Cloisonné yay!

The ends are woven in, the buttons (I used some of the ones which Felix bought me from Duttons last year) are sewn on and the Cloisonné jacket is ready for me to wear to work tomorrow.



Pattern: Cloisonné jacket by Deborah Helmke
Source: Interweave Fall 2010
Needles: 4.5mm circs
Yarn: (just over) 5 balls New Lanark DK in natural brown and 1.5 balls in ecru.
Modifications: knit in the round with a steek and knit-on button band; I also knit just one lace repeat round the bottom hem.

I'm so pleased with how this turned out. The shape is great - just around the length of a cropped jacket and the yarn is delicious. It's softened up amazingly after blocking and just feels fabulous. This is going to be lovely ad cosy to wear in the office this autumn.



I really like the garter stitch collar too - it's a detail I'll be borrowing for future projects I'm sure.

It's a good thing that the Cloisonne jacket worked out so well because the eyelet cap is a bit of a flat failure. Actually "flat" is the wrong word, it's more of a floofy failure. Blocking didn't sort out the problem, rather after blocking the hat has assumed the proportions of two hats. That being so I'm going to follow Vanessa's example over at do you mind if I knit? and cut it in half. I'm pretty hopeful that I can at least get a ribbed beanie out of the lower half.

Finished objects galore

I've finished off a whole bunch of projects this week. Currently blocking in various locations around my living room are the Cloisonne jacket, Eyelet cap, and a garter stitch baby jacket.

The Cloisonne jacket was all but done before I went on holiday but I felt it was too bulky to cart around Ireland just for the sake of finishing the collar.



There are still a few ends to weave in here and there, the steek facing needs to be tacked down in a couple of places, and it needs buttons but it should be ready to wear by the weekend I hope.



This one doesn't need anything else to make it ready to wear - it just needs the intended wearer to arrive on the scene :-)



This one doesn't need anything else doing to it either. In fact I'd be wearing it already if it weren't for the fact that it's floofing out at the top of the brim in a most unattractive manner (think a handspun Shetland chef's hat).

Finalment we have a freezer paper stencilled t-shirt made at Ellen's gathering at the weekend using a stencil from this fabulous book which was brought by Abby.



I have to say that freezer paper stencilling is the most fun ever. It's crafty, you get a great finished object, and there's a high instant gratification quotient. I also stencilled this cute owl (traced from a card that Kate sent me).



I was so pleased with how this turned out. Check out Ellen's post if you want to see the big reveal.

Things I learnt at Knit Camp

Steeking is easy and fun.
Irregular colourwork when worked backed and forth is neither easy, nor fun.
The "itch factor" of a yarn depends on both the diameter and length of the fibre (short fine fibres may feel more itchy than longer, coarser fibres).
I have been cooking American pancakes at too high a heat (I could never figure out why the butter always burnt). I am now the queen of American pancakes based on the way people were wolfing them down although that may also have been to do with the strawberries and ice-cream topping (for breakfast folks!).
All the cool kids are wearing these shoes http://www.schuh.co.uk/womens-green-red-or-dead-rolo/1304474020/ - expect to see my new pair in forthcoming sock FO posts.
Knitting really is where all the great women are (to quote Felix).

Enough waffling though, I know what you really want to see is the yarn.



I came out of Deb Robson's class even more convinced that knitting from British breed specific yarn was the way to go. We used mostly Blacker Designs yarn in the two sessions of Deb's class on Friday and as soon as we hit the lunch break we headed over to Sue Blacker's stand to say thank you and to buy yarn.

I bought 5 balls of the Cotswold dk yarn on Friday to knit another seamless hybrid lace sweater (I already have some lace motifs picked out from Mikal's Vogue stitchionary) and I bought a single ball of the raspberry coloured Ryeland on Saturday with no particular plan in mind - it was just such a pretty colour.



Earlier in the week I had continued the British yarn theme (if you can continue something in advance) by buying yarn for the Cloisonne Jacket from New Lanark Mill. This is such lovely stuff. It's knitting up very quickly too, I'm already onto the sleeves of the jacket and keep breaking off from this blog post to work on the crochet reinforcement for the steek.

Finally I bought some gorgeous sorbet coloured fibre from Old Maiden Aunt. I love Lilith's colours and deliberately went for something a bit outside my usual range (plum through to wine coloured).



The colours are a bit brighter than they show up in this photograph - I'm sorely tempted to spin them both up the same weight and then stripe them!