Brambles

The first real autumn-knit is done!

I immediately fell in love with this pattern. It was in the new Deep Autumn edition of knitty that came out on Wednesday and I think I cast on on the same day I finished on Friday night so it was a quick knit. I could have been faster but I do have my thesis looming …

Pattern: Brambles

Needles: 4mm

Yarn: lane cervinia capinera 50% virgin wool 50% acrylic

This is the same yarn I used for my sweater and it’s really soft and nice to the skin. The colour is fabulous I think and I think I said this before I’m a big fan of this colour. They had a lot of this yarn where I usually buy my yarn and in really pretty colours as well so I’m sure I’ll knit more with it. There was a wonderful warm dark-red that I almost took and a plum colour as well. It wasn’t that expensive either… and knitting it was wonderful, no splitting, no problems with the cables (did them all without a cable needle). It does look a bit fluffy but that’s ok. If I want non-fluff I take merino or cotton The 4mm worked very well for it as well, a bit better even I’d say than the 3,5mm I took for the sweater.

As for the pattern, all worked very well. The big cables were intriguing and the small ones are just sweet I knitted size M but I think I’d make S if I’d do it again in the same yarn. My head circumference is 21” (55cm) but the finished hat is a bit wide. Also I made the long version and I somehow think it could be even a bit longer… Or I could have blocked it over a larger dinner plate…  I like slouchy berets

But it works as a hat as well:

a small P.S.: my Eireen pattern now has charts!  You can find it on Ravelry here if you want to knit it. I hope I made the instructions a little easier to follow. I’m sure the charts do help a lot. I want to knit up a pair this autumn as well so there’ll maybe come another update later this year.

Eireen

Well, well, well, I actually got them finished and loaded up to Ravelry! Here is the direct link to the pattern. What an extraordinary moment. A pattern on ravelry. I never thought I’d be called a designer … wow … I don’t think it will get much company on there, it was so much work to write what I was doing so that other would be able to follow it. And I have no idea if I succeeded. I guess I’ll know if I get some feedback.

Do you want to know something about this pattern? Well, where to begin? I’m a big fan of fingerless mittens and last fall I was searching for a new pattern. I wanted something cute, just the right length, a cuff of about 3-4 inches, with cables, something with a celtic spirit. I found a few patterns but nothing was really perfect. I also had bought the yarn already and nothing would really fit without huge alterations. So I thought, well, it can’t be that hard. I looked at a few patterns, looked what other people were doing, I mean I had already knitted a few fingerless mittens. Then I looked for cables that I liked. I’m really fond of Delovely which have wonderful cables and I got inspired by them and then I searched for instructions for weaved cables with three or more strands and found the one with four strands which I think looks just about perfect. I finished the first one rather quick ( that is after I had figured out how many stitches I would need and how to get the cables where I wanted them… I think I had to undo the cuff a million times… which kind of makes me wonder why I had so much free time… hm …) Then the whole project hibernated for quite a while. I just couldn’t get myself to starting the second… yeah the curse

But last week I finally begun with the second. In a way it was good that there was that much time between the two mittens… that way I was able to see flaws in my instructions myself because I basically had no idea what I had done back in October. I figured it out and rewrote parts of the pattern. I also undid the first one again because it had gotten too long. That let to a few bewildered looks on the train … people always look weird at me when I’m knitting on the train but it’s a whole new quality of weirdness in their looks when I’m knitting backwards … :p

Anyway… the second one isn’t even finished but I wanted to get it up to Ravelry now and, wow yeah, setting up that whole thing, designer, store and all that … feels … extraordinary, really…

oh I just checked again and someone already put it on their queue … o.o coool :p