Last summer, when I was in Kenya, I cast on for a Whispy Cardi in Posh Yarn Sylvia. I’d been meaning to knit one of Hannah Fettig’s laceweight cardigans for ages, and when she re-released Whisper (from Interweave Knits) as the Whispy Cardi I bought the pattern.
I knit most of the shrug portion when I was in Kenya, and then abandoned it to hibernation as soon as I got back. In January, when I was packing for Nepal, I picked it up as ideal travel knitting (only 100g towards your luggage allowance for a whole cardigan’s worth of knitting!). I knit in Nepal, and continued when I got home. For a while I thought it was going to turn out far too big, but when I added the ribbing round the collar and waist (and how tedious that amount of K1, P1 rib was!) it really stabilised it. I’m very pleased with the final article, although I would have preferred the sleeves to be longer.
In fact, that’s my only peeve with the pattern. The pattern photos show a cardigan with 3/4 length sleeves, but according to the schematic I should have been knitting sleeves 9″ long. There’s no way 9″ comes anywhere near my elbow, let alone past it! I added an inch or so to the sleeves, but I didn’t dare make them longer as the sleeves are the first part that’s knit and I didn’t want to run out of yarn. As it was I had plenty of yarn left, but no easy way to lengthen the sleeves, as they’d been seamed and one was the cast-on edge. Still, I’m pretty happy with it. But if I were to knit it again, I’d make the sleeves longer.
Notice the skirt?
It’s from a Clothkits kit that I bought in a sale a while ago. I don’t think they sell it any more. In comparison to my Birdie skirt, which took me the better part of 2 years on and off (mostly off), I whipped this one up in about 5 hours total over two days. I’m really pleased with it, although it is a bit big. Despite me cutting out the size 10 and measuring the seam allowances carefully, it’s the same size as my size 12 Monsoon skirt! Still, it’s an A-line skirt, so it’s pretty forgiving.
One other detail from the above photos: the necklace was made by the wonderful Helen from her handmade ceramic beads. Check out her site – as well as jewellery she makes lovely leaf-shaped buttons!
Last, but not least, I’ve been working on a crochet kit that my good friend Tor bought me for my birthday last year. The result:
It was a good bit of crochet practice, and I learnt to crochet rings into the bargain. Aren’t they cute? I think I feel a crochet Cthulhu coming on at some point…
Oh lovely :)
Glad to see you are wearing the beads, I really must update my blog soon, I have square porcelain buttons with lace patterns on them now as well as the leaves.
I wear them a lot. Because they have so many different shades of purple in them they go with all my purple clothes!
Lovely cardi and skirt! I seem to have bought rather a lot of cardigan-quantities of laceweight recently – such an economical way to do things if you don’t mind knitting with tiny yarn!
Thanks! Because the cardigan is so light it really feels like a “professional” garment. The stitches were a bit uneven, I guess due to it being laceweight, but it evened out beautifully with blocking.
The only downside is laceweight cardigans take ages to knit! I’m currently working on a Featherweight – how’s yours coming along?
I’ve just started the ribbing at the bottom of the body of my Featherweight, but I haven’t picked it up in ages because I’ve been knitting a Galathea to wear to my mum’s 60th birthday party next weekend so that has taken priority!
Love the cardigan and the skirt! It’s so frustrating when you realise that you should have done something differently but it’s too late to change it.
Thanks, Cayt! I’m getting better with the sewing. I could always take it apart and fix it if it really bothered me. I’ve been meaning to do that with my birdie skirt – it’s really too big for me!