Well! I thought I'd lost my knitting mojo for a while there after I finished the Ekorre sweater, but I think I am back on track for now. True to form, I couldn't just work on one of my WIPs and actually started a few new projects...
First things first: as I mentioned in a previous post, I started the perfect companion to my my Ekorre sweater, the Squirrel Fun mittens by Lotta Lundin. They are knitting up quite slowly, because the needles are tiny and there are 80 stitches to a row. I can't wait to see the end result though! Click on the link to see some mittens that others have made.
Also, I identified the white yarn as Drops Baby Merino leftovers from the Skärgård sweater :-)
End of February/ beginning of March is also when we get our tax returns here and I decided to treat myself to some alpaca yarn from a nearby farm. As is the case with this kind of yarn, it's all hand-made and the labels have the names and pictures of the Alpacas who provided the fibre.
I was very excited about the new yarn and of course felt the need to cast on something new. I settled on the Helix brioche hat by Jonathan Tollow:
It was a fun and quick knit and I thought the instructions were very clear (even though I am usually a chart kind of gal). However, I did have to start over once I realised that the ribbing, which I made with 3.0 mm needles was going to be too small for my big head. Ah well.
And as soon as I cast off the hat, I felt the urge to start another project, this time with some yarn that had been sitting in my stash for a while. I decided to make Midori Hirose's legendary? notorious? Ranunculus sweater that everyone and their mom has made using Aade Lõngad Artistic 8/2 in the colourway 'Lamb', which is a lovely ombre with show colour transitions. The sweater is somewhat textured, but I don't think the ombre distracts from that, as there are rows of stockinette between every couple of rows of textured pattern and I think you can see the texture pretty well. The sweater is made on 6.0 mm needles, so I made pretty good progress with that first evening of knitting:
I'm excited to see how it turns out and what the fit will be like!
