Knitting: Fern Cable and Bobble Top

Alongside knitting all the socks, over the past couple of months I've also been gradually working away on my latest knitted garment. This is the Fern cable and bobble top, a pattern from West Yorkshire Spinners.

Fern is described as a boxy, cropped top with short sleeves in ridged stocking stitch. The main body is knit in reverse stocking stitch, with a wave and bobble cable running up the centre front. The neckline is a ribbed boat neck, and one of my favourite features of the pattern is that this means that there's no need to pick up stitches to knit a neckband (perhaps my least favourite part of knitting!).

In some ways this might seem like an odd style of garment to knit because the short sleeves don't exactly fit with the cosy aran weight yarn, but I have a similar ready-to-wear jumper that I wear quite a lot so I thought I'd give it a go.

The pattern is knit in pieces and seamed, my current favourite method of knitting garments (although I am planning to give knitting a seamless cardigan another go as part of my #2018makenine plans). The only change I made from the pattern was to knit the body 5 cm shorter than instructed to get it to hit at my waist. I was slightly surprised about having to shorten it given that I usually have to lengthen bodices/tops, and Fern is described as being cropped. Maybe West Yorkshire Spinners' understanding of "cropped" is different to mine!

Anyway, it's a fairly simple pattern, and I found it very easy to follow. I think it would probably be a relatively good pattern to pick if you've got a bit of knitting knowledge but are dipping your toes into garment knitting for the first time.

Saying that, I'm not entirely sure that my bobbles worked out quite right. They just seem a bit more flat and less, for want of a better word, bobble-like than I was expecting them to be. Looking at them from a distance, I think the overall effect is fine though. And I'll have plenty of practice knitting bobbles in the pattern that I've moved onto now.

The yarn that I used is Tivoli Celtic Aran in the catchily named shade 981. I fully intended to get a more neutrally coloured yarn to maximise the number of t-shirts that I'd be able to wear under the top, but when I went to a local yarn shop and saw this magenta colour, I couldn't leave it behind. It was nice to knit, and feels nice to wear (I finished this a couple of weeks ago, so it's already been worn a couple of times) but I'm slightly concerned that it might not wear too well long-term. We'll just have to see I suppose!

All in all, I'm fairly pleased with how my Fern top turned out. If I had to be picky, the sleeves feel slightly stiff at the moment and a bit of persuasion is needed to get them to sit nicely inside a coat sleeve. but hopefully they might soften up a bit over time. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying finding all the different outfit combinations I can match this up with!

Dusting off the cobwebs with a whole new outfit

Hello! Is anyone still out there? It's been a while! To make up for that, today I have both a cardigan and a dress to show you. Let's get on with it, shall we?

First up, the cardigan! I used a James C Brett pattern (JB108), which was an impulse purchase with a Deramores order at some point last year. It was one of those occasions where I had almost enough in my basket to qualify for free postage, and buying an extra pattern and getting free postage seemed like the only sensible thing to do. I really like the deep V neck and relatively short length - perfect for wearing with dresses.

The cardigan is all stocking stitch (with rib at the cuffs/waist/neckline) so was a nice mindless knitting project. I worked on it quite a lot when I was staying with my family over Christmas/New Year and it was the perfect thing to keep my hands busy without me needing to concentrate too much so I could still be sociable.

The yarn I used is West Yorkshire Spinners Aire Valley DK in purple and, as it says on the website, it definitely is excellent value and to me seems to be really great quality for the price. It was good to work with and, having now worn the cardigan a few times, I'm happy to report that it's wooly enough to keep me warm without being all scratchy.

I didn't make any changes to the pattern, but I did knit a size smaller than recommended. I'm glad that I did - it's still got a bit of positive ease which I think is probably needed with this style or the neckline might stretch out a bit too much, but if I'd knit the recommended size it would have probably been too baggy.

I'm really happy with how it turned out, and I'd definitely consider knitting the same pattern again in a different colour at some point.

Now on to the dress! I realised after I'd taken these photos that I'd forgotten to take any of the dress on its own, so I'm afraid we'll just have to appreciate what we can see under the cardi. It's another Emery dress to add to my growing collection, so it's not exactly revolutionary, but I love it all the same. After all, you can't beat a favourite pattern combined with a pretty print!

It's possibly hard to see, but the fabric is a dark purple covered in hundreds of tiny lighter purple and white starts (bought on ebay), and happily the lighter purple stars are a perfect match for my cardigan. Hurrah!

I think that's about all I have to say about these two. Both nice simple projects, and both already in regular wardrobe circulation. It's nice to dust the cobwebs off my blog with two successful creations. I've got a couple of other projects finished and waiting to be photographed, so hopefully it won't be so long before I'm back here again. See you soon!

Knitting: vintage cardigan

Earlier this year, my Uncle passed down all my Granny's old knitting patterns to me. There are some that are definitely very dated (part of me is very tempted to knit a particularly ugly "helmet" to embarrass my nephew when he's older, but realistically I think it would be a waste of both time and wool), but there are also plenty that are very wearable still. The first one I decided to knit was actually one of the plainest, this round neck cardigan...

It's from a Patons & Baldwins raglan twin sets pattern booklet. I'm not interested in the full twin set with the jumper, but a waist-length cardigan is something that is always going to get a lot of use in my wardrobe, so I set to work.

Unsurprisingly, the yarn used in the pattern has long-since been discontinued, but I rarely use the precise recommended yarn for a pattern anyway so that didn't bother me. I chose to use West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in Blueberry Bonbon from the Sweet Shop range. It was a lovely yarn to work with and, now that I've worn the cardigan a couple of times, I'm pleased to report that it's nice and warm without being at all scratchy or irritating to my skin.

This is the cardigan knit exactly according to the pattern. I did originally intend to borrow a stitch pattern from one of my Granny's other patterns to make it slightly more interesting than a load of stocking stitch, but there's dart shaping coming up from the waist in the front and back panels and keeping the pattern correct across the darts was going to cause me a headache so I abandoned that plan. Keeping it simple made this a really good mindless knitting project for working on in front of the TV, and I think plainer cardigans are totally fine because most of the time I'm wearing them with a highly patterned dress!

You may have noticed that I haven't done the buttons the whole way up the cardigan in any of these photos. That's partly because of the collar of my dress getting in the way, but even more than that, it's because doing all the buttons up would involve strangling myself! The neck does look high on the pattern photo, but it turned out even higher and tighter than that on me. It doesn't really bother me because the cardigan works fine with only the lower buttons done up anyway.

Neck aside, I'm pretty happy with the fit of the cardigan. When I first put the cardigan on, I thought the sleeves might be a touch short, but having worn it now I think they're actually fine. It's a great length for wearing with all my full-skirted dresses, and I think the amount of ease is just right - it's nicely fitted without being too tight and putting strain on the buttonband.

Speaking of buttons, finding them was a bit of a saga! I wanted to get coordinating buttons because, as there are a lot of them, I thought contrasting buttons would dominate the cardigan a bit too much. Unfortunately, much though I love the colour of the yarn, it appears that button manufacturers don't agree with me because I couldn't find any that matched. In the end, I opted for these little clear ones that have just a hint of greeny blue in them, so work well with the yarn colour without taking over.

All in all, I really like how this cardigan turned out and I think it'll do a good job of keeping me cosy. I'd definitely be tempted to use this pattern and yarn again (I love pretty much all of the Sweet Shop shades), but now I have some Christmas-related knitting I need to get on with first. Are you making any presents this year?