finished object alert

I have. Finished. An. Object. The reason I've amazed myself with this is that I am working on two endless projects: the small-gauge full skirt and the Kimono Shawl. The shawl is about half finished, the skirt maybe one forth to one third. Laura, the Scarlet Knitter has a rule of three though. She generally works on three projects at once.


When I read that, I realized that three is the perfect number and that I too usually work on three at once. One of the three projects has to be a smaller, finishable one, and, it recently came to me, should be portable. So I made a little blanket for a baby in little squares. Here it is being blocked:

Here is a close up:
Here is the Ravelry page. And here is how it looks in the original from Natural Knits for Babies and Moms by Louisa Harding:

I think the designer's yarn choice is brilliant. The faded colors of Green Mountain Spinnery Cotton Comfort (wool/cotton blend, dk weight) of similar intensity give it a mellow, vintage/organic look. However, I had leftovers: Debbie Bliss Cotton Cashmere (dk) leftover from the Bandersnatch sweater, and I used it ALL up. I love putting leftover yarn to good use. I also love this yarn. It is soft and warm like worn flannel pajamas.

I edged the blanket with Knit Picks Cotlin, a cotton/linen dk (see previous post), mitering rather than overlapping the garter stitch edging. The yarn is soft and knits up very well - a Knit Picks winner. The edging did not work perfectly as to pick ups along the row edges. The first time I followed the rule of three stitches per each four rows, and it was too many. For the second edge I reduced the stitches, and it was better, but still a little flaring. Both side blocked out well though. I could have made the border wider, but I came to the end of the yarn.

The squares, which measure 6.75 inches wide and 6.5 inches long, knit up in no time, but took a while to put together. The squares are butted together and whip stitched from the back into columns, leaving a ridge between them. The expert knitter who made the sample in Louisa Harding's book somehow avoided the ridge. I would like to know how to do that. The columns are mattress-stitched together with no ridge, but leaving a visible seam in my version. It could have been better, but it doesn't look bad in person.

I used Louisa Harding's charts for the star, heart, and plain square, but I designed my own cat and flower squares. These were fun and easy to chart. You can knit a picture of anything.

bandersnatch: a free sweater pattern

As I promised in the last post, here is the pattern for Bandersnatch, a sweater I designed last year. This is my first full scale sweater design. I am finding this sweater very comfortable to wear; I think it looks as good on as it feels.

I have noticed that ribbed sweaters are flatttering. This sweater flares sweetly at the bottom edge for modesty of the belly, yet the stretchy ribs form themselves to body countours without any tightness. The beaded rib pattern adds a touch of fanciness to a simple design, and the cotton/cashmere blend yarn is super soft. No special edging is needed because the ribs form their own non-curling, non-binding edges. It looks good on everyone who wears it.

Bandersnatch is my attempt at a wearable design with fit and construction conventions mimicking ready-to-wear. I have become more aware lately of fit in hand knitted design and more interested in solving the fitting problems that I have encountered. Sometimes, for example, hand knitting patterns give too much leeway and gape at the neckline or fall off the shoulders. I am learning to compare my own fit requirements more closely to those of the knitted pattern.


Although designed for me, this sweater will fit anyone. It represents few chances for poor fit because of the flexibility of its ribbed fabric. I sized it for a range of sizes, but precise matching of body measurements is not needed. The finished sweater measurement is taken with the fabric unstretched and might be smaller than corresponding body measurements. This is not negative ease, but a function of the sweater's stretchiness.

Note that I was unable to publish my schematic chart (which I painstakingly taught myself to draw) in Google Pages. I tried it both as a word and a pdf document, and the lines would not show up. So at the bottom of the pattern, I listed the finished measurements of each piece. Not as easy to read, sorry, but the information is there.


A note on the sweater's name: I sometimes name my knitting projects for the audiobook I listened to as I knit it. When I made this sweater I was listening , not to Alice in Wonderland, but to The Frumious Bandersnatch by Ed McBain, a police detective crime novel.