Lilias Day

After a slightly rocky start on combining continental and English knitting, I thoroughly enjoyed working the stranded yoke on my Lilias Day and raced through to the finish line over the weekend (Western Easter, but still mid-Lent for us).  I'm eager to do more stranded knitting!  (And purpose-bought yarn for a Mackworth and a Blaithin-Stripes mashup with the great sale at Webs). And German short rows are brilliant (even if they did end up in the wrong place)!  I'm never doing a wrap and turn again. 

I did worry that blocking might mess things up a bit, so took copious photos before dunking it in the bath.  The body of the sweater relaxed and grew quite a bit more than I was expecting, and I was disappointed with how long it looked.  My torso is short, so even an inch too long looks really unflattering on me.  

My meager attempts to fix the growth resulted in some minor felting on the two pink sections and the yoke was slightly tight across the tops of my shoulders, although it fixed the body length issue.  I clipped some of the longer floats on the blue/green section (the last two lines of floats are epic) which helped release some of the tension.  

The sweater fit, but the white wasn't particularly great on me (it rarely is a good choice with my complexion) and I decided the sweater would be better off living with someone else.  

Thankfully, a friend who is narrower than me loved the sweater when I posted pics of it in progress and finished, and I'm popping it into the post for her in the next few days.  I'm glad it will have a good home!

In the meantime, I loved this palette so much, I decided to make an Evendoon with it instead (continuing to work from my stash), which will suit both my closet and my complexion better.  My son also asked for a sweater, and we were able to cobble together enough yarn that I think I can make him a slightly smaller Evendoon from also-stashed yarn in a palette that suits him. 

I'm watching Shtisel on Netflix (and am kind of obsessed with Hasidic communities at the moment); it is lovely to listen to Hebrew and read subtitles and knit with something not-quite-mindless, but not too hard either.