Yellow FIFA Sweater

It all started with my new noise cancelling wireless headphones. This autumn I've been obsessed with listening to audiobooks during my daily walks, and even on my trips downtown. The weather this autumn was very mild, even warm and if i needed a hat, it was my cap to shade my eyes from the sun. 

And then came late November and it became too cold to walk in the park for an hour, often longer, without a warm hat. The headphones work over a hat, but not as effectively as directly on the ears. So, faced with my tiny problem, and as stupid as it sounds, I googled images of hats and headphones and came upon this picture of Selena Gomez from Only Murders in The Building. I was absolutely fascinated by her look with the yellow hat and the yellow sweater. Probably this is the inspiration I've been waiting for all year long, for I immediately started searching for suitable yellow yarn and planning a similar look.

Just then the sales for Black Friday were happening and I settled upon a sale offer from a Bulgarian yarn company, that I have used before - Performance yarn. The yarn I bought is supposed to be 100% merino of fine quality, 250 m / 100 g - exactly in the range of thickness I was shopping for and in a delightful mustard yellow color. 

Even with the sweet 20% off from the BF sale, the yarn was expensive, within the price range of the Italian bobbin merinos I've been buying these last years. Maybe I've been spoilt, but the quality of the yarn did not meet my expectations, given its price, so I won't be shopping any time soon from this company.

But I cast on my sweater anyway. I wasn't planning it as a FIFA World Cup sweater, I even thought of boycotting the football cup because of Qatar's questionable hosting, but football is football and I simply couldn't miss the emotions I get from following the matches every four years. And thus for two weeks now I've been watching the games and knitting my yellow FIFA sweater.

The inspiration sweater is a machine knitted raglan fisherman rib sweater. I'm knitting mine in half-fisherman rib and so far I've done the front and the back up to the armholes and this evening, while my beloved Spain lost to Morocco :(((, I cast on one of the sleeves. I plan to knit the two sleeves up to the armholes as well and then I'll decide whether to continue the sweater raglan or with separate sleeves.

I'm also playing with the idea of adding small zippers at the hem sides of the sweater, but I'll think about it when I come to that AND if I can find suitable zippers. I hope I'll be able to finish the sweater till the end of the World Cup and if I have enough remaining yarn, I plan to knit the matching hat too.

Autumn Colors

As the Indian summer is over and it's cold and gloomy and rainy outside, I am taking out my wool dyes and getting my knitting mojo back.This weekend I got to play with two new to me Bulgarian sock yarns. Until now I've only used the Turkish Alize Superwash 75% wool 25% nylon, 420 m / 100 g and I am quite pleased with it. But I'm always curious for something new.

The Performance yarns have the same technical description as Alize Superwash, but so far I'm happier with them than with the Turkish yarn, as far as dyeing goes. The yarn took the dye beautifully, preserving its shine and smoothness better that Alize Superwash. Of course, the major test - knitting, is still ahead, I'll be counting on my mother for reviews, as these skeins are a present from me for her.

I used one and the same method for both skeins - layering of colors on twisted hanks, using four colors for each hank, three of which were the same and done simultaneously - butter yellow, bright yellow and orange. For the fourth color I chose green for the first skein,

trying to imitate this tree in front of our building.

And for the second hank the fourth color was sort of chocolate brown - a mixture I made myself from yellow, red, blue and black. On these pictures the skeins are still a bit messed from the dyeing

and here they are reskeined, smoothed and ready to be sent. I love reskeined yarn, as it gives better idea of the distribution of the colors and how they would knit up in the future socks.

Good Bye, Vogue Cardi

Four years ago I knitted the Fitted Cropped Cardi from Vogue Spring 2014 in Performance Cotton Gem. I loved the process and I liked the way it turned out, but I never wore it, not once in the course of a year or so. As Cotton Gem is fairly expensive and with low yardage, this tiny thing had eaten through quite a lot of yarn, which was unused, so I frogged it and reknit the beige yarn in my Ho-okipa Cardigan.

When I considered knitting the Vogue cardi for the second time, using only black Cotton Gem, I had presumed that the problem with my first attempt was the contrast color combo, which was hard to match with anything other than solid black or solid white. And I had forgotten the issue with the transparency of the big holes, which made the cardi look more like a fishing net than a piece of clothing.

The problem didn't seem obvious to me, when matching the work in progress with various items it could be worn with,but it became glaring after I blocked the back and two fronts and pinned them to try the body on. As I had still to knit the two sleeves and the bands, I decided that I'd rather frog it and start anew than knit the remaining 2/3 and then frog it in a year. Now I'm testing stitch patterns for the new design. Am I a too fussy knitter, I wonder?!

Goodbye, Sabrina Cardigan!

Two years ago I cast on a cardigan from Sabrina magazine. I really loved the pattern and worked on it for quite a long time (these wrapped stitches were quite a slog). I had actually two complete sleeves and the back, when I lost interest in the project and discarded it in my overflowing box for unfinished projects and yarn.

With the coming of spring I felt it was time to decide what to do with the Sabrina cardigan - finish it or make something else with the yarn - Performance Cotton Gem, 100% cotton, 50 g / 100 m. It was of course a pity to discard all the work I had put into it, but i just didn't feel like finishing it, when I've got so many new ideas I want to try and knit. So - I pulled the thread.

I  only regret it I was half way through frogging when it occurred to me that I never took pictures and blogged about this cardigan and I had two-thirds of it actually done. So I took a pause to photograph what was left of it. I'm frogging it using steam and though I wouldn't claim that the yarn looks as good as new, I hope blocking of the finished project would even the stitches.

A glimpse at the new cardigan I'm knitting with this yarn:

And to sprinkle this rather bland post with some color - two pictures from the site of the host town of the National Olympiad of Biology, where Gaby won the silver medal. We are so proud of our clever girl!