Red Burda Blouse 6924

This August is pretty unusual here in Sofia - it's more cold and rainy even for the cold and rainy mountainous climate we are accustomed to. So last Sunday the backpacks were ready, the cheese pie (banitza) was baked and we were hyped to go hiking on Rila, but ... it wouldn't stop raining and the forecast was for rain and thunderstorms all day long. And what else could I do but sew another Burda 6924 blouse :)

Last year I bought this bright red viscose (it is blood red, in case your monitor, similar to mine, displays it otherwise). I believe I had at least 2.5 m of it and I was thinking of a long bright red dress. But I never wear long bright red dresses and where would I do wear them? So, I decided it was time to cut into it and make something, even something as small as this cropped front tie blouse.

 

It is exactly as the white blouse, only red :) I made the same modifications as for the white blouse, including the bias tape coverage of the back neck seam, french seams, four front buttons. Gaby already wore it to the dentists' and declared that she loves it even better than the white one and now wants a third, but with 3/4 sleeves. We'll see about that :)

 

Pattern: Burdastyle 6924

Fabric: 100% viscose, light fusible

Thread: cotton, red

Time to make: 2 days

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: Secret Garden Cropped Cardi

FREE PATTERN DESCRIPTION
 

I have finally a cropped black cardi to show - my Secret Garden Cropped Cardi. This is the same yarn - Performance Cotton Gem in black, which I had purchased for the frogged Vogue cardi. My decisions for this cropped cardi were so many and so wrong most of the time that this small cardigan, which should have taken me a week or so of enjoyable knitting, took me more than a month and cost me so many troubles! First - it was the wrong choice of pattern, but that can happen. Then - it was the insufficient quantity of yarn. Instead of ordering all of the yarn online from the beginning, I bought the two balls available in the shop, then a week later - two more balls which the shop procured for me, with the promise to provide more if I needed later. In the end I knitted and unravelled a lot to match the balls of yarn from different batches, frogged and shortened the sleeves to make the yarn suffice (because the shop never delivered more of the yarn) and in the end I found the manufactures site and ordered the yarn I was missing online.

After browsing Ravelry and Pinterest for cropped cardies, I eventually decided to design it myself, using a stitch pattern from the Japanese knitting stitch bible I got as a present for Mother's day. I sampled several patterns and in the end I chose stitch 104. For the rib I continued down the cables, but for the button bands and the neck band after much deliberation and sampling I decided on a simple 2x2 ribbing.

And here's the little black cardi finally finished. I'm fairly pleased with it, though I would have preferred more interesting buttons and maybe only 4 buttons would have been enough. I did think long about the size and the placement of the buttons and 5 big buttons seemed OK, but today as I sewed them I was not completely satisfied with them. I'll leave it as it is for now and if Gaby doesn't like them at all, I might redo the bands next year. May be :)

The cardigan is for Gaby and I hope we'll be able to have a small photosession with it modeled when she returns from her two months' practice at Cambridge university next week. Until then - just these flat photos.

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?!

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.

Miette

Pattern: Miette by Andi Satterlund (free Ravelry download)
Yarn: YarnArt Summer 150 g and YarnArt Violet 90 g, held together
Needle: 4 mm, 3.5 mm button bands and neckline
Time to knit: 11 days

This is a top-down cropped raglan cardigan with a pretty lace detail, quite easy and pleasant to knit. For full disclosure, I should mention that I did make several mistakes in the lace, all of which I went back and corrected, because I'm such a crazy person. My gauge was quite different from the pattern's original (20 st and 25 rows for a 4 inch square), so to get the smallest size I actually knitted the medium 38". But not quite - the sleeves felt narrow, so I added 6 sts to each of them (53 total) and gradually reduced them to 40 sts. before the lacy part.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I read carefully all of Gail's notes on Miette and I would recommend them to anyone planning to make this cardigan. She's provided many useful tips and among other things now I'll never have to wonder any more where to place the buttonholes on my knitted clothes, because I already know that WOMEN ARE ALWAYS RIGHT :))))