FO: Red Ripple Sweater

 Last year in January, I dug out this cone of very bright orangey red chunky merino wool and cast on for Gudrun Johnston's Cara. I had a lot of new knits going at the time (a few days before giving birth to the wee one) and this one never really made it through to the end. Continuing in the stream of KALs in the Rav group for Lindse's podcast, I signed the finished bottom ribbing up for the 'Finish or frog' KAL taking place this March. And here it is! Finally finished, thanks to this KAL.

The bottom ribbing is indeed all that remains of the original sweater. The rest has been frogged and restarted in various shapes at least three times, before I finally ended up with a shape that would give a flattering knit in this chunky yarn. Therefore, all that I kept of the original pattern was the garter rib and the ripple pattern. 

Pattern: My own, inspired by Cara by Gudrun Johnston.
Yarn: Chunky SuperGeelong (Rav link) from Garnudsalg.dk, colourway Rød, 480 g. This is a 10-ply(!) merino yarn, which actually feels like cotton while knitting, but after a wash its true wooly nature came to life. It's nice and soft, but it remains to be seen how much it will pill. The colour is bright and I love it.
Needles: 6.0 mm.
My Ravelry project page has many more notes and can be found here.

Two small projects

Sometimes you just need some quick little projects, so here are two. The first is 7 squares (sewn together as requested) for a project called 'Varme 15x15' where a lot of Danish women (and a few men, I assume) knit for the homeless. I'll be sending some unused hats and scarves from the stash along as well.

The second one is a pink baby hat for one of the many babies our friends and acquaintances will be welcoming in 2013. It's not from my favourite baby hat pattern, which can be found in Susie Haumann's All You Knit is Love. I used this model a lot for the wee one - it's cute and fits well.

Both projects are on Ravelry - here and here.

FO: Mellow Sweater

It's all KAL work at the moment. This time Mette suggested we knit Pickles' Mellow Sweater in the Copenhagen Knitters Ravelry group, and since I had it in my queue I signed up after digging some fairly suitable yarn out of the stash. It's originally knit in angora, but since I'm not at ease with all that fibre shedding and wanted to use my stash instead, I settled for a 1:1 mix of Holst Supersoft in Mandarin and Isager Alpaca 2 in the tomato-coloured 025.

I knit the free size XS with a slightly different tension (one stitch less per 10 cm, I think). After finishing the sleeves it looked awfully wide and I had my doubts about how flattering this sweater would be. I decided to add a few side decreases and decreased 2 stitches under each arm 4 times in total. In the end, it turned out to be just perfect! The right size, great fit, and just the right length! I couldn't be more happy with this sweater!

Pattern: Mellow Sweater (Rav link) by Pickles, size XS.
Yarn: One strand of each: Isager Alpaca 2, colour 025, and Holst Garn Supersoft, colour Mandarin. 7-800 metres of each (had a hard time determining the amount of each yarn used), 272 g in total.
Needles: 5.5 mm (3.75 mm for the lower hem).
Mods: 4 x 4 stitches decreases down the sides to add some shaping; I think this is quite flattering. 
My Ravelry project page is here.

FO: Leise

In January and February I joined a KAL in the Ravelry group for Lindse's podcast - this time with the theme 'Knit from Danish patterns'. The first FO for the KAL was my anthracite No. 23 from the previous post. For the second project, I pulled out the new book by Lene Holme Samsøe, Suveræn Strik, which I got for Christmas, and started knitting the Leise cardigan.

Like  last year, I try to knit mainly from stash, but had to get a fluffy kidmohair for this project. I paired up one of my favourite (now discontinued) Isager colours, the slightly purplish blue 53 with a purple silk kidmohair from Garnudsalg.dk. I'm a fan of bluish purple, so matching the slightly dull purple of the kidmohair with the blue wool made the perfect match for me. In my opinion, this silk kidmohair is a bit more rough than the silk mohairs from e.g. Rowan or Isager, but the price is also lower, so I guess you get what you pay for. It works well in this knit, though.

I made some really stupid mistakes while knitting this cardigan (of which you can read more on my Ravelry project page if you can read Danish), but I ended up finishing it in time. In retrospect I think I would have liked it more without the bubbles on the sleeves (the simplicity is in part what makes me so fond of Helga Isager's designs), but I'm definitely not redoing them and I like it well enough as it is.

Pattern: Leise by Lene Holme Samsøe, published in Suveræn Strik, size M. I chose size M based on the measurement schemes in the book, but I think I could've used a size S, too.
Yarn: One strand of each: Isager Tvinni, colourway 53 (now discontinued), 144 g + Blackhill Silk Mohair, colourway 8 (Lilla 2), approx. 80 g. It's quite a lightweight sweater, and fast to knit on large needles.
Needles: 6.0 mm and 5.0 mm.
Mods: None.
My Ravelry project page is here.