Jobo Designs

For some reason? the idea of knitting myself a *fitted* garment still scares the heck out of me.   Maybe this stems from the fact that I have always had issues with the way that clothes fit?

I am three apples tall? a fair bit under the five foot mark, though with my affinity for high heeled shoes you might not have realized at this point!  my 4 foot 10 inch frame, as one can imagine, does not always lend itself to clothing fitting right off the rack.

I shorten everything.  Jeans?  generally at least 3 inches needs to be removed from each pair.  Dresses?  Let the bust out, bring the hem up, blah blah blah.  Sweaters?  they either fit or they don?t.  I always feel badly for the clothing store clerks when they see me coming out of the dressing room with a ginormous armload of outfits?  Clerk:  ?So you?ll be taking those then??  Me: ?um nope, that?s the No Pile?  Sigh.

So not surprisingly, a standard Cardigan ? I fear ? when knitted exactly as intended to the letter of the pattern? Will likely not fit.  I know I will need to deviate from the pattern at some point to customize the piece to fit my shorter and slightly rounder figure.  (Yes, I *would* like another bowl of icecream? thank you.  It?s summertime.)

Liesl (by Scottish knitter and designer Ysolda Teague ? available for sale here)  seemed like a good first time foray into the world of fitted garments. 

The piece is cast on at the neck line, and knit from the top down.  You can stop, try it on, and then continue knitting to see how it fits.  The entire body is knit in one piece, and then the arms are done by picking up stitches and then continuing down until the desired length is reached.  It sounds simple? knit, try it on, repeat until satisfied.  Even I should be able to do that.

The Fabric is a very open lace knit on large needles.  This means it is Stretchy? and hopefully fairly forgiving.  Also, because it knits up fast, I hope that if I mess up, it won?t take too long to redo.  I made a mistake a few years ago on a ?jacket? style sweater, and I would have had to frog nearly the entire thing to fix it.  I opted to keep it, mistake and all, and as a result I only wear it if I am completely freezing? and no-one will see me in it!

Another bonus is that this pattern can be knit from THREE (yes only Three) skeins of Malabrigo Worsted.  The non-knitters out there are probably thinking ? what is this Malabrigo, and why is she going so nuts about it?

  This. Yarn.  Is.  One.  Of.  The.  SOFTEST.  Things.  On.  The.  Planet!

Normally, the thought of spending money on enough yarn to knit a cardigan, and then potentially messing up said cardigan and never finishing it? would terrify me to the point that I wouldn?t take the chance.  For most cardigan style projects the yarn can be costly.  One particular wool cardigan I had considered for a while would require that I buy 8-9 balls of a specific yarn? which cost 10.50$ Canadian per ball!  If I knew I would love the finished sweater, than I could be ok with that.

Liesl, only requiring 3 balls of Malabrigo at a cost of 10$ a piece? means only a 30$ Investment.  I can live with that.

As you can see? (yes, that is my new bathroom? why do you ask?)  I have completed the yoke and main body of the cardigan and have moved on to the sleeves.  Number one is almost completed, and I plan to start on Number two if the humidity/heat wave ever lets up.  It?s been too hot in the evenings to have a cardigan laying over my lap.

I hope to finish this in the next week or so? and then attach the Vintage Mother-of-Pearl Button that was rescued from my Grandmother?s fantastic Button Stash.  It was a one of a kind? so this will be a perfect way to showcase it!

Ever since my first forays into Ravelry... I have wanted to try working with Malabrigo.  The reputation for super soft, squishy singles, with beautiful kettled dyed shades - how can a knitter resist?  Seriously!

So when I was in Moncton last week at Cricket Cove, and they had a whole gigantic rack of this stuff, and in practically every color too... I really really had to resist the urge to knock the rack over and spend the afternoon rolling around in Malabrigo fantasticness!

I have been wanting to make myself a cardigan for a while, but I have not had great luck with creating fitted garments to my *coughROUNDahem* body shape.  Ysolda Teague's Liesl only takes 3 skeins of Malabrigo Worsted, so the investment is fairly reasonable, and the cardigan itself is made up of Feather and Fan style lace, so I think it should be fairly forgiving as far as size goes too.  I have a couple of vintage buttons from my Grandmother's button jar... one of which is about an inch across, round, made of shell or mother or pearl.  I think it will make a great match with this steely blue color too :)

Mmmmmalabrigo - Stone Blue #99

I have been sitting on a skein of Fleece Artist Peter Rabbit for quite some time.... The story behind it is that I purchased it on a whim from North Shore Island Traditions based on the feel of the yarn alone.  Normally I go for the more blue / greenish tones exclusively, but in this case, there were very limited colorways in stock so I couldn't choose the usuals.  I decided that even though I normally don't knit with yellow or orange, that I generally find these colors bright and sunny, so I should step outside the box and try it regardless.  This particular colorway features bright yellows and oranges, reminiscent of Big Bird from Sesame Street... but in my mind at the time - reminded me of sunsets and Golden Flowers.

The Yarn itself is so unbelievably soft, albeit a little sheddy...  I had initially intended to knit socks from this, but then it struck me to try knitting a shawl/scarf.  I know that next winter when it starts to get cold around here (love the Canadian Winters) that the angora will be warm and soft against the skin in a way that no other fiber can be.  "Peter Rabbit" consists of 70 % Angora, 20 % Nylon and 10 % Wool for a super soft, softly haloed, and light as a feather.  I managed an entire Ishbel of the small size from a single skein.  It isn't huge, but it fits nicely around my shoulders, and I think will be perfect in size to wrap around the neck to protect from a winters chill.

Now I have Knit Ishbel (by Ysolda Teague) a few times before... so I knew what I was getting into.  The beginning in stockinette just flies by!  And though I seem to have issues memorizing the charts, even those fly by so fast that I hardly remember them.  I chose in this case to make the small size, though I think I might have done an extra section of the lace chart.  I remembered from blocking before that this shawl doesn't end up completely triangular, but more of a curved shape on the top.  When this was blocking on the spare bed all I could think of was how much the shape reminded me of a golden Pheonix rising.  It feels almost like golden wings.

The yarn in the skein had a bit of a halo, but after knitting and blocking, the halo intensified a bit.  You can really tell when the shawl is up against another object how much of a Halo it really has.  I thought in the beginning that maybe the halo wuld be too much and obscure the vine lace, but in the end I think it still shows up ok.

In general, orange is not a color I would often wear, or purchase items in that shade... surprisingly, the warm bright color doesn't look awful with my skin complexion.  I come from a family of red haired folk... So I am very pale and I have a lot of freckles (my husband teases that if I ever needed a medical Freckle-ectomy, we'd go broke paying the bill)  I'm not sure what I will ever wear this with, but the warm fuzziness around my shoulders makes me tempted to buy an outfit to match!

Another reason I decided that I needed to try working with Angora is the fact that I have an English Angora Rabbit coming to live with me around the end of June.  The bunny (henceforth referred to by his royal name, though he hasn't be chosen from the litter yet...) Ruttiger was born on May 10th as part of a 6 bunny litter, and though the smallest bunny has passed away, the other 5 are thriving and growing fine.  The breeders plan on keeping the white bunny, but there are two "blue" and two "torte" babies that will be up for grabs.  I plan on going up and officially meeting the kits next weekend, so expect photos then.  Meanwhile, I have been in a nutso nesting phase... buying the supplies I will need for Ruttiger's homecoming (aka cage, food, bedding, grooming equipment, etc)  I am very excited for our new pet to come home and get cozy at Casa-Jobo.

Here is another shot with the "Ishbel on Fire" cozied up with a plain seed bead necklace... which looks surprisingly nice :)

Did you ever notice how difficult it is to take photographs of yourself?  (Yes this is in my Bathroom, and Yes, it is a little Blurry.  No I had not been drinking... though there was wine shortly after the photo shoot)  At least I managed to sneak a smile in :)

Another successful shawl... warm, cozy, elegant, and very very Golden Yellow / Orange.  I hope I don't look silly in this color, because I kind of like it!  (you definetly won't lose me in a snowbank with this on! as my grandma would say)