Monte Rosa in Green and Yellow

Pattern: inspired by Monte Rosa by Isabell Kraemer
Yarn: Alize Lanagold Solids appr. 340 g green, 30 g yellow
Needle: 3.5 mm rib, 4 mm body
Time to knit: two weeks

Definitely one of my most favourite winter cardigans ever, I'm very happy how it turned. I blogged about the modifications I've made. About the sleeves - I decided to unravel some 15 rows before the armscye and to make the additional two increases which I had skipped, thinking that 48 stitches would give me enough width. This and some blocking settled the issue with the narrow sleeves and they feel quite comfortable now.

The winter is back - it snowed heavily last night and today the city is covered in white. The snowy park provided a nice scene for the session but added a bit too much contrast to the pictures and the texture of the knitting is not quite clearly visible in most of them. But I've posted so many pictures that I'm sure you get the idea :)

A jay bird in the tree above us was causing snow to fall on the camera:)

 Lots of great tit birds (Parus major) - the bird symbol of Sofia,
perched only a yard away from us

Parus major

Parus major

And a few more photos :) This  cardigan is going to get lots of wear, I'm sure!

South Park on a Bleaky Day

Just a few photos from our walk in South Park today. The weather is dull, windy and rainy. We had to abandon our plans for sledging on Vitosha because of the strong hurricane winds that have been blowing yesterday and today in the mountains - there were uprooted trees in the park after last night's storm.

My Monte Rosa is almost ready. Here's an idea I came up with for finishing double-folded collars. Instead of casting off the stitches and then sewing the cast-off ridge to the body, I decided to use grafting, treating the back side of the stitches, picked up for the collar, as live stitches. The result is a smooth ridgeless finish:

This is the collar from the inside - green outside and yellow inside.

I still haven't attached the sleeves to the body, as I'm a bit at a cross-road. For some reason, unknown to me, I have changed the tension of my knitting on the sleeves and instead of 16 sts per 4", I've knitted them to 17.5 stitches per 4". Thus the sleeves are a bit tight. I could wet block them and hope for them to relax or I could reknit them, adding a couple of stitches for good measure. I'll sleep on this and decide tomorrow :)

WIP: Monte Rosa

It looks like monte rosa, it smells like monte rosa, but it's not monte rosa :)))

I'm making a visual interpretation of Isabell Kraemer's monte rosa pattern. The original pattern is a long cardigan continuously knitted from top to bottom. However I'm at a stage of my knitting when I prefer cardigans, knitted in separate parts from bottom to top and then sewn together. I've noticed that my knitted clothes, especially cardigans, have better structure and are less deformed in the course of  wearing and cleaning (machine washing at low temperature and delicate cycle, no centrifuge) when knitted in separate parts.

The interpretation also features some of the modifications, made by other knitters, which I liked better than the original - shorter, more fitted cardigan with stockinette stitch side sections. I'm still thinking about the closing - zipper or buttons, but I'll cross that bridge when i get to it.
The green color is fairly true in these photos, but the yellow is much more subdued, it's actually mustard and the combination looks better in real life.