Gibson Cardigan

 

I am finally able to show you a finished knitted garment - The Gibson Cardigan by Angela Hahn. Gibson is a free pattern, published by Knitty magazine, First Fall edition of 2018. The pattern calls for heavy weight cotton yarn, but lately I find that I prefer knitting with wool, even for summer. So I opted to knit it in an Italian bobbin tweed yarn I had around - Filpucci Tweedeco, 70% merino, 30% poly-amide, 450 m per 100 g.

Gibson is a top-down raglan cardigan with lace sleeves and a wide collar, which is knitted sideways. My first modification - as my yarn was thinner and my gauge smaller, I cast on the second size (S), aiming at achieving an XS and I had to recalculate the rows to add additional depth, as my rows gauge was also smaller.

 When I divided for the body and reached the high hip, I decided that I wanted the cardigan longer, so I continued knitting until the body under the arms measured 40 cm. However the long cardigan was rather narrow to cover my hips, even with the added collar. So I decided to add two lace triangles to the fronts. I chose a place above the bust to start the lace triangle and grafted it to the stockinette body as I went knitting it top-down.

 

I did not want ribbing which would pull in the end of the cardigan, so I finished the hems with broken rib and for consistency I decided to make the collar of the cardigan in the same style.

 

And finally - I decided to leave the cardigan open,  without buttons or other closure, as it is intended as a light cover during the summer nights or warmer spring and autumn days.

Although I had my doubts and hesitations, I am pretty happy with the end result - the cardigan is light, only 230 g, airy, yet very warm and comfy. The yarn is supersoft and pleasant to the skin.

 

 

Pattern: Gibson by Angela Hahn

Yarn: Filpucci Tweedeco, 230 g

Needle: 4 mm body, 3.5 mm hems and collar

Time to knit: 2 months

Jirachi Cardigan

Finally a modeled photosession of my latest cardigan - Jirachi. Jirachi is a free Knitty pattern for a summer sweater by Karen Clark. I fell in love with the lace pattern, but the last few years of knitting proved to me that summer cardigans are much more wearable in our warm climate with only light chill in the morning and in the evenings, than summer sweaters. So I turned the lace pattern into a cardigan, replacing the rib with moss stitch to match the moss stitch diamonds of the lace. I've included some notes on my Ravelry page, but couldn't be bothered to write down the whole pattern.

Pattern: modified Jirachi sweater
Yarn: YarnArt Jeans, 280 g, color 63
Needle: 2.5 mm moss stitch border, 3 mm body
Time to knit: 19 days

Pictures taken in front of the Sveti Sedmochislenitzi Church, built in the 1900s through the conversion of an Ottoman mosque, built in 1528 upon the ruins of an early Christian temple from 4th-5th century, which on its turn was erected upon a pagan temple of Asclepius from Roman Serdica. I love it, when a place can trace its history back in time :)

Sophia Loren Riverside Pullover

Pattern: Sophia Loren Riverside Pullover by Kathleen Lawton-Trask
Published: Knitty, Deep Fall 2013
Yarn: Alize Cashmira 36 Brick (120 g), 1 Cream (70 g), 14 dark Yellow (70 g)
Needle: 3.5 mm rib, 4 mm body
Notes on my interpretation of the pattern

WIP - Knitty Sweater

I know I haven't been blogging about knitting for almost a month, but it's not like I haven't been knitting - just I've been doing it very very slowly. I'm very bad at stranded knitting - one reason - I knit with the yarn in front of the knitting, and when there are two or more colors passing through my pin, it usually quickly becomes a mess and keeping the right tension is quite a challenge. But this Knitty Deep Fall 2013 sweater has only a few sections of stranded knitting, so I thought I could manage it.

I made a few modifications to the original pattern, some good, some bad judgement.
1) I elongated the body a bit, making the rib longer and adding a row to the single color sections.
2) The sleeves are 3/4 long, repeating exactly the body.
3) I changed the waist fitting, distributing more evenly the increases and the decreases, still keeping the stitches multiples of 6, where it was necessary (the stranded sections).

4) When I reached the underarms, I decided to continue with the upper part, adding the sleeve stitches with provisional cast on. I do that often with raglan sweaters, as it provides a more neat connection between the sleeves and the body. I knew the V of the stitches on the sleeves would be ^ upside down, as the sleeves are knit in the opposite direction, but I thought I wouldn't mind that too much. However, when I began the sleeves, I found that I minded the difference a lot, so I unraveled the stranded diamonds, cut the yarn and started the sleeve from the wrist and then added it to the body with grafting. I think it worked alright and doesn't show. Now I'm working on the second sleeve (and fighting the second sleeve syndrome :). However, if I had to knit this or any other stranded sweater again, I would knit the sleeves first and then continue with the upper body.

5) I omitted the last C1 color section and instead added some length to the back in the C2 color section, using short rows. My first try actually included the C1 section and short rows in that section, but it didn't look alright with only two rows of orange in the front and 10 rows of orange in the back, the bigger yellow section worked better with the elongation of the back neck portion.
I'm almost done with the second sleeve, so I hope there will be a FO photosession later this week :)

Sheepish

Project: Ba, Ba, Sheep
Design: When Sampson Met Lila, Knitty, Deep Fall 2011
Yarn: YarnArt Pure Merino, 4 balls of brown and 2 ball of cream, 300 g total
Needle: 3 mm hem, 3.5 mm body and cowl
Time to knit, correct the length (added 8 rows of st st with grafting) and sew: two weeks

The pattern is interesting and the first to catch my eye when Knitty Deep Fall came out. I've done some modifications - the hem is jagged and I like it this way a lot, I knit it in the round up to the armholes, also lifted the neckline to the height of the armholes and it is still a bit low for my liking. I wish I had listened to my gut and made the neckline higher and narrower and the cowl with more stitches (this is 132 st) by picking 1 st for every knitted row and not 2 st for every 3 rows. I would also extend the final part of the cowl by changing the needles to 4 mm (which I also thought of as a possibility while knitting, but didn't dare to try it). Now the cowl does not fall as freely as I wished it to and hardly covers the neckline, so I decided to sew it folded in half, as seen on the pictures.
Because I never wear short sleeved wool sweaters, I made mine with 7/8 sleeves, no pattern here, just following my general idea of a sleeve.
The yarn is virgin wool and a bit itchy at first, until the skin adjusts to it. I like it, but I wouldn't knit another sweater out of it soon. Surprisingly, it didn't stretch at all in length or width after wet blocking and the sweater is probably a tiny bit too fitting. As a whole, though my gauge was exactly as needed, probably due to the different yarn (and knitter :) my sweater came out smaller than expected (thus the 8 rows of elongation).
The trinity stitch cowl makes this simple stockinette sweater look festive and just the thing I needed for the coming holiday season.

PS: Can you tell how cold I am while taking these pictures :)? Frost had fallen in the morning and I hurried to shoot the sweater before it began to snow. Now I'm sitting next to the heater, while a heavy snow outside falls on the trees and fields.






For other finished objects don't miss Linda's Creative Friday and Tami's Amis FO Friday