I have the house to myself this weekend, as Jamie is off Wales to visit his parents. As I have no pressing engagements, I plan to spend most of the weekend knitting. And what better knitting than casting on for Eskimimi's Mrs Tumnus KAL!
Knowing I wanted to cast on straight away, I spent some time during the week winding my yarn and swatching.
I didn't hang around after bringing this lovely Skein Queen Blush home from Unravel last weekend. I got it straight on my swift and wound into a gorgeous, squishy cake.
As this is sport weight, not fingering, I felt it was important to swatch for this pattern, particularly as I only have one needle with a 100cm cable and if that turned out to be the wrong size....
I knit two swatches, one on 5mm and one on 5.5mm. I hit gauge (mostly) on the larger needles, but prefer the fabric of the smaller needles, so will knit my Mrs Tumnus on 5mm needles. Even though this was the needle I already had in the right length, I decided to buy myself a new one. There's nothing wrong with my Milward circulars, but ever since I bought my little Addi Turbos for the colourwork projects I did before Christmas, I've been hankering after needles of the posher kind. I want to try out all the different options before I splurge on a full set though, so decided to get something different to Addis for this project.
I'm starting to find I have a preference for knitting with metal tipped circulars, but wooden dpns. So I opted this time for a Knit Pro Nova needle. It has a purple cable! I can't wait to get started, although I am a little daunted that the first instruction in the pattern is to cast on over 400 stitches!
That yarn looks just as lovely on screen as it does in the flesh ;) Can't wait to see progress on the shawl :)
ReplyDeleteAt least if you cast on 400 sts, it will only shrink with time. My one tip would be to use a stitch marker every 50 sts so that you don't have to count loads of times, you just have count back to the last marker that you were sure of.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a wonderful weekend, the yarn looks heavenly
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a lovely weekend, hope you enjoyed it. Gorgeous yarn, sport weight is my nemesis when it comes to gauge.
ReplyDeleteYou go on swatching. This is a vibrant red. Can't wait to see more!
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