November Lavaliere

Completed Lavaliere and blocked..the cardi used just 2 skeins of bugga..and it was a bit of a challenge to do so. The fronts are a bit short..so i'm thinking i'll break the band on one of the valentine skeins which has a bit more red in it to add some width to the front bands to make it more closed.

Lavaliere Finished Smocking Photo (11/24):



I'm beginning to realize as the weather grows colder that I do like having open cardis, but I like having the cardis cover my front, even if I choose to leave them open and not zip or button them.

Audrey in Unst is off the needles, and I will have to re-block the fronts to stretch a bit to close and not have that pulling on the buttons. I did find the perfect carved shell buttons in my stash. The arms are snug as well, so I will have to re-think ease options the next time round.

I have since started on Rapunzel, and lovely sport-weight pullover with cables on the side, and two triangle pieces with cables on the front and back. The pattern calls for a gauge swatch of the standard 24st/36R per 4" for sport weight yarn which the designer achieved on a US4, in the round and blocked. I met gauge on a US5, and like the fabric, so I picked a 34" size, and started. It's too big so far..i'm 8 rows in on a 53 row chart and it looks huge. Conservatively measured, it's 40" around, and I'm 37.5" at the hips, which is where the pullover starts, being knit from the bottom up.

I'm using bugga in Strawberry crab:



and it's a joy to knit. I have 3 skeins well-matched - 2 from SG and 1 from CY, but perhaps I didn't take into account the stretch of the fabric..since the designer used a 100% merino yarn...or it may be that I haven't knit far enough to get the suckage of the cables that should happen.

So far, I like the yarn, and I want to knit the pattern..but I'm not liking the fact that I may have to either (a) ignore the gauge swatch or (b) rejig the pattern to fit me. Already, I had to do a bit of copier enlarging to get the charts to match for easier knitting.

Also, my camera battery officially died..won't hold a charge..so I have to buy a replacement battery and wait for that. In the meanwhile, I checked out new cameras..and I made an early Christmas purchase - a Canon Powershot Elph 330 which I'll have to test out soon. Primarily, I'm taking pics of yarn and projects not people, so color accuracy is important to me without having to rejig in software.

My skein yarn order arrived and colors are not as expected again. The denim dip-dye looked quite periwinkle on my monitor - skein's photo here:

and pic on kim's camera phone which arrived quite blue but not as expected..although a very soft base.



The topaz looked light and bright, but came dark and murky.

Here's skein's pic;

and the pic taken on my friend Kim's phone camera which has a much brighter aqua tone than actual. In person, the gray brown is more prominent:



These skeins look pretty in the picture, but i'm not quite sure I like them in person.

Other pics to wait until I can get the camera up and running.

ETA: 11/24 - Skein yarn destashed locally to someone in my group who loves the colours!