Spring is Back - Happy Baba Marta!

It is again the 1st of March and in Bulgaria we celebrate Baba Marta and give our relatives, friends, colleagues, classmates and acquaintances martenitzi. For several years now I've made it a point to make our martenitzi at home as close to tradition as possible. This year I had the most fun making the traditional Pijo and Penda. My couples are very amateurish and far from the pieces of art I've seen, but I'm fond of them, I even gave them names :))) The most interesting:

"The Rapunzel couple"

"The Joker couple"

"The Punk couple"

"The Big couple"

Meanwhile last night arrived my new yarn from g-yarns:

250g Kauni Artistic, Rainbow, 100% wool

100 g Lora&Festa, 10% cashmere, 20% silk, 70% merino extrafine

400 g Italian band yarn, 70% cotton, 30% linen

Can't wait for the extended holidays to start testing and knitting the new yarn :)

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

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 :)