Monday, March 05, 2007

Color-stranded child's vest

It's finished! The child's vest that I made for my Norwegian circular knitting course. Of course, it's not perfect, but I'm quite satisfied considering it was my first attempt at large scale color stranding with this new technique and also my first attempt at steeking. I knit it up with Sandilane Classic Light yarn (70% pure new wool/30% dralon) from Italy. You can see that the colors are yellow, light blue and green (with a bit of black on the backside of the border). As you go down, the background color changes from blue at the top, yellow in the middle, and green on the bottom. I quite like the bands where the background color shifts--I did a mirror image of the design with the original main color for the first half and the new background color in the second half. I did have a few issues that I mentioned in an earlier post with the color stranding--I'll have to try out the various suggestions I got.

Another issue I had was with the border. Picking up the stitches and knitting along the border wasn't difficult. But once I finished and started to sew it down, I noticed that the corners kind of curled. My instructor warned us about this, saying that we could prevent it by knitting a round without increases just before the purl row and starting on the other side. I did just that... But I also started the decreases immediately on the backside... Perhaps I should have just knit a row without decreases on the other side as well? The other issue was that I couldn't seem to keep the border lined up enough to sew it down properly. That also caused a bit of unnecessary curliness. I guess this is best resolved by keeping the border down with some strategically placed safety pins? Any other ideas?

4 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Prachtige kleuren! Ik vind het erg mooi geworden, gefeliciteerd.
Wat dat krullen betreft: ik heb ook aan de achterkant een toer zonder minderingen gebreid, krult inderdaad minder...

Monday, March 05, 2007 10:25:00 AM  
Blogger Genevieve said...

this looks awesome! sorry, no clever ideas on preventing the curling - did you block it? did that help any?

Monday, March 05, 2007 10:38:00 PM  
Blogger sunneshine said...

WOW! That is amazing!! I hope there is a special child somewhere who will enjoy it!

No great ideas on the curling - other then genevieve's of blocking...

Tuesday, March 06, 2007 6:33:00 PM  
Blogger gearncniht said...

i haven't blocked it yet... that should help a bit. that won't help the area around the collar, though, because i picked up too many stitches. oh, well. but overall, i'm happy with it... i just keep in mind that it is a first attempt.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007 3:56:00 PM  

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