The Annual First Bee Day 2017... was three weeks ago!

I knew it! Apparently First Bee of 2017 was waiting for my previous post release... and showed up just one day later - on March 5th.

Ok, this may be considered cheating, because hyacinths were bought in a flower shop. But we have other flowers as well:

I mentioned buying fancy yarn in my previous post. As a 100th post celebration, or simply because I deserve some squishy goodness after this horrible winter! After hours of picking, calculating, terrorizing my husband with countless links I finally found what I was looking for - Mirella by Włóczki Warmii. Fingering weight 100% virgin merino wool, hand painted in Poland. Colorway "Curry". Yummy!

Shipping was really fast. I ordered on Saturday night, and the parcel was delivered on Tuesday afternoon. Luckily  I had a day off after a night shift, when I came back home to this:

Since skeins were a bit too long for traditional one-chair winding I had to create a Wind@tron 2.0. I swear one day I'll try winding my skeins with hand mixer!

It took me about two hours to wind all 1200meters into three neat balls.

Being done with all that I was finally able to start working on the Hitofude Cardigan by Hiroko Fukatsu. I decided not to slip any stitches at the beginning of each row, and I consider it to be a good decision so far.

 

I'm working simultaneously with all three skeins - that forced me to cut thread twice after joining sleeves. No regrets though - yarn is an absolute pleasure to work with, and result is just gorgeous! It has tiny specks of red and green - just like real curry! 

So far I manager to finish sleeves (did 10 instead of 12 repeats), and start body increases. I still have 160g of yarn left, which should be enough to complete the cardi as intended.

I hope that my next post will be one of those "ta-daaaah" posts! Also, my birthday is getting closer, and I might get myself something... nice :)

I'm running back my to knitting! Stupid daylight savings time took away a precious hour of my free weekend!

Have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

100th post! And one less WIP!

Yay! Here's my 100th blog post!
I promised something special for today, haven't I?
And what can be more special and appropriate for celebration than...
A FINISHED ADULT-SIZED GARMENT? For me?!

Pattern is called  Ahelad (Chains) by Anna Kuduja. It's available for purchase on Ravelry. Very well written, easy to follow. After one repeat I just tossed the chart in my project bag and worked on my own. It is also easy to modify.

I wanted to make size M at first but ended up with S (both sizes start with the same no. of stitches - lucky me!). It's a wise decision since cotton is quite heavy and it grew faster than I knitted! :)

For this project I used  FibraNatura Cottonwood  in bottle green - 100% organic cotton, DK. Ravelry marked this one as "discontinued" but in Polish yarn shops there's still plenty left! I fell in love with this dark, rich green.
It's very pleasant to work with, splits a bit but nowhere close to what I expected.

What surprised me was the needle size. When I started my knitting adventure I was a tight-knitter. Now I worked DK weight yarn with 3,5mm (flat) and 4mm (in round) needles... and fabric is soft and drapey!

Also.. the stitch definition is just amazing!

I used almost 7 skeins - 350grams. I'm keeping the last one in case I would like to add some length to it after washing.

As always thanks to my husband who took all the pics! This time Korek seemed eager to help...

But it turned out he was just in it for cuddles!

Oh, you!

Now that I completed 2 WIP's over just two weeks I can finally buy more yarn!

Have a nice afternoon!

Gosia.

PS.: Spring is nigh, I tell ya! I'm already on lookout for The First Bee of 2017!