F.O. Hamble by Isabell Kraemer

Pattern:  Hamble

Hamble 

Designer:  Isabell Kraemer

Yarn:  
Rosy Green Wool Cheeky Merino Joy (100% Merino)
Colourway:  Edelweiss (1 skein)

O-Wool O-Wash Sport  (100% Merino)
Colourway: Cuckoo Flower (2.5 skeins)

 Pigeonroof Studios Silky High Twist Sock (80% Merino, 20% Silk)
 Colourway: Railroad Stake (held double)

Needles: 3.5mm

Ravelry:  my notes

Added Notes:

1.  Designer Isabell Kramer is popular for a reason.  Her patterns are well written, fun to knit, and produce a garment that fits well.  When Hamble was published I happily cast on, knowing that this sweater would get a lot of wear.  I have to admit that I am delighted with the finished result.  The hardest part about this pattern was knitting the neckline.  There are increases on both the purl and knit sides, and the increases I made on the purl side were creating holes in the fabric.  I found a great tutorial that demonstrated how to do this properly.  Once the neckline was created the pattern was straight forward. 

2.  I played around with different colours for the contrasting coloured stripe before I picked the Pigeonroof Yarn.  For example, I loved how these two skeins looked together, until I started to knit the stripe and realized that there was not enough contrast between the two. 

Old Rusted Chair Sock Yarn: Colourway Spring Forward

I tried several yarn combinations until I found the fingering skein of Pigeonroof High Twist Sock.  I have been holding onto this skein for sometime as the yarn is gorgeous, much too beautiful to knit into socks.  As this is a fingering weight skein I doubled it, and it worked perfectly with the sport weight yarn.

Much better!

3. The Yarn:  This was my first time using Rosy Green Wool and the experience made me want to knit a whole sweater's worth. It is the softest merino I have ever felt. It's one of those yarns that you want to keep squishing as you knit with it.   O-Wool, a yarn I bought at Rhinebeck a couple years ago, is a lovely yarn too, and was a good match with the Rosy Green Wool.  Look at the variety of colours that are available.

O-Wool Sport

O-Wool is certified organic by the Global Organic Textile Standard.  You can read more about what that means on the O-Wool website.  If you are lucky enough to go the Maryland (this coming weekend) or Rhinebeck Sheep and Wool festival you can see O-Wool in person.  If you want to try either yarn the owner of O-Wool sells both yarns online.  Trust me when I say both yarns are worth buying.

4.  I was halfway through my second sleeve when disaster happened.  I spilled the remains of a Tim Horton's coffee on my sweater and the coffee seemed to hit every inch of my sweater, especially the cream upper body.  Luckily I was just entering my house when it happened and I was able to submerge it immediately in water, so thankfully no lasting damage was done!

I love the feeling of getting a sweater off the needles.  Since this is a sport weight sweater I still will get a lot of wear out of it before summer.  Instead of focusing on the two remaining sweateres I have on the needles I promptly cast on another one.  I have so many projects on the needles at the moment.  But I am enjoying every one of them.  More on that later....

As a side note I have been quiet on my blog recently as life has been extremely busy.  I hope to get back to a regular schedule soon, so thanks for sticking with me.  

Happy knitting!

WIPs: Hamble, Stronachlachar, and Old Romance

Every now and then I go through my large Ravelry queue, and try to reduce the number of patterns in it.  I find this quite challenging as there are so many amazing patterns which have stood the test of time.  Of course, I am also tempted by new designs that crop up daily, and so my queue just grows and grows.  Does anyone else have this problem?  Recently I seem to be obsessed with knitting sweaters.  Instead of casting on just one sweater, I have cast on three!  Two are newly published, and the third has been in my queue for a long time.  And the best thing...all are knit from stash yarn.

1.  Hamble:  I am a long time fan of Isabell Kraemer and have found that her patterns fit me well, and tend to get worn quite a bit (see Aibrean, Mailin, and Seashore).  I could not resist Hamble, Isabell Kraemer's newest pattern knit in Rosy Green Wool Cheeky Merino Joy, a sport weight yarn.  I had the perfect yarn in my stash.  On my trip to Nashville in the fall, I picked up three different coloured skeins of Rosy Green Wool from Haus of Yarn, to knit a shawl.  Only one skein was needed for the top of the Hamble body so I used one of the colourways I had called Edelweiss. In my stash I also had some O-Wool O-Wash Sport yarn.  These two yarns work perfectly together.  Although I love both yarns, I found that Rosy Wool is one of those yarns that I kept squishing as I knit.  Rosy Green Wool definitely lives up to the hype.   (I found out that O-Wool carries Rosy Green Wool if you are interested in trying a skein).  Here's my progress so far: 

Rosy Green Wool Cheeky Merino Joy in Edelweiss
O-Wash O-Wool Sport in Cuckoo Flower

Pigeonroof Yarns Silky High Twist Sock in Railroad Stake

2.  Another new pattern that I cast on as soon as it was published is Stronachlar, part of the West Highland Way collection, by Kate Davies.    If you haven't had the chance to look at this collection of patterns I highly recommend it.  I had the perfect yarn in my stash for this pattern, about 900m of a DK weight wool called West Yorkshire Spinners Blue Faced Leicester DK.  I love the look of the simple cables and, if I can finish Stronachlachar soon, it will be the perfect spring sweater to throw on top of a blouse.  

West Yorkshire Spinners Bue Faced Leicester DK

3.  Since the beginning of the year I have been slowly working on Old Romance, a fingering weight cardigan, by Joji Locatelli that was published four years ago.  The pattern starts with two identical lace strips that become part of the sleeves.  I decided to knit both lace inserts at the same time.  Each day I slowly added a few rows until I knit the 27.5" required and then the fun began. This cardigan has a similar construction to Joji's Japan Sleeves, as the lace panels are knit first, and once done provide the foundation for the sleeves.  The interesting construction keeps me entertained, but as it is a fingering weight sweater it will take me some time to complete.  See my Ravelry notes here.

The pattern begins by knitting two lace panels
knit in Madelinetosh Light in the colourway Cathedral

The next step is to join the pieces and create the two arms and neck
Sweet Fiber Yarns Cashmerino 20 in colourway Verve

If only there were more hours in a day!  The trouble with knitting three sweaters at the same time is that it never looks like I have made much progress.  However I will remain hopeful that I will have three new sweaters to wear this spring.  Wish me luck!