Sea Green Vine

Finally, a photosession of my newest sweater - Ysolda Teague's Vine Yoke Cardigan. I took advantage of our hike on Vitosha yesterday to shoot a dozen of pictures of the cardigan near my most favourite tree along my most favourite path Aleko - Kupena.

This is my second Vine Yoke cardigan, I knit my first in poly-cotton blend a few years ago and I still wear it a lot, mostly at home in the summer. This new one is 100% pure merino wool, Italian bobbin yarn, very, very soft and thin and I mean to wear it as a spring/autumn sweater.

The yarn is hand dyed in two batches and I absolutely love the variegation and the way the ridges of the garter stitch texture play with the blue-green colors.

Pattern: Vine Yoke Cardigan by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Italian Bobbin Merino,  230 g, hand dyed
Needle: 3 mm, 3.5 mm
Time to knit: one month

My yarn is much thinner than the original and my gauge is quite smaller, so I made my own calculations. I added short rows for the lower part of the body, almost doubled the stitches (106 sts for the body, 72 sts for the sleeves) and played with the short rows at the neck line.
I'm really happy with how this sweater turned out :)

MMM'13 - Fourth Week

As was to be expected, the fourth week of the month is mostly repeats from the previous weeks. I do have other me-made clothes, mostly shirts, skirts and dresses, sewn when I was heavily into sewing, but most of them I don't wear any more or just didn't feel putting them on during the week.
I'm happy to report that Gaby continues to wear her cotton cardigans to school, she wore the blue cardigan yesterday and put on the lilac Joy this morning. I'm thinking of knitting her another one, probably in red, maybe with cotton and bamboo.

Day 22 - My most recent knit - Obsession by Kim Hargreaves. It was a good thing I added cotton to this bamboo, the soft bamboo thread is already showing signs of pilling.

Day 23 - Sabrina top, cotton and viscose.

Day 24 - Burdastyle 90s shirt. I have no recollection of the pattern, or even if it was a women's pattern or an adapted man's shirt, because back then I also made three checkered  shirts for my husband. I chose this photo for the blog because of the funny photobomb in the distance - a city child, running wild through the green meadows. She ran like that most of the time and also rolled on the grass - the call of the wild, what can you do :))))

Day 25 - My Christina again. Well, it's obvious, this is my favourite summer cardigan. I love its terracotta color and feminine design, Kim is a genius.

Day 26 - Miette. If it wasn't for MMM, Miette would have been my every second or third choice, it goes so well with all of my dresses.

Day 27 - And another easy choice  - the Vine Yoke cardigan. Soft and very comfortable. I'll tell you what's in the bag in my next post :)))

Day 28 - One of the self-sewn dresses I mentioned at the beginning, very flattering design. It was actually a long dress, which I cut short the next season - I think short dresses suit me better. And obviously a parade of cardigans couldn't be complete without Quanun. I'm thinking of a shorter cardigan with 3/4 sleeves, based on the Quanun silhouette. If you wonder why I am always carrying this bag - because it is big enough for the camera and sometimes tripod I bring with me :)

Sea Gray Vines

BTW, my geranium is in full blossom now :)


Name: Sea Gray Vines
Pattern: Vine Yoke Cardigan by Ysolda Teague
Yarn: Lanoso Alara, 50% cotton 50% acrylic
Needle: US 4 (3.5 mm)

This is a bit tricky and very original pattern by Ysolda Teague. Tricky, because it is knit sideways and with a latent length. I wish I had listened to my guts and added a few stitches to the body - now the cardigan is almost short. When it came to casting on for the sleeves I knew better and added 12 stitches (could have added a couple more). For the short rows I followed the modifications suggested by knittingfan:
Modification for Neckline Decreases:
* rows 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 as instructed
* row 4 knitted all the way to the end (same as row 8)
* row 6 - same as row 2
For the grafting I used two youtube videos for grafting in stockinette stitch and in garter stitch.

It took me about 10 days to knit the cardigan and another 10 days to find some buttons. Alas, not THE buttons. From the very beginning, when I bought the gray yarn, I knew I wanted this cardigan with tomato red buttons. I found the perfect ones on an old dress of mine, but they were only 6. Nevertheless, I made the 9 buttonholes, certain that eventually I'll find either three more of the same or 9 similar buttons. Well, I reckoned wrong. All the round red buttons available nowadays in Sofia are either pinkish or brownish, and the tomato red ones are too large, or square, or elliptic. So, having rummaged through all button-selling shops known to me in Sofia, I settled for these simple unobtrusive gray buttons.

But button issues set aside, this is a nice pattern and I like the final result.

In The Making

The fruit trees under our windows -
the peaches,


the cherries,


the wild plums,


the geranium on the kitchen sill


are all in the making. And so is my Sea Gray Vine Cardigan:


Can't wait to get it finished. The pattern is very ingenious, knit sideways in garter stitch with a beautiful lace border. It is a fairly quick knit too - it took me almost three days to get into the mood of the pattern, but thence it's been a breeze!