Ruby cardigan - finished!

I finally finished this cardigan that took forever to knit (because of a dozen other projects, active time to knit this was not that much). The pattern is Ruby (here's a Ravelry pattern link) by Kim Hargreaves. I love the styles of her designs and have queued several of them.

Due to it took me a year to finish, and I lost 10% of my weight due to a low-carb diet, the cardi is quite big (I knit size M without mods, except the collar uses twisted ribbing instead of plain, and the belt is modified). I like it and I might knit another in a smaller size. I would be over the moon with this sweater unless I hadn't lost the weight, but I can't blame the pattern for that. And the joy I get from loosing the weight totally outweights the slight disappointment with size.

Nevertheless, the pattern flatters a curvy shape, hiding those hills and showing the valleys... ;o) That's also one reason why I like Kim's patterns - they typically look flattering on a curvy body. But certainly would look good on anyone. I am women's eurosize 38-40, and around 10 in US sizes, and I think size S would have been better for me.

The yarn I used is Novita Luxus Cloud, which contains wool and bamboo - I'll return to edit for yardage later. It is slightly thicker than the suggested yarn. I love the feel of this yarn! Too sad it is discontinued, as Novita seems to be targetting the supermarket segment more narrowly.

Seabreeze

Tour de Fleece inspired me to card batts for a cardigan. I had dyed tops to have something nice when I want to mix batts. The tops were piled on my table, waiting to get listed in my Ravelry stash. They looked really nice together, inviting and cute, and I could not separate them from eachother. So I mixed them together.

I got eight batts, altogether 500 gramms, and I named them "Seabreeze". I combined alpaca in natural gray alpaca and light turquoise, two different superwash merino tops, and mulberry silk.

It looks lovely as a single - I've got about one third spun so far.

Eglantine socks & squishy birthday cake

Welcome to my brand new spinning-knitting-crocheting-sewing-etc-blog!
Currently I'm knitting the Eglantine socks (Ravelry link) pattern by Nicole Masson. I made my own heel, and have not followed the pattern after I learned the panel, but it is very pretty. This pattern is available for free.

I have modified the pattern slightly at the ending point. Rather than stopping where the pattern repeat ends I just continued in the style of the pattern to make a diamond shape finish for the panel. This is somewhat easy to do. The yarn is Araucania Ranco. It started a pooling twist in the cuff and I continued with alternating rows using both ends of the ball.

Sock knitting inspired me to card batts to spin sock yarns. I just love carding squishy batts that I like to mix several times to make them appear semi-solid in colour. I carded this batt as a gift for a friend who organized a spinning event to celebrate her birthday. Her favorite color is orange.

The batt weights 92 gramms and has 87 % superwash merino and 13 % nylon - to make a nice sock yarn. I dyed both tops before carding the batt. Of course, I did not take pics about the hand painted top.