My Peggy Sue

I've knit a few sweaters/cardigans now, my husband [yeah, we got married last month] has 4 now, my nephew has one, my mom has one and I've knit myself one in the past. They've all been bottom-up. Well, I've recently cast off my first top-down cardigan!

Woohoo!

P-A-R-T-Y? Because I gotta!

I chose to knit the Peggy Sue, with my own modifications of course. Here's My Peggy Sue (links to my project page).
It's a free pattern on Ravelry, a delightful little 1950's style cropped sweater, very feminine, very flattering. The neckline follows your collar bone whilst the cabled ribbing accentuates your waist.
And you'll notice that mine has no such effect, well except the neckline, I like that neckline. There's also the stripes, I haven't seen anyone else do stripes yet.

I did omit the shaping in the body as I was extending it.

I based the stripe pattern on one of my favourite cardigans, which is blue/brown/yellow, and I really wanted a green one.

So, below are my modifications.

Let's start with the yarns. I have 5 colourways in my cardigan. All being from the Stylecraft DK ranges.

Colour 1 - Fern (Collar, button band & stripe) (100g ball)
Colour 2 - Daffodil (Stripe) (100g ball)
Colour 3 - Zingy (Ribbing & stripe) (Will need 2x 100g balls)
Colour 4 - Charcoal (100g ball)
Colour 5 - Pebble (100g ball)

Cast on with Fern and work the collar and raglan set up row.
Change to Daffodil for 14 rows.
Change to Zingy for 18 rows.
Change to Charcoal for 18 rows.
Change to Fern for 18 rows.
Change to Zingy for 18 rows.
Change to Pebble for 18 rows.
Change to Daffodil for 18 rows.
Change to Zingy for 30 rows of 2x2 ribbing.
Cast off and rejoin for sleeves, and keep the stripe pattern (above) the same as the body.

When you rejoin for the sleeves, pick up 5 stitches on the under-arm and decrease them down the next few rounds. I chose the slp1, k2tog, psso method.

The sleeves are bracelet length on me, though still a little baggy. I decreased 6 stitches in the Pebble section as it's where my forearm starts to get narrow.

There are 8 buttons which are 15mm wide and spaced evenly along the button band which is followed by the pattern only with more stitches picked up and a little maths which meant the button holes were being worked after every 19 stitches.

I hope these notes are helpful, or just of interest to you.

My Colour Affection

Or Color Affection if you're American, and I spelt it that way on twitter due to today being the 4th July.

So there it is; my Colour Affection, (rav link) I have loved working on this project, it was so therapeutic, just simple repeats that were memorised in a jiffy.

My only nit picking would be the time it took to knit the last 30 rows, I timed it at 24mins. Yes, I used a stopwatch. When I say 24 mins I mean per row, I'm not such a speedy knitter. Luckily I had Supernatural on play all so I didn't have to keep getting up.

And for the nerds, yes, my Aperture Laboratories vest, I also have a shower curtain, it's probably my favourite game ever now.

Ok, so the yarn I used for this delightful project it;

Stylecraft Life 4ply - Silver Grey (Grey, duh)
Stylecraft Life 4ply - Zest (Yellow)
Stylecraft Life 4ply - Fern (Green)

On my project page for this I have the Zest listed as being yellow-green as in the ball it does look a yellow-y limey shade, but next to the grey it's perfect yellow, I guess that's how different colours interact and affect each other.

I chose to start with the grey because I knew it'd play well with the other shades, but also as I didn't want the  long band to be grey as it'd feel washed out, this is the same reason why yellow was contrast colour 1 instead. I was knitting this for me, and although it's my favourite colour, yellow doesn't suit me, whereas greys do. I also wanted contrast colour 2 to be a darker shade to end on, give it some weight in appearance, hence the choice of green.

In all honesty I should've sketched this out like I usually do, but when I was yarn store browsing, I saw these three shades and knew they'd work well together, then I saw how it looked in my head.

I really loved it, and I have plenty of the yarns left over to knit matching socks! Haha, maybe, or a monster, or something. I certainly used over half the ball of each shade.

For an acrylic yarn (75% acrylic, 25% wool) it's really come out so nicely, and so soft. I don't think I'll be blocking this because I really the the smush factor and how it drapes and hangs.

I can see what everyone said about the edging being tight, but that doesn't really bother me as I'm not blocking it out, if I was I could see how this would be a problem. I also don't think my m1L and m1R are as tight as what most people have been on about, but maybe I'm just loose...

I just know I love it, and everyone should knit this. I'm really tempted to knit one half the size for some reason, as a neck scarf? Who knows, I'll think about it.

Squares and Affection

Squares

I have a chair in my room which I love to sit in, put my feet up and knit. As this chair is cream of all colours, I have a throw on it. This throw is now getting a little threadbare, but I love this it!

I bought it from IKEA a couple of years ago, from the bargain corner, so it had a hole in it already. I didn't care, think I paid about £3 for it. All I did was knit a ribbed square and sew it on over the hole.

Fast forward to now, and I'm at the height of my yarn collecting. I'm knitting things all over the shop and I have odd balls of yarn. I figure, why not use them up and save something I love? I can practice different square knitting methods, learn something new, it's fun!

As you can see I have kept the squares to a natural-ish pallet, using 5.5mm needles for aran weights and 4.5mm needles for the bulky. This keeps the squares at the same sizes

Affection

And by affection I mean the ever popular Colour [Color] Affection. 

I've chosen grey, yellow and green as my colour scheme, ooh they look so tasty together, don't you think? Craig bought me the yarn, it's Stylecraft Life 4ply in Silver Grey, Zest and Fern.

Everyone appears to love knitting this, so I'll give it a go. I'm going to start with the grey.

Best get started then! I'm off to watch Revenge, laters!