The Sunday Yarn 30 Sept 2012

Hello and welcome to the second 'Sunday Yarn' posting!  I've been busy this week getting on with this and that and am pleased to share the results today!

First of all, and of interest to those who aren't really into yarncrafts, but love embroidery, is the trimming up of the white baby cardigan that I showed you last week.  Here are two photos showing (roughly) the same area at different stages - with buttons and some stem stitch, then complete with french knot buds.

As I had quite a bit of the white yarn left, I decided to have a go at a pair of mittens to go with the cardy and here they are, both pre- and post-finishing up and embroidering.  In this case, I did the stitchery before sewing them up as the working space would have been too constricted had I done it the other way around.

And here's the finished set.  I must say that I'm very pleased with it and am planning on doing the bootees with the remaining white yarn and even looking for a plain red dress somewhere to trim up with the same design, but with white buds.  It'll make quite a layette, don't you think?

I've already started on my next knitting project and here it is, another baby cardigan, but this time in finer 4-ply wool (which is lovely and soft - a better quality yarn than the pack of five balls of DK I bought), and in pale lemon.  Also, as the yarn is thinner and the finished garment won't be as warm, I decided to opt for the 6-12 months size so that it should be most useful in the warmer weather.  I finished the rib stitch trim at the bottom yesterday.

Next I have to move on to the pattern section, which is a little more complex than the last one.  Like last time (which you haven't seen), I got another ball of yarn (DK this time) and needles and trialled the pattern.  It's easier to do it this way as a near beginner as, otherwise, you risk having to pull stitches out of your real piece and that can be both a slow nuisance to do and carry the risk of dropping stitches.  So, here's the sample piece showing 4 lots of the pattern.  The photo isn't as clear as I would have liked, but getting the lighting right is such a challenge, no?

In the week ahead I'd like to get well on with this cardigan, (it's the back you can see my start on) and maybe tackle those white bootees as well.  As I also want to do one or two other textile things and this piece is far slower by virtue of being much bigger, the yarn finer and the pattern more complex, I don't know how far I'll get, but I'll post whatever updates there are next Sunday.


Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012