Cranberries and Cattleyas

I look absolutely ridiculous wearing a beanie, so beanies have never been my thing. But everyone needs some headware. Mine are most of the time berets.

Since I needed something to wear in my head, I had a go with a couple of berets found in Ulla.

The first one was Hyrrä (Ulla 2/2008).

Pattern with swirls was simple and elegant (sorry about the unsharp photo).

Yarn Novita Luxus Cloud (wool and bamboo), needles 4 mm. I knitted a few extra rows before decreases, and instead of regular ribbing, I knitted twisted stitches there to keep the shape. I needed an extra strechy bind off, and after serious searching in the Internet, I picked up a bind off with sufficient amount of stretch there.

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My second attempt at berets was Hulda (Ulla 1/2009).

Yarn Novita Wool (100% wool), needles size 3,5 mm (ribbing) and 4,5 mm (lace pattern). This beret turned out ever so soft and cosy, thanks to working the lace with oversized needles.

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There are a few odd skeins of yarn in my stash. Having toured around Ravelry for quite a bit at Christmas, I finally figured out what I could do out of this nice brownish yarn.

Since a 50 gram skein of extra bulky yarn is hardly enough for any project, I decided to turn it into a Baktus (Ravelry link).

This Baktus is a mini version. Due to miscalculations or bad weighting, I ended up having an annoyingly large amout of yarn after the scarf was finished. The extra yarn was turned into two tassels, one for back and one for the other end.

One end was carefully left without a tassel, because the scarf only is long enough to wear if one end is tucked underneath. So no tassel needed there.

A long time ago, I bought a few skeins of Novita Nalle Color for kids. Quite some time ago, I started knitting a sweater of them (needle size 4 mm). Decided on cables (surprise?).

Cable ribbing was nice. But then I continued with improvised cables, with turned out horrific. Buried the project in my UFO basket.

In the beginning of November I realized that kids desperately need new sweaters. So I did some digging and some ripping and was left with the cable ribbing and half a skein of ripped yarn.

Instead of complicated cables, I decided on some rather simple ones. There’s a cable on both sleeves…

…and short one at the back.

In the front, there’s another cable, which comes up higher than at the back.

Last year, I knitted some quick caps for kids of Novita Puro. Kids liked the caps, so as the new colours of Puro yarn appeared in the store, I decided to give it another go.

This year there was more harmony in the colour shifts.

Green one turned out darker than expected…

…while brown one was lighter than I assumed.

The grey color is called Usva (the mist), but the colors remind me of the reindeer.

I like Novita Puro, because it is 100% wool. It’s far nicer to knit than yarns with nylon in them.

Though most of the time I wear sweaters, I had this urge to have a long warm knitted coat for chilly autumn weather. I had absolutely no idea of the pattern, so I randomly bought 1,5 kg of Novita Isoveli. The perfect needle size for me was 5,5 mm.

Though the yarn is bulky, decided on making cables, because I felt like it. So cables it was. The wider, the better. They turned out wide indeed.

Decided to knit a wide cable in the front and in the middle of the back. To give some shape, knitted in cable all around the waistline.

The collar is all about cables. (And the picture is horrific; should have bothered to set up proper background and proper lighting.)

Instead of ribbing, there’s cable all around the wrist, too.

The hem was knitted afterwards, once I figured out what I wanted. It looks ok on the stockinette part, but should have decreased a few stitches at the cables. Perhaps some blocking might do the trick (yes, I’ve been to lazy to block this jacket, since it would take an eternity to dry).

I improvised the pattern as I went along, and therefore I was bound to do a lot of ripping. It took me a year and a half to complete the coat, because I had to give it a lot of rest to figure out how I really wanted this coat to turn out.

The result is far from perfect, but warm and cosy, and I’ll be sure to wear it.

Knitting entrelac is fun.

Getting rid of the yarn ends is not.

I did most of the knitting of this entrelac jacket in the summer 2009. I started weaving in the ends. I got bored. I put the jacket in the knitting basket and carefully piled a few UFOs on top of it.

Unfortunately kid didn’t forget about the jacket. So I had to finish my work into wearable state.

Original plan was to have buttons of some kind, but finally decided on leaving the jacket unbuttoned.

In the sleeves I wanted to have some contrast to the body, so decided to give some stripes there. To add some asymmtery, I made the colour changes in a different pattern in both sleeves.

Yarn is Novita Spektri Plus, rayon and acrylic. Nice and soft, but splits easily and is somewhat difficult to knit evenly at the ends of the rows. And there are a lot of row ends in an entrelac. Knitted with 5 mm needles, the project took up 400 g of yarn, that is, 8 skeins.

Technically, I’m not satisfied with this project, but it looks nice and – what’s more important – kid loves it.