Continuing on from yesterday’s FO post, a little show and tell of my FO’s so far in 2011.
Holden Shawlette by Mindy Wilkes
Yarn: Skeins Superwash Merino Laceweight
I was a little unsure about this shawl as I was knitting it, it seemed a little too frothy and frilly, and yet too plain at the same time. However, it’s blocked out beautifully and I have decided that it’s light and airy and delicate and warm, and like most things I knit to gift, I wanted to keep it. But it was a birthday gift for my boyfriends mother, and off to her it went.
The pattern was written for a slightly heavier weight yarn, so I modified it slightly by knitting a larger stocking stitch portion and more repeats of the lace pattern. More details are on my Ravelry project page, if anyone is interested. The lace pattern was easily memorised, although a little bit dull after so many repetitions. I did pull the yarn snug after every repeat, but it still seems to have laddered between the repeats, which you can see in the photo above. This annoyed me at first, but then it struck me that the laddering was faintly reminiscent of a stitch pattern I’d seen in an old stitch dictionary of mine called “Eiffel Tower Stitch”:
and so I decided to tell myself that this was an intentional design feature :)
I was intending to dye the yarn, but then my boyfriend told me that his mother had been hankering after a cream shawl she’d seen in M&S, so I decided to leave it as it was and she seems quite thrilled with it. After seeing it his sister asked if she could have a shawl for her birthday, which is quite handy since I was going to knit her one anyway!
Mongolfiera Socks by Corrina Ferguson
Yarn: Zettl Valbella
These are the November/December Mystery socks for the SolidSocks group on Ravelry. They took a bit of a back seat while I tried to catch up on all my gift knitting, but I managed to finish them by the end of January.
Mongolfiera, says the designer, is the Italian word for hot air balloon, and these socks are so named because she designed these socks to look like a hot air balloon! From the basket at the foot, to the strings that attach the canopy, and finally to balloon itself with beautiful diamond brocade and lace “swags”. I love the attention to detail that has gone into translating this concept into a sock pattern, and how it really does look like a hot air balloon! It appeals to the child in me, and I find it endlessly amusing :)
Filey by Ingleside Belle
Yarn: Woolcraft Superwash Sock Yarn
These are the latest socks off the needles. Aran inspired cables and diamond brocade for the boyfriend. I mirrored the cables, but I think that was the only big change I made, although I did somewhat stop following the pattern towards the end, finishing off the foot and toe in a way that suited my fancy. In fact, I did change the toe to make it more rounded. So that’s two changes. And I twisted the single knit columns in the ribbed cuff. Three…
This yarn is quite sproingy and elastic, which makes for quite a snug and cosy fit. It’s very much a budget yarn, so it’s not particularly soft, but it’s not too hard on the hands and I actually quite enjoyed knitting with it. I’ve used the lighter colour of this yarn to make a few socks for me, and I think I much prefer knitting with the grey as it seems slightly softer, although I think that both are a bit too rugged to use for anything other than socks.
I’m not entirely convinced that it was the right yarn to show this sock pattern off properly though. It’s quite a dark charcoal, and the pattern ends up bit lost in it all. The boyfriend seems happy with them though, and I suppose that’s what matters.
So that’s me all caught up with my finished projects!
