Monday, May 24, 2010

Colourmart Contest Cast-On

(that's a lot of C's!)
All my WIPs are on hold right now so I can start two new projects for a contest. Yay!  The Colourmart group in Ravelry is having a contest, and guess what the prizes are: yarn.  Cashmere yarn.  I just bought a bunch of Colourmart yarn so of course I'm in!



This 100% silk is going to be a top for myself.  After a bunch of hemming and hawing and negotiating with my swatch, I realized that this yarn was not going to be the top I wanted it to be and went searching for a better partner.  Finally I stumbled upon the Shirley pattern.  It's written for a mohair blend, but I'm thinking this is going to look great in the silk and get a lot of use for work.  There are already short rows and waist shaping incorporated into the pattern, so I don't plan to modify it very much.

This merino (with 5% cashmere) is becoming a ribbed scarf with reversible cables.  I'm following the Palindrome pattern.   It's fun and untroublesome knitting, but I find it fiddly to do the ribbed cables without a cable needle even though I am no stranger to cables.  I just use one of the needle tips from the interchangeable needle set I have and it's just fine.



Colourmart yarns come oiled so swatching is very important - the yarn changes a lot after the oil is washed out of it.  So yes, I swatched for this scarf, silly as it may sound.  I left my photo evidence of this fact at home though.  (I'm in Germany this week for work.)

The odds are long that I will finish both of these in the time frame, but I'm going to have a little fun with it anyway.  The Ravelympics came at an awful time personally and I got about 25% of my project (a measly pair of socks) done, so this is my time to have a cinderella story when it comes to knitting events.

woo hoo!