Sunday, December 29, 2013

Finished projects - cardigan, scarf, beanie, man!

I got a few projects finished just before Christmas. One was Fantastic Purple Cardigan (the Velvet Morning pattern from Knitty), which I made with Araucania Toconao. It's turned out to be a lovely snuggly cardigan, very warm as the yarn is aran weight.


It's not quite as swingy as the Knitty pictures, as my gauge between the plain and fair isle sections turned out to be very very different, so it pulls in quite a bit round the middle. But I still like it, and will wear it, so that's the main thing. I do need to do more practising of fair isle though, as the sleeves (which I knitted last) are much better than the body! The balls are 100g each, which means I have nearly 350g of yarn of the purple (and a bit of the other colours too) to make something else with.

According to Ravelry it's taken about 10 months to knit this, which isn't really true. It was quite a fast knit, as the fair isle keeps you interested, and the aran weight means it goes fast. However, I wasn't keen on the idea of sewing the neck edging all the way round the front, as sewing up really isn't my favourite thing, so I did loads of procrastination. When I eventually did get round to it, I mattress stitched the collar on, and it didn't actually take that long after all...


Another finished project is a ribbed scarf for my BIL for Christmas. This used three balls of Patons Colour Works Aran, which has some fairly subtle colour changes in it. It's nice and soft (and machine washable) but a bit on the splitty side for knitting with.


I made this beanie hat in about 10 days just before Christmas - finished on Christmas Eve just in time to wear it to Midnight Mass! Again, this didn't really take 10 days to knit, most of it was done using magic loop, but I realised I'd find DPNs more useful when the circumference got smaller, and Hobbycraft didn't have the right size in stock so I ordered some from GetKnitted, who were commendably fast (I did wonder whether they'd get through the post before Christmas!).

The pattern is the Thrifter Beanie by Woolly Wormhead, knitted in Manos del Uruguay wool clasica, which is another lovely squooshy yarn.


And this chap is the Man Who Built His House on the Rock, which I made for a friend who runs a charity that does RE teaching with primary school and younger age children. The idea is to have two larger figures that can be used to tell the story, and then make some smaller pairs of figures to give to groups of children so they can tell it for themselves. The figures don't have to have any particular look, and don't have to have a "Biblical" look, they just have to be different to the other one in the pair.

This one is based on the basic pattern from the Sirdar Nativity collection by Alan Dart, and I used some leftover bits and pieces of DK. I wasn't going to make the cloak thing for him, but you can see where the head is attached to the body without the cloak so I added it. Cardboard circles in the feet ensure that he can stand up! The hair is some leftover fun fur yarn someone at knitting group was getting rid of.


I found it quite hard going, as there are LOADS of little pieces to sew together (not my favourite thing!), so I thought I might give Bobble Man a try for the next one! I love the Ravelry pattern browser/advanced search, as it made it really easy to narrow down what I was looking for!

I also found a Downton Abbey season 4 mystery knitalong whilst I was looking for Bobble Man. Shame I've already seen it...

According to my Ravelry projects page, that makes 12 projects completed this year, seven of which used stash yarn, which is pretty good going (I haven't yet done a calculation about how much my stash grew this year!).

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