern.

A word about the yarn - not bad, gives good and heavy texture, but I don't think I'll use it again. I'll have to wait and see how it will hold on to wear.

All in all - a nice, feminine, easy pattern and a satisfying result. Now I can move on to another project :)

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 ... :(

Vogue Cardi

I finished my Vogue cardi a week ago and finally got to blogging about it. I've styled it with black and beige as in the magazine, but it goes well with my short summer dresses too. I made a few minor modifications, some of which turned for the better - the sleeve cap, and some for the worse - the lengthening changed the silhouette and was probably a mistake.

Pattern: Fitted Cropped Cardi by Theresa Schabes, Vogue Knitting, Spring/Summer 2014
Yarn:  Performance Cotton Gem, 300 g light beige and 50 g black
Needle: 3 mm rib, 3.5 mm body
Time to knit: 12 days

I kept extensive notes on my process in my Ravelry page, so I feel have little to add here :)
I'm ashamed to confess that I didn't bother to block the black button band - and I should (blushing). It pulls the sides, especially the left one, when the cardi is worn unbuttoned. I'll have to fix that soon. All in all a wearable little cardi, but not very versatile and I doubt it will become a staple in my summer wardrobe.