Month: February 2006

Last night I completed my first knitted garment – Bad Penny.

I used Cascade Sierra Quatro (color 88) and Sierra (color 12). They’re both 80% pima cotton, 20% wool. Working with this yarn was great. I really liked it and would definitely work with it again. I think it’s perfect for next to skin garments because it’s quite soft. It’s a little on the heavy side, though. I love the way it feels on (though this could also be because this is my first garment, so…).

I would recommend this pattern to someone who hasn’t knit a garment before. It’s quite easy (knits, purls, yarn overs, k2tog’s and p2tog’s). The only thing that tripped me up was how to really do the bottom pattern and when to use the k2tog or p2tog to make it look nicer (the pattern says k2tog for all of it, but if you do that it just doesn’t look pleasing to the eye, IMO). Also, for the XXL size (which is what I made) it says:

On last round, inc 2[3, 8, 0, 1, 2] and dec 0[0, 0, 4, 0, 0] sts evenly around.

My issue is the inc 1 evenly around. If you do this, you’ll have an odd number of sts while doing 1 x 1 ribbing. I didn’t bother to do it and it worked out fine. I had to do the last row of yo’s for the chart pattern slightly differently, but it’s not at all noticeable. It was just a matter of being one stitch shorter because of not doing the increase. I think the bottom pattern could be not done at all for someone with a little less experience who still wants to make a garment.

I also worked the sleeves in the round because I found it impossible to knit flat. Because of the raglan style of this shirt, it’s quite difficult to do anything other than knit the sleeve edging any other way. That’s my opinion, for whatever it’s worth.

When I picked up the sts along the collar, I had a difficult time. I know I’m really just not good a picking up stitches “properly” so it seemed to stick up a bit before I blocked the collar. After blocking it, though, it now stays flat instead of trying to fold outward.

Okay, enough of that… look at my FO!

Here it is with the collar blocking:

Me modeling it:

TA DA! Look I can wear it now!!