Start: 31st January 2009
Finish: WIP (aiming to finish by 3rd March 2009)
Needles: 4 mm / 80 cm Addi Lace and 4.5 mm / 60 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: GGH "Cumba"; 42% new wool, 28% alpaca, 30% acrylic; Colour #001, dye lot #8072271
Pattern: "Portland" by Lisa Lloyd from the book "A Fine Fleece - Knitting with Handspun Yarns"
Swatched: 22nd July 2008
Started: 24th July 2008
Finished: 05th November 2008
Yarn: "Carpe Diem" from Lang Yarns; 70% merino, 30% alpaca
Needles: 5.5 cm / 80 cm Addi Turbos
Pattern: "Putting Down Roots" from "Inspired Cabled Knits" by Fiona Ellis
Modification:
Using bigger needles and yarn, so less pattern repeats. Will be
eliminating the turned cuffs and the turtle-neck for ribbed cuffs and
v-neck. I also added the ribbing at the bottom of the body, too.
This
is a new record for me: Two hand-knit jerseys in a year! And now I've
been catapulted into sweater knitting mode....because the third one has
already been cast-on. ;-)
I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE this sweater. It was a bit of a work converting the pattern from a women's pattern with finer yarn, rolled cuffs and turtle neck into a men's V-neck, ribbed cuffs and thicker yarn. Thank goodness my boss at the Lanaiolo helped me with it. (yes, otherwise you would have heard of the armhole catastrophe).
I had a bit of a problem with the centre stitches on the V-neck. You
can see in the photos that they're a bit wonky. Granted though, I've
never knitted a V-neck before....and I knitted this V-neck onto the
jersey while watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 at 1.30 a.m. in the middle of the night.
I was really afraid of the cables giving the sweater too much of negative ease and that I would end up looking like a "Presswurst"...or
look stuffed into it....but it seems to have turned out very well and
the stretch even gives a better definition to the cables.
The yarn is scrumptiously soft....and super warm, due to the mix of 70%
merino and 30% alpaca. The only downside to this yarn is that it's not
superwash and so I have to watch out with the wearing that it doesn't
felt too soon. I'm guessing that the first place to felt would be at
the cuffs of the sleeves because the sleeves turned out a bit longer
than I expected (it could cover half of my hand if I were to pull it
down).
Alpaca keeps in more warmth than merino. However I'm glad
that this is a mix, because alpaca supposedly doesn't have "memories"
that sheep wool would have when knitted up, which would mean that 100%
alpaca sweater would be more prone to wearing out and stretching
without springing back to its original shape. But I guess that the
negative ease from the overall cables would have helped with that
problem, too.
The cable design looks complicate at first glance, but it was really
easy to remember. A bit fiddly to knit though, because you can't do the
cables without the help of cable needles.
As the name of the sweater suggests, "Putting Down Roots" is inspired by nature, by the vision of intertwining roots of huge old trees. Here is what Fiona Ellis, the designer of the original pattern, wrote as an introduction to the pattern:
"There
is a sense of both expectation and anticipation when we plant a seed.
This is followed by a period where little appears to be happening,
where we have to simply trust in the process. I think you will agree
that this is akin to casting on that initial row at the beginning of a
knitting project.
We know that the first few rows will go slowly
while we learn the pattern and get into a rhythm, like a seed
germinating. Just as an ugly bulb or dry, uninspiring seed eventually
delights us when it blooms, these rows will come to fruition as the
pattern reveals itself. Often the cast-on edge can hardly be detected,
but the roots of the pattern are certainly there."
I think
that it is a beautiful comparison with knitting this pattern. It
started out small with just a ball of yarn and knitting needles...just
like a seed in the earth and some water. Then it just grew into
something beautiful.
All in all, I'm really happy with this jersey and I will sure wear it a lot to keep me warm this winter! ;-)
Start: 5th September 2008
Finish: 20th October 2008
Needles: 4.5 mm / 100 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% Peruvian Highland Wool; colour 8886, dye lot 7414
Pattern: Joukahainen by Kristel Nyberg. Published in Finnish in the magazine Ulla 03/07. Pattern is available as an English translation as Ravelry download.
Modification: I shortened the body a bit because I don't like jerseys that hang down too low.
Sorry about the long silence....but well, I broke my laptop last
Wednesday while I got this spurt to clean (which totally subsided as
soon as the computer broke).
I decided that I needed to wash the
table cloth which is under my laptop. I disconnected the laptop, lifted
the laptop up, pulled part of the cloth away and replaced the
laptop....without seeing that part of the laptop landed back on the
cloth. I was listening to some exciting Spanish music (...a tango...and
to be more exact it was "Por una cabeza"...my
favourite one forever...and I was listening to that exact version -
yes, I have the soundtrack) and decided to pull a table cloth out in a
passionate fashion....
...as you can guess, the laptop came
a-flying with the cloth. It landed on the floor with a thud....and when
I tried turning it on, it made a sickening clicking noise and gave me
the infamous Blue-Screen-of-Death saying something along the line of
"Unmountable Boot Volume".
I actually panicked....coz I broke a laptop once already by dropping it on the floor (al contrario, sin tango).
And this time it seemed like history was repeating itself. Back then, I
had to send in the laptop for reparation, which took 6 weeks and EUR
250 (well, actually DM 500). And I didn't want that this
time...especially the six weeks period - not that I would have the
quids to spare either.
I crammed after some contacts and got a
friend of another friend. We met up, he took a look and said that it
definitely was the hard drive. He took my laptop with him and fixed it
for me, i.e. replaced the hard drive, pulled out whatever he could from
my old hard drive and set the laptop up for me again. I paid him
waaaaaaaaaaay less than what I would have to pay were I to send the
laptop in. Thank goodness....but then again, it's not like I have money
to spare, so I'm kinda broke right now. At least til the end of the
month.
Anyway, so now I've got my laptop back, with even more
memory...and it feels kinda new. So, yeah, I'm pretty happy, even
though the darn HP QuickPlay thing doesn't work any more (I haven't got
the recovery CD), but I hardly used it apart from watching DVDs anyway.
And for that purpose, I just downloaded some free third-party programme
and then I'm all set.
So yeah, here I am again. Back in the
beginning of September I had to unplug from the internet unwillingly
for a week because the German Telekom effed up something about the
contract. But I still had my computer to do stuff on. This time around
it was five days completely without computer. I felt as though someone
had cut off my arms....so the only sensible thing I could do was to
knit. Which bore fruit. :-p
I finished my Joukahainen! The
picture above is just a teaser...since I still need to do a proper
photo shoot for it. Here are the specs:
Start: 5th September 2008
Finish: 20th October 2008
Needles: 4.5 mm / 100 cm Addi Turbos
Yarn: Cascade 220, 100% Peruvian Highland Wool; colour 8886, dye lot 7414
Pattern: Joukahainen by Kristel Nyberg. Published in Finnish in the magazine Ulla 03/07. Pattern is available as an English translation as Ravelry download.
