Cupcake Shrug - Sirdar 1239

I give the credit to Kate and her bobble obsession for my latest knit.
The FO below is Sirdar 1239 from their Sirdar 397 Cosy Little Knits pamphlet. I was led to this book from Kate's bobble cardigan. I first fell in love with pattern 1240 and I managed to find the booklet online for little more than the single pattern would cost.
I have been swatching for pattern the cardigan for Thomas, I am planning on using some sock yarn so I needed to do a bit of maths as the pattern is written for DK.
In the mean time, I cast on the bolero for a special soon to be one year old.

I used The Yarn Yard Crannog, a laceweight yarn, doubled and got gauge straight away.
It is a gorgeous pinky-purple semisolid and works very well doubled.

This took about 5 evenings to make. I messed up the increases on the right side, so just mirrored my mistake on the left - so the top and bottom of the cardigan are not symmetrial. I sewed the garment together and then picked up all of the stitches at once and knit the edging in the round - a much simpler way of doing things. However I am not convinced about the edging cast off - instructions are " cast off all stitches in rib as follows:- *rib 3, knit into st 3 rows below next knit stitch, rep from *. This should create a scalloped edging. I wasn't sure what to do after I knit into the stitch 3 rows below - should I drop the stitches down to this one? Should I knit the stitch on my needle with the one 3 below? That is what I ended up doing, where I think maybe option 1 would have been correct. It does have a slight scallop, but doesn't really look like the pictures in the book.
Most importantly, it has been gifted, it fits (with growing room) and it is the perfect colour. I couldn't ask for more!

Another Mystery - my options

Yeehaw! The first Westknits Mystery Shawl KAL: Earth & Sky starts August 1st!

You need three colours, one as the anchor and then two others.

The colour choice advice is:

Snap! High Contrast - Combine light, medium, and dark shades with contrasting
colors.
Crackle! Tonal - Choose 3 shades of 1 color.
Pop! Tonal with a little extra somethin’ somethin’ - Select 2 shades of one color
combined with an accent color.

I have bought the pattern, and am trying to decide what combination of yarns to use. I pulled out the stash last night and came up with the following:

1. The soft option - Nimu Helvellyn ( a silk/cashmere mix that is the softest yarn possible), The Yarn Yard Lochan (merino/tencel) in beachglass, and The Yarn Yard clan (merino) in nude - but I may substitute a double strand of the Zephyr laceweight I used for my wedding shawl.


2. The nautical option - YY Clan in Midnight, Artist's Palette Sweet Feet " Garden Wall" and YY Clan Nude - I would probably need another skein of the Midnight to make this work.

3. Gold and Blue - YY Clan in Haystacks, Artist's Palette Sweet Feet " Garden Wall" and YY Clan in Midnight

4. Shady Garden - YY Clan in Kale, YY Toddy greens and browns, YY Clan Haystacks.


What would you choose?

A day at the embassy

It seems a birthday shrug is the perfect thing to wear with your posh frock when visiting the British Embassy in Paris.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar - in jumper form

After all of those birthday shrugs I was glad to knit something different.
This project has been in my head for a long time, and I am so glad I finally got to knit it for my own little boy. I present "The Very Hungry Caterpillar Jumper".

I was inspired at first by this cardigan on Ravelry (and I later on found this fab cardigan too) but also by the most perfect Very Hungry Caterpillar coloured yarn - Dream in Color Classy in Happy Forest. This is the yarn I knit my Vine Yoke cardigan from, and I had a spare skein which I had been saving for this imaginery jumper.

I started with a jumper pattern I had knit before, the Catch Sweater from Louisa Hardings "Miss Bea's Playtime". However like last time, I knit in the round up to the sleeves and then knit the back and the front separately.

I grafted the shoulders, knitted the neck band straight onto the jumper and then picked up stitches and knit the sleeves in the round. I am sure I should probably use short rows to shape the top of the sleeves, but it looks fine like this to me. Instead of plain stocking stitch arms I added a row of purl stitches every 9 rows to make them more caterpillar like.

The jumper came out slightly smaller than the pattern because I used worsted weight rather than aran weight yarn. However as these Louisa Harding sweaters are always massive it doesn't matter too much.

The caterpillar was knit on the fly - after several attempts I finally cracked it. He is worked in garter stitch. I cast on at the tail and used short rows to shape it. I found the best way to define the different sections was to cast off 2 stitches on one row and then cast on 2 using the backwards loop method on the next row. Increasing and decreasing didn’t give enough of a defined shape. The head was knit in stocking stitch and shaped using normal increases and decreases.
The eyes were knit and appliqued on, as was the nose and the feet. The Antennae were crocheted.
I attached the caterpillar to the jumper with bondaweb. I tried adding the caterpillar's hairs but decided it was just too much.

I am so pleased with the finished jumper:

A caterpillar close up:


I think someone else liked his birthday jumper too:

One today!

Thomas is ONE today. The year has flown by.

He has a t-shirt to prove it

We went to the farm to look at piglets


He got a tiger cupcake for pudding....


The first 12 months