Cake anyone?

Eat as much as you want without getting fat!
Recipe can be found on Garnstudio's website.

Daisy sweater in Drops Cotton Light

I managed to finish a sleeveless sweater for Isola today. Well, it was supposed to be for her but it came out way too large so it has to hang in the closet for a while. The pattern is from pickles and I picked this project for two reasons: one, I liked the daisy pattern and wanted to try it out and two, I wanted to try this yarn. It's Cotton Light from Drops. Their RELAUNCHED Cotton Light. If I remember correctly, their old Cotton Light was a cotton and acrylic mix. It was soft and squishy without being squeeky. Nice. But now it's made in cotton and polyester micro and is supposed to breath more. That's good news. It's spun with 14 threads and on their website Drops says that it's less suitable for crochet since it can split. Well, I can tell you that's it's certainly not suitable for any advanced stitch patterns either.

Although the touch of it seems a bit paper-like in the skein it knits up beautifully. It drapes very well and feels cool and soft. As long as in stockinette stitch. When I came to the daisy stitch part I felt like going crazy because it split all the time. Part of the stitch requires that you purl three stitches together, and without letting the stitches off the hook, you yarn over and purl the same three stitches togheter again. This was almost impossible. It was like having 45 separate strands of sewing thread on the needle instead of three strands of yarn. And since cotton yarn isn't as elastic as wool it didn't bounce back once it split, even though I reknit. So the yoke took FOREVER.

So the verdict on Drops Cotton Light: really great for stockinette stitch or basic stitch patterns. Crap for other stuff.

Chunky cables coming up

 I've been having some chunky cables on my needles lately since I'm working on a new pattern for a toddler's cape. I really like mixing moss stitch pattern with cables and it has been real fun to knit with chunky yarn again because you se the pattern take form in no time at all. Capes, or ponchos as some call them, is great for that in-between weather, not to mention that they are super cute on small kids. 

This time I worked in an alpaca and sheep wool blend from Garnstudio Drops, it's called Andes. They have the same yarn in three different weights which is great, but unfortunately the color range isn't so exciting in all of them. But it is soft, warm and very price-worthy.

The Chunky Cables Cape Pattern needs a bit more test-knitting but I hope that I can present it to you soon!

I can too!

I wrote about the knitting technique Entrelac the other day and how I failed to learn how to do it. But this weekend I gave it another try, following the tutorial I linked to in a previous post. And I think I did pretty well, what do you think?

I used Garnstudio Drops Delight, a selfstriping wool yarn, and 3 mm needles. Couldn't find my regular needles but double pointed worked out fine since it was just a sample piece. About this yarn - I love the colors! Both the combination of colors and how it changes, not too fast, not too slow. But to knit with it - blah.... don't know what's its problem. It feels like it hasn't been spun enough. The thread is very easily split and I alway end up sticking the needles right through it..