Monday 15 August 2011

From Fibre to Finished Cardigan... ta-dah!

I finally finished knitting my hand spun cardigan at the end of last week, so it is time for a "ta-dah!!!" post.


The fibre was 200g extra fine merino, dyed by the extremely talented Helen, Angelica and Imogen Jacobs-Grant at My Heart Exposed fibres. Their fibres are dyed with all natural dyes- dried flower heads, crushed fresh herbs, various roots and other unusual ingredients, which yields beautiful colours and subtle hues that you just can't create with chemicals. One braid was a semi solid pink (Rosetta) dyed with cochineal, and the other was pink, yellow and orange (Cosmos). I spun them to a 2 ply fingering weight yarn on my Ashford Traveller.



Originally I planned to make a pretty summer shawl, but anyone who knows me knows that I have shawls-a-plenty so I decided to make a light cardigan instead. The pattern is Kaleidoscope and it is certainly one that I will use again. It is knit as one piece, so no horrible seaming to worry about. :-) I started it in late May, but took a long break in the middle to work on other projects. So all in all I think it was about 3 weeks of knitting.

I wished I could have eeked out 3/4 length sleeves, but I only had 6 inches of yarn left so I am happy enough simply to have them even! I'm really pleased with the end result though. It has a lovely wide neckline which shows off summery tanned shoulders in a vest top very nicely!


The buttons are from Textile Garden. I was very impressed with them - their prices are extremely reasonable, and they delivered in a flash. Less than 24 hours from ordering!

Thanks for letting me share!

1 comment:

  1. absolutely stunning !!
    love love love this one, its a real work of art and your yarns are pretty amazing the way they stripe so naturally too :)
    Fantastic work!!

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