In what appears to be a detour into necklace making,
a sweater begins…
The ring around the chair above is the result of a first try in the design process. I do lots of these little lais and ususally leave them hanging around for awhile to decorate the hut but this one is especially silly.
Last year I finished a shell that had been lingering on the needles for, well, years (2003).
It uses the same yarn I’m working with now, Gedifra POESIE. The little aqua number was fashioned from a pattern from the Lang Yarn Co. from their book Fatto a Manno NR. 146. It is style nr. 33 and they showed it with a peau de soi silvery aqua pencil skirt that was fabulous. I’ve been wearing mine with some polished cotton brocade capris in aqua.
Hunting through the stash, I found some more POESIE, this time in a mix of blues…
It’s really exciting stuff: color runs of navy lead into portions of cobalt all shot through with alternating rectangles of slightly metallic gold and orange. Umm. Orange…
It’s frothy, lightweight and begging to be made into a frock-like shell, but with a twist.
I wanted the Bottom Edge to be a slight flare. Not a ruffle but a flared border.
So, the chair is wearing Try #1 of the FB. After about 5 rounds, I realized it was ginormous! I would be making an invitation to an upskirt, maybe a pup tent of sorts. The gauge of this ribbon yarn is 3.5 sts per inch and although I knew going to be a trip to the slippery slope to shape the neckline and armhole, border bulk completely bypassed my geekitude. So it was a trip to the Frog Pond instead and Try #2 is on its way now, tamed by roughly 20% and ready to be continue…
I’m looking forward to seeing how this works out!
Ah, the Fatto a Mano book…while doing inventory on one of our stores, I searched high and low for Fatto a Mano, all the while exclaiming, “What the hell IS Fatto a Mano.”
I finally found it. Your shell is proof it is not an Italian curse word, but the place lovely patterns emerge from!
Got the patterns from you last week. Many thanks! Can’t wait to see them!
I have this yarn — bought it on eBay about four years ago. Tried to improvise a summer tank, but wasn’t really a good enough knitter to have any idea what I was doing. Frogged it. If you have any additional tips (or designs!) on using this yarn, I’d love to read about them. I have that exact colorway you show, plus one with brown and gray.
For Tanya:
“fatto a mano” = “handmade” (lit., made by hand)