3 posts tagged “malabrigo”

I feel in love with the Wicked Sweater a while ago. According to the pattern, the short sleeved version in my size could be made with three skeins of Malabrigo. Spring before last, thats right, Spring of 2008, when my LYS first really started carrying Malabrigo, I bought three skeins of the beautiful Azul Profundo colorway to make the sweater.

 

The Malabrigo laid idle in my stash while I spent the rest of 2008 knitting Christmas gifts and then spent the first part of 2009 catching up on the other projects in my queue while at the same time getting distracted by new exciting projects. A few weeks ago I found these great striped long-sleeved shirts at Old Navy that I thought would look fantastic under the Wicked. I bought 4 different colors of the shirts and finally busted out the yarn and pattern for the Wicked. The first thing that I do now when I start a new project is go to Ravelry and see if anyone has made the pattern in the same yarn to get an idea on how gauge ran with that yarn and how the fit was and that sort of thing. I immediately started getting nervous when I discovered that many of the people who made the sweater in the two sizes I was contemplating used more than 3 skeins of Malabrigo. Many of these folks had skipped the kangaroo pocket, but had made the sweater longer, so I was holding out hope that I would be ok.

I had a hard time deciding what size to make this sweater. My bust size hit right at the break between the medium and the large. Several folks noted that this sweater was a good fit with zero or negative ease and since I was worried about the amount of yarn I had, I went with the medium. I knit this on size 8 needles although I think now that I probably should have gone up to 9's as I was a little small on gauge. The sweater is definitely fitted. I was a little worried that it was a bit too fitted, but several friends have assured me that it looks good.

 

As you can see, I also skipped the kangaroo pocket. I was worried about the amount of yarn I had and I thought it was going to hit me in an awkward and unflattering spot. I wish I would have made it a little longer and even though I was tight on yarn, I would have had enough to make it a tad longer. Unfortunately at the point that I made the length decision, I still had to finish up the arms and didn't know how much yarn that would take.

 

In the original pattern the bottom band of the sweater is supposed to be knit in seed stitch to mirror the seed stitch border around the kangaroo pocket, but since I skipped the kangaroo pocket, I just did the bottom in the same rib as the neckline. I of course managed to screw this rib up. You are supposed to alternate the set of knit stitches that you do the crossover stitch on, so that you have a 4 row repeat in the rib, but I misread the pattern and did the crossover on the same set of knit stitches every time so that I have alternating knit stitches with the crossover and straight knit stitches in the rib. I didn't discover the error until the neckline was almost done and someone at my LYS said she thought it gave the sweater more visual interest anyway, so I just kept on knitting! I just made sure to repeat the same mistake on the rib around the bottom of the sweater and arms.

 

I'm not as excited about the finished product here as I was about the pattern before I knit it, but I think it will be a warm little sweater for casual weekend wear. I'm just worried that I won't ever be able to get over the fear that it's too fitted and won't be comfortable wearing it out in public.

 

Mosaic got in another shipment of Claudia Handpaints in the Hokies colorway shortly after I finished the pair of Hokies socks that I was making for myself. When M. found this out, she requested a pair of Hokie socks for her. I wanted to do something a little different than a basic ribbed sock, so I looked up the instructions for a spiral rib and did a spiral rib on the cuff.

 

After getting past the cuff of the first sock, I sort of wished that I had stuck with a basic rib. The spiral rib mixed the colors up oddly and without the spiral rib they were actually striping nicely. I asked M. what she thought and she said she was happy with how the cuff looked, so I left it as it was. Beyond the spiral rib cuff, this is just the basic sock pattern written by S. down at the knitting store, adjusted in size to fit a child's size 12-13 foot. I'm actually not terribly happy with how these turned out, but M. seemed very pleased with them, so that is all that matters.

 

The other project that I've finished up recently but didn't blog about at the time because it was such a small little thing was some to-go cup cozies for the administrative staff in my departmental office for administrative professionals day.

 

I had enough of the Hokie-ish colored Malabrigo left over to make each of the ladies in the office a cup cozy. Then all of us PhD students chipped in for Starbucks gift cards to go with them. We'll be giving them out tomorrow. Hopefully they like them (and drink coffee or at least tea or hot chocolate). As much as I love the Hokie colors, I think I've about OD'd on knitting with the Hokie colored yarn for this year. I still have three more skeins of the Claudia Hokies sock yarn from the last round, but it will have to hang out in my stash and wait for a while before I knit with it.

Last spring when browsing the Malabrigo selection on Webs, I discovered the Oro y Vino colorway which could also be named Hokie.

 

I bought four skeins and put it aside to figure out what to do with later. A month or so ago, it struck me that if I graduate on schedule (*knock on wood*), I'll only be at Tech one more winter after this one. I like the Hokie colors and even have a Hokie colored striped shirt that I bought long before I had even heard of Virginia Tech, but wearing the Hokie colors when not at Tech is not quite the same as wearing the Hokie colors while at Tech. So I decided I better get to knitting with the Hokie yarn so that I could get some wear out of it before I graduated. Even though I had enough yarn for it, I wasn't sure I was ready for a full on hand-knitted Hokie colored sweater. I decided that the yarn would be better suited to a scarf, hat, and mitten set. I started with the scarf.

 

This is the One Row Scarf by The Yarn Harlot. I have knitted this scarf out of Malabrigo before. I loved the yarn/pattern combination back then and that hasn't changed. I did think it was interesting that this colorway of Malabrigo didn't patten anywhere near like the Lime-Blue colorway. This scarf was knitted on size 10 needles just as the other one was, but I like my scarves long and narrow, so I only cast on 22 stitches for this scarf. Once I had the scarf, I moved onto the hat.

 

This is the Better Bucket Hat from Make One Yarn Studio with modifications as per Ravelry user Solaris. The modifications essential made a larger brim by adding more stitches and using a larger needle size for the brim. The original pattern calls for a size 7 needle, the Solaris calls for a size 8 for the brim and a size 7 for the hat, I used a size 8 for the entire thing. I don't like really tight hats because of my poufy hair, so I stayed with the size 8 needle to make the hat a little larger. This was a fun knit because I finally figured out how to do a provisional cast-on, which had previously defeated me. I like this hat and pattern a lot. I already have plans to make another one to be given away. After the hat came the mittens.

 

This is the peekabo mitten pattern which can be obtained for free on Ravelry. The website where it was originally published no longer exists. I chose this pattern because it was simple and I thought a fancy stitch patterns would get lost in the varigated yarn and because I liked the "peekabo" feature of the mittens.

 

I have to say, as simple as this pattern is, I had the hardest time with these mittens. Either the person who designed the pattern had much bigger row gauge than I did or much shorter hands than I do. I kept following the pattern instructions and then having to rip back when it became obvious that the mittens weren't going to fit my hands. I finally got them long enough for my fingers, but then I wished I had put the finger openings a little higher up on the hand. I knitted the entire mitten on size 7's, but wish I would have gone down a size or two for the ribbing on the cuff. Even though I'm not quite happy with the mittens, I'm happy with the set overall.

 

Oh, and just in case you are sitting there thinking, "well, she isn't a true Hokie until she is literally decked out in Hokie colors from head to toe", here's a peek of a one of my current WIP's.

 

These are the Jaywalker socks, also from the same now defunct website as the peekabo mittens, made in the Hokies colorway from Claudia Hand Painted Yarns.