Brocade Continues

Well, the brocade flowers pullover continues. I cast off for the armhole openings and am  now back to back and forth fair isle. Not my idea of a good time but the result is generally worth the effort. I considered doing a steek but with the shaping involved I decided that route was about as troublesome and added more effort when finishing.

This is the point of the project where my mind wanders. My goal this year is to work through as much of my worsted stash as possible and I have made a considerable dent. While working on the front of this project I began thinking of my single and partial skeins. I've been putting them into bags according to color family. My neutral/brown sack had almost enough for a sweater. The skeins are interesting. Some very vintage Harris tweed and Lambs Pride. Also, some no-name knitting worsted bits.


I'm using weight to estimate what I need for a project. Most of the stash is vintage worsted and the labels do not show yardage as a rule. I  weighed them and found that the collection was a bit light for an entire sweater. I find that 26-28 ounces or more than 6 and less than 7 four-ounce skeins is enough for a medium/large pullover.

I had another vintage Harris skein and another vintage Lambs Pride in colors that seemed like they could work in. The Harris is a bit cranberry and the Lambs Pride is sort of pistachio.This got me to 27 ounces so critical mass is attained.

I've been browsing some slip-stitch patterns and Furrow caught my eye as a potential choice. The pattern uses four colors but looking at how the colors are used, I found that it was a ten row repeat using three colors. Then, one color is removed, the two remaining shift and the fourth color is added. It seemed that this could be used for more than four colors, so I tried seven.

I'm pretty pleased with the result with respect to the color. The repeat is fifty rows, but because it is about half garter the fabric is pretty dense. So, it is asking to be more of a casual jacket rather than a pullover.


I'm thinking of V-neck cardigan with sleeves that sit just below the elbow. The fabric is busy and there is enough garter that it does not curl much so a narrow-ish garter stitch on the edge for the cuffs and waist and button band will be nice.

Brocade Progress

The body is coming along. Some car knitting over the weekend.

Not too many rows before the armhole decreases and I will be knitting back and forth again.

Brocade Leaves Sleeves

We have sleeves. The kitchen scale says they weigh just shy of 8 ounces so one skein of each color was used.
That suggests that I will need two more skeins of each color, leaving me with an extra of the multi-color Cascade and two skeins of the coral.  I would like to have gone through more of the coral but it is more important to me to make something that pleases me.

Often, once I start working with a color I find troublesome I begin to like it and then miss it when it is gone.

I think this looks great and I especially like the linen stitch edging. I'm not sure why we don't see it more often in hand knitting designs.  Perhaps because it is less elastic than ribbing, but hemmed edges are also not elastic.

Coral Development

This stash yarn has been eating into my brain. I probably acquired it during an eBay yarn binge.

I don't do that anymore.

It is not quite orange, not quite pink, not quite coral and very very bright. I have about five four-ounce skeins, so not quite enough for a sweater.

 I tried it with turquoise, but that did not make me happy. The idea was to make it the main color for a Catherine Parr, but it was clear part-way up the sleeve that there was not enough of the coral for the project..

Then, I tried with white and Barbara Walker. French weave. French weave, colors reversed, Florentine.  Good exercise, but still not happy.

I cruised by a local yarn shop, and found this lovely and coordinating  beauty in the 50% off bin. Enough for 1/2 of a sweater.
I tried some slip stitch patterns first. I liked the cuff, but the rest did not interest me.  Several others were tried and ripped. ...

Time for a time out while I browsed Ravelry projects for a while.

Well, Hello, beautiful:

Canyonville Complete

This is the result of a weekend Breaking Bad binge.















And it fits.