Vintage Cardigan

Ladies and gentleman, the debut of the Vintage Cardigan! Ta ta da!


Click here for a closeup of the pattern.

Nope, I'm not the one who knitted it up :) but it's mine now! :D It's a beautiful cardigan and there is a story behind this that makes it so very meaningful.

This cardigan was a gift. SW's mother used to work as a nurse. After a time, she shifted up to Kuala Lumpur as she was about to marry. One of her good friends was a knitter. When she heard that SW's mom was moving away, she decided to knit something for her. In those days, it was very cold during the night shifts at the hospital and many wore cardigans to keep warm. This friend of hers went all the way down to Kuala Lumpur and got the wool from St Michaels, now known as Marks and Spencer. Ok, so Mark and Spencer is not much in UK but over here, they brand themselves as up class and believe me! Their stuff is expensive! So yes, she got the wool from St Michaels and knitted this up as a going away present in 20 days. Yep, 20 days. And that was about 30 over years ago. Now SW's mom is retired and She can't wear it now. Also, weather is swelteringly hot compared to the freezing offices we have here. I'll always look at this particular cardigan differently.

And yes, it's an oddity here in Singapore and Malaysia. Our weather gets hotter and hotter by the year. But the office workers gets 2 extreme weather conditions every weekday. Extremely hot outside and totally freezin inside buildings. That's the only place we can wear warm clothings. Most of our offices and shopping centers take air conditioning seriously.

So yea, there. My quick post for today..:)

My WIP Report

I know, I know... I've been a bad girl. Lots been going on, but I haven't much time to take pictures and download them and blog. So to make up for it, I'm posting all 3 WIPs I'm working on now. My life has come to a 'busy' phrase, so life is pretty hectic. I'm having insomnia again and my facial eczema is starting to act up again, so that really suxs. But nobody really want to hear that so..:) here's my WIPs. I haven't been able to let go of all 3 and concentrate on one. Everytime I pick one up, I feel guilty about the other. So as a result, everything goes round robin. I'll finish slower on all 3, but I'll get to wear Green Tea and Vanilla almost at the same time. *Grins

Green Tea Cables


Going is pretty easy now that I understand the pattern. I can do the main panel without refering to the chart anymore. How could I not reach this stage when I had to chart and rechart (*eye roll) it over and over again. Not to mention how many times I had recorrected (*see my previous entries) and tore my hair out. Still, I'd say that mastering the cables was easy compared to mastering lace with KSH.

Vanilla Seed Shell



Miss Vanilla Seed is also plodding along just fine. I actually totter about with it in my car. I knit this while at traffic lights or jams. Pretty easy. More calculations needed later on but for now, it's a relaxing knit. I love the stitch definition on this one. I'm doing the decreasing for the waist shaping now. I've decided to have a V-Shaped cowl neck.

Marmalade Kiri



This little minx is occupying a huge chunk of my time right now. It's real slow going and a real eye strainer. A tip while doing this if you are new to it. Count them stitches often and use lots and lotsa stitch counters! I ran out on those. Green Tea is using most of it. Right now, I'm counting stitches everytime I reach the center of the row and at the end of the whole thing. It's better than frogging the whole row/s. Right now, it's knit 4 to 5 rows, frog 1 to 2 rows. It takes some getting use to. But it's such a fiery and beautiful piece. Ah me laddie, really lost my heart to this dame..:D

I have a few other projects lined up already. Having being inspired by Carabebe to hurry up and catch up with her for the X-back top in Knitty. I've dug out my tape yarns and found 1 skein of River Tape and 1 skien of Rowan Cotton Tape in Shadow and those Colinettes. Colinettes really don't gel with anything I've got right now. They've really gotta go. A quick pop over to Ebay found me 3 balls of the Cotton Tape in the exact color on offer in which I bid and won. Ouch! I can see my money fluttering away.

As for Phildar Flirt, she has found her niche as a jacket wannabe. I actually took a photo of my swatch. But it's so blurry I've decided to reshoot and blog about that another time.

I think most of my yarns has already found a pattern to mesh with now..:) Knit knit knit! Really.. no more crazy yarn buying. I'm going broke already. I'm limiting myself to a paltry sum per month until I finish everything I've lined up. Yea I can hear some of the girls laughing at me already. Me? Limiting myself? Let's just see how long I can take it yea girls..:P

Colinettes anyone?

I got 2 skiens of Colinettes recently.


1 skein Colinette Wigwam in Florentine
1 skein of Colinette Enigma in Fragipani.

Choose the wrong colorway. Can't seem to come up with anything to use it with, it doesn't gel well with my other yarns in terms of colors. Anyone game for a swap? My wish list is somewhere in the left column below.

Kiri & Seed Stitch Cowl Neck Shell Update

A wee bit of complaining. I dunno what's with my Bloglines. It seems sooo slow in updating me of new entries that it seems everyone gets it before me. And worst, it repeatedly marks certain entries as new even though I've read it. Some of the girls over here gets a few hours lag but I'm getting it 1 day late! Ugh!

Vanilla Seed Shell
Seed Stitch Cowl Neck Shell definitely needs another nickname. It's such a blah and long winded name. I'm toying with a few that somehow sounds....weird! Take for example, Cream Seed Cowl? Sounds like a bad word. hahaha I guess Vanilla Seed Shell would do. It's cream and it's a seed stitch pattern. No pictures yet cause I recalculated and recasted with smaller needles. It's only 1/2 inch so can't really see much of a pattern. I knit this when my eyes are too tired cause I don't have to concentrate like with Kiri KSH or Green Tea Cables. I'm bringing this along to and fro work. I've discovered that I can actually get a bit done during the traffic jams to and fro work. I get less agitated with drivers too. haha

Kiri

Last night, I was working till 11ish at home. Trust me, staring at the laptop and programming in the middle of the night sucks big time. In the end, I just couldn't think straight any more and I chucked it in favor of Kiri. I think I must be mad. While the other girls in this knitalong are finding 4.5mm needle too big and holey, I'm looking at my 4.5mm and thinking it's a little small. Oh and the picture above is the best I could come up with right now. I had to step on my circular needles to pull it straight for this picture. LOL The length on the needles is about as long as a pen right now.

Anyway, working on Marmalade Kiri, I was happily congratulating myself for not needing to rip again, when *gasp! I found an error! Oh no no no! The pattern calls for left and right decreases, knit2tog for the former and psso for the latter. I've been doing knit2tog for all the decreases. Gasp! I ripped 2 rows very carefully. Took me 1/2 hr. Then I looked again. I don't think I wan to rip it entirely again. The error is slight and it's only the first 6 rows. Hardly noticeably to my eyes since they are soo crossed over by then. So I think I'll leave it as that for now. I need to be careful with this one. Lesson learnt - Can't knit it when I'm too tired.

Kiri

Pattern = Kiri Shawl
Yarn = Rowan Kid Silk Haze
Needles = 4.5mm metals



I finally started on Kiri. I know this is a lousy picture, but it was best I could produced under such eagerness to continue with it, it was the 1st day picture.

Day 1
Starting with Kiri with KSH is difficult, I'm knitting very very loose and if you don't grip the needles properly, it all slips out. I know you can't see much of the pattern, neither could I then. I got pretty worried about whether I was doing it right.

Day 2
Progress forward! No ripping needed yet. *Fingers crossed. Getting the hang of it. Gets easier as the piece gets bigger. Only problem is the piece keeps rolling up the needle. At least I can make sense of the pattern now. I'm concerned that my stitches don't seem to be even at all. Some big some small. Will knit it more tonight and see how it goes. I'll take another picture tonight. Pretty happy with the needle size. Won't be changing.

Phildar Flirt



On another note, the Phildar yarn I bid for in ebay came yesterday. No regrets! Oh I love the colors. So bright and cheerful! These pictures don't reflect the true colors of it at all. 1 strands of a bright pink and another thinner strand of pastel to faded pink. It's a bright cheerful spring pink mix. And I think I know just the pattern for it. It's going to be a jacket for sure.

Monday Update

There was a meetup last Saturday. I didn't manage to make it. :( I was home for the past 2 days with a rampant migraine that came on and off. I seem to be falling ill alot lately. Mom was telling me, it's a lot to do with the fact that I'm sleeping late and the weather. It has been quite crazy here. It's really really hot and glaring outside and it will suddenly rain either in the wee hours of the morning or late afternoon, but the heat still remains. I notice that my migraine comes very bad when the sunlight is very glaring and the heat is bad. My body is telling me that the tropics is no longer for me...:D Time to migrate else where. heh heh

On the knitting front, there's been some movements but sporadic as best due to my migraine.


Yarn : Cream. A mix of Cotton & Viscose
Recycled from : A Esprit Pull Over Sweater
Swatch Stitch : Seed Stitch
Needle Size : 3 1/4 mm & 4 mm
Pattern : Cowl Neck Seed Stitch Shell

I've finally managed to settle on a pattern for my first recycled yarn project. I almost tried dyeing with this. But it was not to be! Too many project and way to curious about knit related stuff. I'd never get started this way. I just love it, very soft and lots of drape. I like the way the swatch turned out. I think I'll stick with 3 1/4 mm size. So a cowl necked shell it will be! I've already casted on. A bit of a brainless knitting since I've already got the schematics worked out last week. So this was what I was doing last weekend when I could. No thinking or squinting required. Just relax and knit. Pretty fast going. I like this project! *grins

On other WIPs
Green Tea Cable
I seem to be catching the habit of starting a few project instead of finishing 1 pattern at a time. I'm getting greedy. Green Tea Cable has since lost it's challenge but it is plodding along. Now that I'm comfortable with it, I'm starting on other things as well.

Kiri Shawl



I chose this color for KSH. Isn't it gorgeous? Was a bit apprehensive about the color on the internet but no regrets on this color! A bunch of us girls decided to do Kiri shawl and got Rowan KSH for it. Sad to say, the other girls have moved on to other yarns for Kiri. I tried casting on twice with disastrous results. But I really love this yarn though it's very tricky. So I'm gonna attempt again with stitch markers, hopefully with better progress. Tonight if I'm up to it.

Mystery Wool



I need help here. Can anyone out there identify this bunch of tweed wool? I got it from ebay. I love the colors and the feel of it, but the original owner no longer has the details of this wool. Any help to identify this lot would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Green Tea Cables Update

Hi all, I know I haven't been blogging lately. Work has been all consuming and I've been too tired to do anything else. It should be better for a time now. :) Thanks for all the concern. I have a few things I'd like to share but I guess I'll do it day by day.

My cable project hit a snag last week. I took one look and realized that I messed up one of the cable panels pretty badly. The main panel, which I'm following another pattern. After figuring out where I went wrong last weekend, I decided on the spur of the moment to take pictures of it. But my photo skills weren't fantastic so I had to throw some away and the others came out dim and blur. So apologies all round. You will also have to excuse me on the odd sizes I have there. :)


If you look at the above picture, there's absolutely no sense of what the pattern is about. It's gibberish. I ripped the panel until I got to the ribbing and removed the needles. Then I put the rubber stopper at both ends so the rest of the stitches don't fall out.


Then I started ripping until I hit the ribbing. There, I inserted a handy pair of extra needles to keep the stitches there.


Then came the ripping of the ribbing. I looked at the ribbing and it made no sense what so ever too. So I took a crochet hook and started correcting the ribbing column by column as I knit along.


It got a little tricky trying to juggle the 2nd pair of needles and the crochet hook at the same time and not let the stitches slide all out.


And there, the ribbing correction is done. If you scroll back up, it doesn't look like the original ribbing. I had to purl where I had knitted and knit where I had purled.


Now I needed to correct the cable pattern panel. So I pulled the correct line of yarn and started knitting according to instructions.


Almost there, it's a little tricky when you get the end of the stitches cause it becomes a tight squeeze.


Finally done, if you look at the book and my panel, it looks about right now. The first picture makes absolutely no sense right? Search me if I knew what I did wrong then. I only knew how to correct my mistake. Good enough for me!

Cheers ppl!