tiny happy

Kia ora, hello!

It occurred to me that I never shared my major knitting project of autumn, aka Arlo's Icelandic jumper, here on the blog. I finished it up over Easter weekend and am really happy to have done so! It was a big project but I was happy with the result – and so was Arlo, which was the most important thing! Phew.

I knitted the Riddari Sweater, a design by Védís Jónsdóttir for Ístex and I used Icelandic yarn (Ístex Lettlopi) from Holland Road Yarn to make it. Arlo chose the colours – they have lots of good contrast and look quite classic I think. I've listed the colourway numbers and how much I used of each colour over on my Ravelry page if you want to check out those details.

The Riddari is knit bottom-up which is not my favourite construction, because I'm never quite sure how long to make the body and worry that my sizing is all wrong. For a long time, I thought that the sweater would be too small for Arlo so I went up a size and a needle size too. But the finished garment actually turned out to be too big. So I should have just trusted the pattern and relaxed! Next time I will.

I think the finished piece looks lovely on him and he seems happy with it though we haven't had any weather cool enough for it yet – I'm sure that will be here soon enough!

You can find more information about the Riddari Sweater here, and you can find a great 'Riddari-along set of blog posts by Pia Kammeborn here, if you'd like even more information! (I think the knitalong is long finished, but there's a lot of helpful info in those posts by Pia).

Other than that, I've been doing some knitting for babies – so many bootees! – and I've also been working on a very bright, rainbow project. I'll show you that in my next post.

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Autumn is always a good time for tidying up in the garden after the party of summer and so I've found myself pressing a few flowers and leaves after such gardening sessions. 

In the second-to-last photo above, I've captured some of the new making materials that have come my way (okay, that I've bought!) lately. A couple of weekends ago I attended a wonderful new yarn festival in nearby Lower Hutt called Woollington. There were a few of my favourite hand-dyers there and I couldn't resist buying a few new skeins. It was also an excellent opportunity to catch up with fellow knitting friends! The sparkly black wool fabric you see in the same picture has now become a winter coat. Will share soon.

I hope you are keeping well and happy, wherever you are in this world! Lots of love to you.

Melissa