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 :)

WIP - Sea Nymph

Quietly I've been knitting away one of the new patterns by Drops Design - Sea Nymph. It's a fairly simple raglan summer sweater with stockinette body and lacy sleeves. I'm almost done with the body - I adore stockinette knitting in the round, the perfect TV knitting ever!

The original gauge is 21 sts and 28 rows and mine is 25 sts and 35 rows for a 10 cm stockinette square, so I made my own calculations for the pattern. Because of my much smaller gauge I decided to skip all the gymnastics in the pattern of casting on a certain number of stitches, knitting the lacy neckline and then adding evenly additional stitches before the beginning of the raglan increases. Instead I cast on the number of stitches I wanted at the beginning of the raglan (in my case 112 sts), so that based on my calculations I would get the desired number of stitches for the body and the sleeves at the end of the raglan increases. Miraculously, the calculations worked! I worked 50 rows of raglan increases and got 206 sts for the body and 74 sts for the sleeves. I intend to make the sleeves longer than in the pattern - at least 7/8 of the full sleeve length and to finish the sleeves and the body with the same lace pattern (A1) as at the neckline.

My yarn is a 50-50 cotton / viscose blend, bought last summer because of its rich red color. It's a Bulgarian yarn, the quality is average. I have previous experience with two other Turkish cotton/viscose yarns and this one is probably a bit better, but I wouldn't buy it again - the viscose thread, as with the other cotton/viscose yarns I've tried, gets easily tousled and the sweater will be difficult to maintain.
I'm not sure how I'll knit the sleeves. I started one of them in the round, but I don't have a suitable short round needle, so I'll have to try either magic loop or DPNs. I so hate knitting sleeves in the round, sometimes I don't understand why I am causing this to myself :))