South Bay Shawlette in fuchsia

Last week I felt like doing a quick crochet project and I felt like using a bright color, so this is what I made; a very bright fuchsia colored South Bay Shawlette. It's difficult to capture the exact color in these photo's, but I can tell you, it's really a very bright color (and I love it!). I used Lang Baby Alpaca (col.66) for this project, and for the first time in my life I used blocking wires to block the shawlette. I had been thinking about buying a blocking set before, and I finally decided to go for it. So I bought one from Wereldwol's webshop and it arrived the very next day, so that was very fast. Using this blocking set made the whole blocking process a lot easier, so I'm really happy with this purchase.

After finishing the shawlette, I decided that I didn't have enought embroidered cushions yet (....), so I have now started working on a squirrel cushion.

Ravenscar Cardigan

Last week I finally finished my Ravenscar cardigan. I received a beautiful button as a gift from my friend C. last year and I wanted to make a cardigan to go with the button. So I chose this design (by Sarah Hatton, it's from Rowan Magazine 45) and decided to make the cardigan out of Lang Merino 120 (colorway 272). I 've been making some adjustments to the pattern because I was using a thinner yarn than the pattern called for, and because the button is larger than the pattern called for. Also, I noticed in most Ravenscar project photo's on Ravelry that the sleeves were quite long, so I decided to make the sleeves 5 cm shorter than the pattern called for. Furthermore, I noticed on the Ravelry photo's that the front edges of the cardigan tended to curl. Mine showed signs of curling too, so the first thing I tried was to lay the finished cardigan between wet towels and let it dry. That helped a bit, but not enough. So I decided to sew ribbon to the back, and that did the trick, the edges don't curl any more. I also added a back button, and I'm very pleased with the result of that too. Overall I quite like this cardigan. I think the button looks great and I love this color combination (of the button and the yarn). However, I think that if I would knit this cardigan again, I would make the upper part of the sleeves a bit wider than the pattern calls for. In case you want to know more about how to sew ribbon to the back of a garment and/or add a back button, there are some excellent video tutorials by the Knitmore Girls that show you just how to do it (just check out the right-hand column of the Knitmore Girls blog).