Happy New Year

Well, we are still in the first week of January (or we were when I started writing this post).

I was going to describe this in the last post but ran out of time - here IS my Colinette adventure.  I bought the yarn at the Knitting and Stitching show (September 2005!), after trying on a sample garment of "Metis" from the Muse book, using Lasso yarn:

 

I'm using the "Forest" colourway.  Between Muse/Metis/Lasso/Forest it's been quite hard to remember which word belongs to the yarn or the design or the colour!

I have not found it easy to knit with Lasso - maybe that's why it's taken so long.  I could not get the right tension - very unusual for me, but had to go up a needle size.  It's a polyamide chain-type yarn with a lovely texture, but very little elasticity, so I was also worried about the garment "growing".  Finally settled on the 34-inch bust size which will fit fairly closely if it keeps to size, and hopefully won't get too baggy after a wash!  You can see the lovely green colours with flashes of blue and cherry red here:   

But oh! such a badly behaved yarn.  It sticks and snags on everything. I'd have never wound it off the hank without my swift, and it dropped off my hand-wound balls in huge bunches and then tangled around itself.  To control the pooling, I'm knitting 2 row "stripes" of two balls, so they could tangle and collapse on each other too.  I have really rough "housework" hands these days, so lashings of hand cream are needed before I can pick up the knitting.

Well I missed numerous "I'm gonna wear it" deadlines (November party, Christmas drinks, Knit'n'chat, Christmas Day), but just when I thought this might be fired into the UFO black hole - dear Santa brought me a ball winder!  I promptly rewound the working balls (tightly) into properly crossed-over cakes and have been tangle free through this last sleeve, so far.

How did I live without a ball winder for so long?

I've now finished the back, front and one sleeve and knitted nearly half the second sleeve, so it looks as if i may get it done this week.  I'm a bit reluctant to measure it but a tacked-together try-on was encouraging.  Problem is it's me, not the knitting, that did the growing over Christmas.

And here we are at the moment, on that bell-bottomed sleeve.  The next picture will be FINISHED!

I must be having  a Colinette phase at the moment, because the next project on the needles is a cardigan in Skye, which is gorgeous to knit with, like a dyed Magpie Aran.  It's Debbie Bliss's much-knitted Easy Jacket, and is flying off the needles.  Just look at these colours: Summer Berries, dyed to order:

I just knitted enough for a break from the Lasso:

I hope it knits as quickly as the last time I tackled this pattern, as it's for a friend who's shortly to move to a house with poor heating.  I'm counting on it being a design that suits almost anyone.

Finally, a few resolutions for 2007:

- Knit more regularly

- Blog much more regularly

- Knit up some of the lovely projects in stash (Wendy's Knit from Stash looked such a good idea)

- Be more interactive with other bloggers - exchanges/SP#/memes etc.

- Go to bed early. Oh dear.

Comments

[Emma.]

Happy New Year !
I love Skye, It knits up beautifully, and felts into a really nice fabric too. Your jacket will be gorgeous.
Getting to bed earlier. I really need to try that !

xxx

[dawn]

I'd like to say that I knit from stash, but the temptation of yarn is too strong! Colinette novelty yarns and I don't get along too well, though the wools are great (and all of the colours too tempting).
Look forward to more posts!

[Alison]

Go for it; knit from your stash! I'm finding it a very liberating experience so far. And it *will* include Brocade for the Kaffe-along!