After the gift knitting for family was over, I still had more obligation knitting to do. I had promised more knitted things to more people than I really should have, but promise is a promise. As of now I have two more obligation knits left, but I needed some knitted things myself, so I took a break from gift knitting once the knits with deadlines were finished.
It is a FO although it is a pile of parts in this photo. I couldn't take a FO photo due to there being no light, before I handed it over to my colleague. It is a Cable and Rib Sweater with Hood by Debbie Bliss, knit in Sandnes Garn Peer Gynt. I am quite pleased with how it turned out even though the cables slowed the knitting considerably.
Needing a break from obligation crafting, and a pair of gloves, I spun some red shetland. I divided the braid to light and dark colours, then blended each separately on my blending board. The idea was to avoid striping, but have maximum of barberpoling by plying a light and a dark single. The yarn didn't plump up as much as I expected, so it came out a light fingering. I used the 32 WPI groove on my control card for the singles, next time if I am aiming for 2-ply fingering, I'll try with the 28 WPI singles.
Next time I need to do a better job of blending because I still got stripes, but they are more subtle than on the previous two pairs I knit out of my handspun. The pattern is inspired by Marjut's Gloves. They are light and warm and red, just perfect for the mild weather we have been having.
Back to gift knitting. This is a hat for another colleague, she picked the pattern and the yarn. It was a very quick knit, and the recipient was very happy with the result.
Being in the desperate need to cleanse my palate from the pink, I knit a Nurmilintu out of Schoppelwolle Zauberball, Cranberries colour. I wanted to use up all the yarn, so I continued the final lace section until I only had enough yarn left to bind off. I love it, being the perfect antidote for the winter greys and pink, but it is too thin even in this mild winter. I've set it aside to wait for the spring.
A couple of weekends ago I was feeling miserable. We had a some lovely below 0C temperatures, but I was feeling too sick and cold to enjoy the weather. Instead, I decided I needed something big and squishy. Brioche was the obvious choice for the squishiness, and there were two yarns in my stash that would accommodate the size in two colour brioche.
I weighed both the Kauni Wool 8/2 Effektgarn and Aade Lõng Artistic 8/2, and they came up almost 200 g each. Perfect. Before trying to invent a brioche pattern myself, I went and looked around on Ravelry and found Marley by Andrea Mowry of the Find Your Fade fame. Even more perfect, I could just follow the pattern for two colour brioche knitting without having to invent anything while being sick.
So I followed the pattern, and it is just as big, warm, and as squishy as I wanted it to be. That stick in the photo is one metre long, the shawl is 2 metres on the long side and one metre deep, and I have not even blocked it yet. I used up every scrap of both yarns, and had to use a little Kampes 2-trådigt ullgarn to finish last 20 cm of bind off. I chose not to have the garter border, but to do a crochet picot bind off which gave the shawl a lovely lettuce edge. It took me eight days to knit on 4 mm needles, not bad considering it is half a blanket.
I have been mostly cuddling under it at home, but I've worn it to work once and I wore it at Syfestivalen this past weekend. I love how the colours shift in the yarns and how the two colour brioche plays with them. I have other projects I need to finish, but it won't be long before I plunge back into two colour brioche knitting.