Thursday, July 25, 2024

Old Dog, New Trick (actually a 60-year correction) plus a New Favourite Colour Combo

First up, let me tell you about this new fave colour combo.

It all started with the little top that I shared the thumbnail of in the last post. 

It's called Collage by Matchy Matchy Sewing Club - here's a link to their pattern page https://matchymatchysewingclub.com/collections/pdf-sewing-patterns

Here is a picture of it finished:

I used some cotton/linen blend fabric that I bought in Barbados many years ago. I never intended to use them together, but when I pulled them out, I thought they suited one another, and I still think they do. This is a delightfully, light fabric and has been worn quite a bit on our "furnace-like" days.

As soon as I finished making this, I decided that I should see if I could replicate the colours in a summer yarn to knit a short sleeve sweater I fell in love with called "Morning Ritual". Here's a link to the Ravelry pattern page https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/morning-ritual-top. Although I couldn't quite match the patterns of the fabric, I was able to find that gave me the same effect. The yarn is 100% Tanguis cotton and the colourways are Denim and Ash. (I just brought this in from blocking outside.)

I love the little bit of colourwork that is the "transition", and I think it will work well as is for the summer, and as a bit of a vest when the weather gets cooler.

So, now onto the new trick -seriously a major correction that took me 60 years to learn. I cast on a new little summer sweater that is a lovely bamboo/cotton combo, and it has a yoke of increasing rib blocks. Between each block of 10 rows are two increase rows - one that has a yarn over every so many stitches, and the second where you knit into the yarn over to avoid leaving holes. 

My first increase rows weren't very successful at not leaving holes, so I decided to go and watch a video of the correct way to do a yarn over. Not the way I have always done it - in fact when I watched the video, it looked more like a yarn under-over. I had always just wound the yarn "over the needle", while theirs was more of a "go under and wrap over". I decided to give it a go, and my second set of increases had nary a hole. How could I have been doing it wrong all this time!!! Oh well, a new skill has been acquired, and I think I know why my sister's yarn over eyelets were so much tidier than mine lol. 

Here, I hope, is a link to the video that corrected my yarn over ways. You may have to watch a VRBO ad first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-RNKk_TFtk

Maybe I am not the only one needing a correction.

Will share the new sweater as soon as it is off the needles.




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