weekend activity
It was pretty wet and dreary over here this weekend, perfect for knitting and final touches. I managed to find some buttons for the baby kangaroo raglan and make a label by embroidering on ribbon that matches the insides of the buttonbands. I'm liking the homemade, homespun look. I'm really pleased with the way this project turned out. I got to learn how to make a raglan sweater (new skill) and work more on finishing details and my fledgling embroidery skills.
I also hunkered down a made a swatch for e's sweater. A few weeks ago we went to WEBS and poked around in the warehouse section to see if they had any yarn that Elliott might fancy for his sweater. We found some nice cones of fingering weight wool in a natural and a slighty varigated blue. The blue is one strand of dark navy and one strand that changes every couple of inches from yellow to purple to teal to blue.
I tried knitting sections of both the designs on 2's or 3.0mm needles. In order to get a more accurate swatch and to simulate knitting in the round I break the yarn after every row and start over. This can make for a pretty time consuming swatch. Because the yarns were from cones, and ready to be machine knit. they were slightly oiled, thin and a bit slippery. If you're using yarn from cones, you really need to wash the swatch and let it dry to get an accurate gauge. When the oil washes off the yarn blooms and expands, really becoming a nice fabric. I'm getting about 8 stitches to an inch, so now its time to do the math and write the pattern. I'm also playing around with the color of the borders for the bottom band pattern. I'm not sold on the golden yellow, as it clashes a bit with the redder tone of the natural yarn. Maybe olive green? any ideas?
I also hunkered down a made a swatch for e's sweater. A few weeks ago we went to WEBS and poked around in the warehouse section to see if they had any yarn that Elliott might fancy for his sweater. We found some nice cones of fingering weight wool in a natural and a slighty varigated blue. The blue is one strand of dark navy and one strand that changes every couple of inches from yellow to purple to teal to blue.
I tried knitting sections of both the designs on 2's or 3.0mm needles. In order to get a more accurate swatch and to simulate knitting in the round I break the yarn after every row and start over. This can make for a pretty time consuming swatch. Because the yarns were from cones, and ready to be machine knit. they were slightly oiled, thin and a bit slippery. If you're using yarn from cones, you really need to wash the swatch and let it dry to get an accurate gauge. When the oil washes off the yarn blooms and expands, really becoming a nice fabric. I'm getting about 8 stitches to an inch, so now its time to do the math and write the pattern. I'm also playing around with the color of the borders for the bottom band pattern. I'm not sold on the golden yellow, as it clashes a bit with the redder tone of the natural yarn. Maybe olive green? any ideas?
posted by cheryl at 12:39 PM
2 Comments:
I don't notice it clashing so much.. at least on my computer screen, but it looks like you could use lots of different colours as well. Olivey green, some kind of warm red or maybe even another shade of blue. I don't know, it's so hard to pick colours over the computer.
You're totally right, its so hard to pick colors from computer images. Just to make myself completely crazy I'm also considering making braided borders like those used on latvian mittens to add an extra color or two in a cool way. Thanks for the suggestions!
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