Little Purl of the Orient

A series of mishaps

#1
Not exactly a mishap but knitting gone not quite right. Both stitch and row gauges are off. And the fabric is too floppy to my liking. I've got to rip anyway to recalculate and maybe I'll just swatch for something else. Greensleeve and I are not clicking.

#2
I cast on for Retro Ribs with Clover 3 and started to knit the leg with Clover 2. Much too loosey goosey than my swatch. Took a closer look and found that somehow, I mixed up the two sets of needles. I've bought a set of Clover 1 and will knit with those instead.

#3
Came back from Ola Kala performance on Friday night too tired to knit. Just received Schaeffer Anne yarn (colour #30) from Knitting Zone and thought excitingly I'd quickly wind up the yarn so that I can swatch the next day. This is the mess that resulted. Are there any professional untanglers out there?

Revival of some oldies

New cabinets means cleaning, packing and digging up ghosts from the past. My husband sometimes grumbles about my numerous bags of yarn tucked in every foreseeable nook and corner of our bedroom. Wait till he knows that some of my stash is in the office. I pride myself that I can most of the time remember exactly what I have and where which yarn is put. My stash is very modest, you see. That's what I thought all the time until today. This morning, I arrived rather early at the office and decided to enter some data into the worksheet kindly shared by Jody. Tap, tap, tap, I typed away; yes, my stash is in my head. In no time, I found that the number of balls soared pass to 200! It may be a molehill to some of you but you have to know how tiny Hong Kong flats are to appreciate that that's a lot of yarn for me; some of your living rooms may be the size of my entire flat. There are a lot of scarf yarn, sock yarn that look so innocently small in quantity but it's unbelievable how fast yarn accumulates. Having said that, there're still yarns like Blackwater Abbey, Beaveslide and Peace Fleece calling to me. Presented with this data, I'll definitely try to work through my stash this year before placing orders.

So what do I plan to I revive? This green cardigan WIP from last spring. The yarn looks like the right gauge for the vintrage pink cardigan from Spring IK (by the way, check out the Summer preview, makes me look forward to receiving it). But then, the lacey cuff where I last stopped, stared back at me and asked me to carry on. The cuff took me ages to finish and the lace rib is much faster going, hopefully, I would have a cardigan for myself next spring. I couldn't help but make the crochet frills on the divide between the cuffs and the sleeve to see how it fits. Here's the close up.

I also picked up the grannies square. The tally now is 45 out of 144, another 99 to go. At this rate, I'll be lucky to have a granny square blanket in two springs' time. Anyway, I'm now left with the 'bleh' colours. I think I could use some orange to zest things up. One ball of orange yarn added to the stash isn't too much, is it?

Green Cardigan

Turned out that Ji Yuan didn't like the kerchief at all and refused to wear it even once. We didn't meet her cousin, Natalie, this weekend so I have yet to know how it is going to be received. Little girls nowadays are really choosy, aren't they?

We had a nice but busy weekend. We went to Sai Kung on Saturday meaning to have lunch and a little stroll down the waterfront. The weather was so nice and Wai Lung suggested going to Hap Mun Bay, a beautiful little isle off Sai Kung, with clean, fine sand and clear water. So off we went with no proper beach gear and the children had a great time, anyway, playing at the beach which was jammed packed with sunbathers. The boat ride out to the isle is one of the most scenic in Hong Kong and I would greatly recommend it to all visitors. Unfortunately, it was an impromptu visit and we didn't have our camera with us. Yesterday, we went to Tsim Sha Tsui to have dim sum with my cousin who is visiting Hong Kong with her colleagues. We came home late afternoon and I was rather tired from carrying Chung Yi the whole while but I've been thinking about the new projects. So I started on the green cardigan.

For a while, I was baffled by the symbols for the 'ribbing' part. The ribbing is in fact a sort of eyelet pattern and the symbols are not those for the usual knit and purl. They looked kind of familar and I remember working something like that before for Ji Yuan's pink bodysuit 3 years ago.

I didn't swatch and went right for the sleeve. Look that's all for one and a half hour of knitting.

The pattern is interesting but a bit tedious to work. And I don't remember seeing it in the Walker treasuries. It's worked in a multiple of 3 stitches like this:
Row 1: *YO, Slip 3 stitches purlwise, pass the third stitch on the right hand needle over the first two stitches, then pass these 2 stitches back to the left hand needle and knit them, repeat from * until the end.
Row 2 and all even rows: purl
Row 3: K2, repeat from * until last stitch, K1.
Row 5: K1, repeat from * until last 2 stitches, K2.

Try it out!

Oops! I missed out a step in Row 1 in the original post, please see the insertion in italic. Sorry!

Breaking out of pink

Guess I got to find a way to get out of saying 'from a Japanese pattern book' when I describe my projects. Just which Japanese pattern book is it from? I don't know Japanese and I haven't found a way to search for the specific title in the Internet and link it here. This site has got some Japanese knitting magazines listed but I can't find the one I wanted to show as it is an old issue. So I'll resort to the low-tech method of taking a photo of my book and posting it here.

This is the cardigan I'm going to knit for my work wardrobe and it is from this book printed back in 2001. The picture is not very clear but it's got an interesting 'ribbing', which in fact is not ribbing but some eyelet pattern. The body is knitted in lace columns with beads/pearls down the front. Shoulder pads are definitely no-no for me though. Looks conservative enough for a bank, yes?

Initially, I chose a white cotton yarn from my stash bought last year but I'm pretty sure it's not enough. I would need at least 4 more balls. So I went down to the yarn store on Saturday to try my luck but the colour is no longer in stock. The boss was kind enough for me to change it to another colour that has enough for the cardigan and this is what I picked. The yarn has actually got some subtle sparkles in it. Click here for a close up. As mentioned to Julie in my comments, I've been in a pink phase for a while and I welcome a change. Green should be soothing on the eyes.