Bye bye summer

Although I do like Autumn in general, I don't really like September. I think it is the days that get so much shorter and the realization that summer is really over and done for this year. The students come back into town, I have to teach, not that I can complain about that, since I do not teach a lot, but what I teach is in September… Come October and I'm used to it again, and then the trees start their colour show and I am all for Autumn… But right now, nay not quite there yet….

I finished my last summer project as well… I had to wait for that extra skein of yarn, but it is worth it. Very very wearable, no major changes to the pattern and a terrific colour green…. I have knitted with Hempathy before and I do know that it will get only nicer when washing and wearing it, so that is even better. It is really a very good yarn for lace and this pattern (Pinnate cardigan) has some real nice panels of it.

I did make one change, I did knit the sleeves flat and seamed them later. This as because I didn't want any changes in the gauge. Sometimes I get that when knitting in the round vs knitting flat and since the main body was knitted flat, I felt I better do the sleeves in the same way. So after the sleeve edges (very nice frilly detail there!) I added one extra stitch on each side that is consumed by the seam. It worked out fine. 

One excellent thing of Autumn coming…. woolly yarns call me again…..

Eaten

And my extra skein of hempathy arrived yesterday, so now again for a main meal….

Forethought

 

So I solved the problem of the pockets for Bulle….. the original has pockets in the side which I thought had a kind of sloppy look to them. Also, I didn't really like the way they were constructed, but I wasn't completely sure  that just not making them at all, was the best idea either. Basically this kind of tunic does need something like a pocket. And also M would really love them...

So after a bit of thinking (how to keep the clean lines of this item clean, and also how to add that interest), the easiest thing to do is to have some forethought pockets. I call them forethought, since the principle is very much like the afterthought pockets by Elizabeth Zimmerman, but as these are made while knitting, it is not like taking the pair of scissors and make the slit for the pocket later on… Top down knitting gives the possibility to try on the sweater and decide the moment is there, so that helps too!

 

I also decided not to have a border on top of the pocket. I debated with myself whether I should have some garter rows, but then I thought, with a lining in a contrast colour, stockinette and the fact that it rolls is just what I need here. The rolling will just pop up that little bit of extra colour (gray, leftover from an earlier sweater, good to have some small bits of things saved up).

Now it is just one sleeve to go and some seaming...

 

Mellanmål

 

And since I was stuck, I have ordered an extra skein of hempathy and I put my "Greener than Grass" aside for the moment. I have one main reason to do so and that is that if there is any difference in colour between the new skein I get and the old ones I have I might want to do some knitting with alternating skeins to make the impact less. So I have to wait. Only one sleeve to go…..

In order to bridge the time, I started something fast (yes I have trust in fast postal delivery and it is in the post right now) an appropriately named Bulle. A bulle in Swedish is a little bread, meant to be eaten as an in-between meals (mellanmål). Most famously there is the kanel-bulle, but I am very partial to a kardamomma-bulle or the famous Semlor eaten just before lent (not that I do lent, but Semlor I do eat…).

So this is my mellanmål, a small sweater/tunic for M. easy to wear, not that hot (it has short sleeves) and good for Autumn play. There are side pockets in the original design but I am not sure I will make them. They are somewhat sloppy (I think) and I am not so sure that they work well. But M will love them, so I am torn. But she will also fill them with acorns, chestnuts and whatnot, so maybe it is just best to avoid them…..

The yarn is from a good & trusted source, Quince & Co Lark, in Pomegranate. A nice red or is it a dark pink?

Greener than Grass

I'm still in the mood for crisp yarns, so I'm quite far into a project knitted with hempathy. This time a mix of cotton, hemp and modal….  the pattern is called Pinnate Cardigan. It is a lovely cardigan with some interesting lace . Hempathy works really well with lace so the knitting is good….

 

What is not so good is that I will not have enough yarn… I hate when that happens. Not that it happens a lot and normally I do tweak a bit so that the yarn amounts holds…. But in this case, I want the long  sleeves and yes I did make the body a bit longer, so the only thing I can do is to buy another skein wait a week or two and proceed. Don't like it, but sometimes that is what one has to do...

But it will be worth it, I say to myself!

Crisp

Some yarn are just crisp and therefore nice for summer knitting. So this summer I had good fun with a crop yarn, Allino. This is my latest project in the linen-cotton mix: my colour changed version of Flaming June:

Just a couple of words on the pattern, I really liked the design with the mitered corners, both at the edge of the cardigan and coming back in the sleeves. Also it is a drape-y summer cardigan and I like to have these to just put on when a chill comes on.

But what I didn't like was the very long sleeves and I though that the sleeve cap had a very strange shape and with the double decreases a possibility to get a very uneven edge and therefore difficult to seam neatly. So I changed the sleeves considerably…. Shorter and a different sleeve cap, more a classical shape sleeve cap for a set-in design. 

I think this will be a good layering item, just hope now for some nice indian summer weather….. (it is very suddenly autumn-like right now).

Recycling

 

Sometimes it is good that I keep things until they are really too ratty to be worn. In my cupboard some old sweaters that I knitted around 1990 are hiding. This is one of them, the pattern comes from a Lang magazine and it is knitted in a cotton-viscose mix (at least that's what I think) bough at that wonder of department stores, the HEMA…. I have not worn it in at least 20 years…. One of the reasons is that it is a drop-shoulder sleeve design and I really do not like to wear dropped shoulders. They don't do anything for me… but in those days, so many patterns were dropped shoulders and over-big was in. This is in no way "a very very much too big" item as some sweaters from that area so clearly are, but still...

But now these things come back into fashion, and while I will still not wear them, I have somebody who will… yeah for (nearly) teenagers….

 

 

On her way to school this morning, good thing I still had that sweater, and it is still a very nice stitch pattern…..