Testing Patience (Silvertweed)

Silvertweed test

Not the pattern; that was easy to follow, as always with Nadia's patterns, and quite satisfying for mindless knitting. I used Miss Babs Kilimanjaro in Impatient, a stunning purple that borders on black. I had been hoarding it since I purchased it sometime last year, I think, trying to find the perfect project to use it all up in one go, and here we are! Sadly, Kilimanjaro is discontinued, but its twin sister, Katahdin, is still going strong!

On the whole, I love the yarn and I want to work with it more! The colours are stunning and although it's not super soft, that's to be expected. I think it would actually be really good for socks, which I'm pretty sure is what it was made for. The only negative things I can say about this yarn are:

1. The dye ran when I soaked the sweater for blocking. A bit of citric acid fixed most of the issue though. (There was still a bit of purple in the water after soaking for half an hour or so, but I'm assuming that's just excess dye.)
2. Not really a negative so much as the nature of hand-dyed yarn: I didn't notice the striping happening until after I knit the entire thing, and while there isn't much I could've done about it anyway, and it doesn't really bother me that much, I might have alternated skeins if I had another skein.

I'm going to go ahead and assume these comments will apply for Katahdin as well, but I get issue #1 with other yarns too, especially with the madtosh when I soaked the bomber jacket. That was a disaster. Citric acid saved me both times, so I think it has something to do with the saturation of the colours for both these cases. As for the subtle striping, that's just hand-dyed yarn doing its thing. If I were really that bothered, I could either alternate skeins, or I wouldn't be working with hand-dyed at all.

First time knitting i-cord edging

The pattern is Silvertweed, by Nadia Crétin-Léchenne, which was released not too long ago. I was lucky enough to testknit this before the official release, and although it's not the sort of pattern I would normally have picked, I'm so glad I signed up for it! I would probably make the v-neck a little bit lower next time, but apart from that, I'm quite happy with the finished shirt. This was also the first time I've ever knit an i-cord edging for a collar (I did knit an integrated i-cord edge for this cowl, but that's different), so I ended up having to knit it twice: the first time around, the collar was way too loose, so the i-cord just flopped right over. You can actually still see that the back is a bit loose, but it's barely noticeable, and I can't see it once it's on (nor, do I suspect, can anyone else), so I'll live with it.

I never really get to wear jeans anymore

In fact, I could probably live in this sweater for a while. Winter's rolling in, and despite the lace sleeves, my Silvertweed is surprisingly warm. Maybe not surprising, given the 85% wool content, and I'm sure I'll feel the chill once the wind starts to blow through the lace, but I'm so ready for the winter months ahead now! Now just to start knitting some hats for me...