New Design in Let's Knit

The August issue of Let's Knit is just about to (or has just) hit the shops in the UK.

 My design in this issue is the 'Rosie' cardigan which is knitted in King Cole Baby Alpaca dk. it's a gorgeously soft alpaca yarn in my favourite colour. I really wish I was a size 10 now so I could wear this sample when it comes back.

 The cardigan is styled with a summer dress but with the 3/4 length sleeves and the alpaca yarn it's actually a perfect layering garment for autumn and winter as well as the cold English summer we're having this year. Start knitting this now and it'll be ready for autumn.

The back of the cardigan features a lace panel below the back neck which is my favourite feature of this cardigan.

 There's also the same lacy border around the them of the body and sleeves, along the front edges and front neck. The little bit of lace makes it a bit more interesting to knit but there's plenty of stocking stitch too to make the knitting go faster and be less daunting for novice lace knitters.

 The sample was knitted by Leni aka The Fluffy Viking and she did a great job.

Want to see which fibre I decided to spin (see post below for my choices)? I settled on the Sweet Georgia Merino/Tencel blend. I've always loved this colourway and have wanted to spin it for a while.

 And it spins like a dream. I've been spinning a bit more than my hour every night. On Wednesday I spun for a couple of hours in the afternoon and on Thursday evening and last night i spun for a couple of hours. Which means I've nearly finished this fibre.

 I stripped this fibre into narrower strips lengthwise. I normally divide the strip of fibre in half then strip each half into narrower lengths but because I'm navajo plying this i only need one bobbin so I stripped it the full length. Below is what I've got left to spin so hopefully I'll finish this tonight.

 I always do a ply back test when I've settled into the thickness I'm spinning. I want to navajo ply this yarn so I did a 3ply ply back. Below it is compared to the 2 ply green ply back strand. It's nearly as thin as the green but it's one more ply which means i'm spinning it finer which was my aim. This fibre is so smooth and easy to draft and spin. I'm spinning it much more evenly than normal too.

The photo shows the 2 ply back strands with a penny for scale.

I prefer knitting with finer yarns and it's been my aim for a while to spin finer yarns. i did Judith McCuin's 'Spinning Fine Yarns' class at Knitnation last year and she showed us how to adjust the wheel to spin a really fine yarn. And I'm not quite getting it as fine as some of the yarns I spun in her class but considering that the green fibre and this merino/tencel is all I've spun in a year I'm doing pretty good. The only problem with spinning fine yarns is that it takes a lot longer but you do get a lot more yarn out of your fibre braid. Most of my fibre is in 100gr braids so getting more yarn out of each braid gives me more options when it comes to knitting it. I'd like to knit something with this on holiday in Spain in August. Not quite decided what though.