Rusted Root!

Here it is! I'd love to get actual pictures taken by someone else, but for today there'll just be the obligatory holding-the-camera-out generic blog picture. Face edited out because seriously, I looked like a vampire. But the sweater's still cute :)



Photography skills to be improved in the future...

Pattern: Rusted Root by Zephyr Style
Yarn: Campolmi Roberto Filati cotton/modal blend (got it in Florence, Italy)
Needles: Addi Turbo sizes 7 and 5 circulars (pattern called for 6 and 4, but with my yarn substitution, the gauge was pretty off). I mostly used a 40" circular, and did the magic loop so that I wasn't switching between a bunch of different lengths.
Comments: SO cute! I love everything about this pattern. The leaf part was my first lace ever, and it was super easy. If you plan to knit it, I'd buy a skein or so more yarn than it indicates - my skeins were slightly longer than the Cotton Fleece used in the pattern, and I still needed four rather than the recommended three. I did make it longer than the pattern said to, because too-short sweaters make me a sad panda. But still, I woulda run out of three skeins even sans lengthening. Also I suck at binding off loosely, but luckily the bottom didn't turn out too tight to wear. In the future I need to learn a wayyy more elastic bindoff, though. All in all, I love it though! I definitely will be knitting more zephyr style patterns in the future.


Next up: Fitted Tank by Blue Sky Alpacas, in Sage Organic Cotton. Um, this stuff is not cotton. It's too unbelievably soft and pretty. And it knitted exactly to gauge! No emergency needle-buying trip for this one. Blue Sky Alpacas might be my new favorite. Everything they make is pretty much the softest anything ever. I'm also working on some sort of sweater design - I have this crazy vision of an empire-waist cardigan, and after a thorough scouring of the internets... nothing matches up with the picture in my head. So I'm attempting to make it up myself. The plan's to kinda copy how the top-down part works from the Rusted Root, but knit it flat with room for button-bands, then bind off under the bust and pick up a kind of skirt-y part from there. Seed stitch borders, buttons only on the bound-off top section. We'll see if this works... if it does, who knows where this could lead?