New year, old knits

Happy new year to you all. I had a restrained new year with my friend Sue, knitting, drinking champagne, chatting and watching silly TV. I finished off a sweater for me but more about that another day.

I've started doing a project called 10 in 2010 which means I'll be knitting 10 shawls this year, I would like to make it but given what work has in store I some how don't think it will happen, it's a nice target and if I get a couple done I will consider it a challenge met.

So the first Christmas knits to be blogged is a cardigan for my godson. This was knit with my own handspun, I feel so pleased saying that - this is my first garment from my own yarn, I've made plenty but small skeins that make small projects or gifts nothing that makes anything more substantial. I really enjoyed the process, I had 100g of delightful fibre from the Yarn Yard as part of the Socktopus SoFA club - a greeny coloured alpaca and bluefaced leicester mix. I liked it so much I managed to buy two more braids of the same fibre in a slightly brighter green.

This was spun and made into a two ply yarn at around aran weight. The SoFA colour and the other brighter colour each made up a single ply for 200g of the yarn and the last 100g I plied the brighter colour with itself.

I then knit a top down seamless cardigan striping the yarn over the body and half way down the sleeves (where I ran out of one yarn) I finished the sleeves and bottom with twisted rib.

I picked up and knit a twisted rib button band with mitered neck line - I think the neck hole looks small but Leo tells me it will be fine (I hope so!)

A small blue monster purchased at Wilferts in Copenhagen was added, you can see the subtle stripes really well in this picture

Button bands were lined with green satin ribbon (from Liberty) and I added giant snaps purchased at the iKnit day in 2009 from Textile Garden. They have really lovely buttons and bits but a really user unfriendly website - a good search function would make such a difference rather than trawling through pages of buttons to find something you want (although doing that makes you buy more!)

Finally I added one of my new labels from rememberwynn on etsy.

All in all I am pretty pleased with this project and hope that it will be well worn. I love the fibre and the beautiful colour, I don't wear green as it really doesn't suit me so it is always a pleasure to knit with as a something a bit different. I now have plans to spin some more larger amounts of yarn for bigger projects and I am really looking forward to it.