More fun with yarn

My favourite winter outfit involves tights, a cord skirt, a long-sleeved or three-quarter sleeved tee-shirt, and a cardigan. Therefore, I cannot have too many cardigans.

I found a cardigan at Reitmans in a lovely blue, but I wasn't that crazy about the style. The cardigan was most certainly not worth 50$ to me, or even half that. 10$, that's what I felt I would be willing to pay. I liked the length of it and how it looked with a long top layered under it. I checked for my size and they had only one left, marked at 20$. I examined it carefully and was thrilled to find a ton of problems with it, including a half dozen pulls. This was the worst defect:



I was thrilled because I knew I could fix it!

The manager said that she couldn't just give me the cardigan and that she'd sell it to me for 4 dollars, taxes included. Perfect!

So, I took it home, pulled out my knitting kit, tucked in all the pulls, and repaired the run:



It took less than 10 minutes to effect all the repairs.

The bit that still looks like its a run is just the stitch, stretched. I'll be able to reduce the effect when I reblock the sweater.

There is no way I could have knit that sweater for 4$!

I repaired two other cardigans of mine this morning and yesterday... I got through my darning pile! I'm completely up to date and I feel like I have a new wardrobe! LOL

Fun With Wool

My sweet potato fries being a qualified success (I'll make the sticks even smaller next time), I had a whole evening ahead of me. The logical thing would have been to work on an essay for the course I'm taking, but I was feeling brain dead. So, with winter bearing down on us, I decided it was time to start my favourite fall activity: Knitting a New Scarf. It's not quite an annual event, but almost.

I started by looking for a pattern. I tend to repeat the same favoured patterns and wanted something new and a tad challenging. I found: this pattern which seemed just challenging enough, but radically different from anything I've ever knitted.

The first challenge was to translate the pattern as I've never worked with an English pattern before beyond basic knit and perl stitches. That done, I had to find materials!

Going through my yarn bin, I found a 70% acrylic/30% wool blend in 'paprika' by 'Red Heart: Cozy Wool' in 100g (3.5oz) weight that seemed suitable, and for which I had an ample quantity in the same dye lot. The wool label recommended 6mm (10US) needles, which are my favourite size, so I went with those (I have every needle size, and more than one for the smaller sizes so I can knit in the round).

Supplies in hand (isn't it cool that I can go 'shopping' at home???), I cast on and spent a couple of pleasant hours getting a feel for the pattern. Here is the result of 2 reps of the pattern:



I can usually finish a project like this in two to three nights, so looking at my commitments for the next few days, I'll be able to wear it to work next Monday morning. I wear lots of browns and greens, so this scarf will go with most of my coats and sweaters. Probably one of the reasons I bought the yarn in the first place!

I might try to make mitts after since I have tons of this paprika left. The first (and last) time I ever tried to make mitts, I got discouraged since the second one wound up being bigger than the first. I know why that happened (too wound up for mitt #1 and too relaxed for mitt #2), so it'd be worth trying again. There might even be enough paprika left to make a tube-thingamabob ('passe-montagne' en français) that you slip over your head to cover it in lieu of a hat. That'll require knitting in the round with circular needles in a simple stockinette stitch, so it'll be more mindless than is the scarf.