Sweater Girl Success: Finished Chartreuse Georgina Cardigan!

My spring green Georgina cabled & lace cardigan is finally done, just in time for spring!

My original "Sweater Girl Showdown Sketch":

My original sketch, from... um... a year ago. See my "sweater girl showdown" post for more on each of these patterns. My goal was to make a very fitted, curve-hugging little lacy cardigan with a bit of negative ease—nothing baggy or shapeless like my last cardigan disaster!

The details:

• The pattern: Georgina Cardigan by Alexis Winslow aka Knit Darling. This pattern is beautifully designed and was a dream to knit: lots of easy-to-memorize but fun and different types of lace and cables and shaping to keep my interest, all knit together or picked up (no after-the-fact seaming). However it was NOT an easy knit (I consider myself relatively advanced and I still made a few mistakes and had to pay very close attention), and I wouldn't recommend it as a first-ever sweater pattern, unless you REALLY like a challenge. I made the smallest size, which was 2-3 inches smaller than my actual full bust measurement—just right to create a fitted look!
• The yarn: Swans Island Hand-Dyed Merino Organic Worsted in Spring Green (3.5 skeins). Soft as a cloud, with just enough hand-dyed variegation for interest, but not enough to compete with the beautiful lace or eyelet cables. Swans Island is a super-cool little eco-friendly yarn and blanket company based in Maine, and they have excellent customer service: when I realized I was short a skein for my last sleeve, they immediately offered to call around to all their retail shops to help me locate one in the right dye lot (Purl Soho had one left—phew!).
• The full Ravelry project details. Yes, it took me a year to finish, but whatever. The designer notes it only took her a week and a half—but I knit like a knitting snail (I have to to preserve my wrists from carpal tunnel redux).

It looks cute buttoned:

Or un-buttoned:

And from the lacy little back, too:

And don't you love vintage buttons? I got these "West German Radiant Buttons" at La Casita yarn shop in Brooklyn (one of three yarn shops in walking distance of my apartment... which makes me either spoiled, or just at constant risk of unnecessary yarn adoption):

I finished the sweater while lying in bed recovering from my surgery—all it needed were some ends woven in and the buttons, and... DONE! (No, I haven't blocked it. It fits so well I'm afraid to mess with that. I will at some point). It was the only bright spot in a really rough painful post-surgery week — I'm getting a lot better, but still have some really bad days — and I got lots of compliments on it at work Monday.

And sorry about the goofy "holding the curtain as a backdrop" photos, but I was too weak/ill to go outside last weekend and had to make do in some very low cloudy lighting. BUT WHATEVER. SWEATER LOVE. I think I need to go snuggle with my sweater now...

What's your latest happy make?

Glove Inspiration: Making My Knitting Life More Colorful (and Difficult!)

Source: ravelry.com via Mikhaela on Pinterest

Inspiration for my next knitting: maralenenok's "Worth Two in the Bush" colorwork gloves on Ravelry

At long last, I have finished knitting my chartreuse Georgina cardigan, and although I still have to sew in the ends, find some buttons and block the lovely soft thing, I'm super happy—it fits perfectly (that is, very snug and not all baggy and droopy like the last cardigan I made for myself) and is just soft as an organic merino wool cloud.

Which means I can look forward to my next project, something I've always wanted to tackle—gloves with real fingers! I know knitters love making mittens, but I am just not a mitten wearer. Fingerless mitts are also more popular and easier than gloves, and I've made two pairs... a Malabrigo "Fetching":

... which I wear all the time when my office is chilly, but which are not so useful outside in the actual freezing winter cold. And a pair of "Dashing" man mitts for my husband...

Source: ravelry.com via Mikhaela on Pinterest

... which I'm afraid never actually get worn, since his home office is never actually cold.

But I want gloves. Real gloves. Difficult gloves with tricky little fingers. And COLORWORK, which I've never actually done. So I'm going to follow in the footsteps of all the enterprising Ravelers who have made gloved versions of Eunny Jang's lovely free colorwork pattern, the Endpaper Mitts:

Source: eunnyjang.com via Mikhaela on Pinterest

This is not exactly a new plan, since I bought the yarn for this project back in 2008. It's Koigu Premium Merino in two of my favorite colors—chartreuse (naturally) and teal:

Hurrah for stash-busting?

By the way... It took me a good deal longer to finish the Georgina than the one and a half weeks suggested by the pattern, but who's counting? As I've probably mentioned a gazillion times, things have been quite rough over here for me and my little girl, healthwise. In January, we ended up taking little Z to an amazing two-week intensive hospital program for kids with severe eczema, asthma and food allergies at National Jewish Health in Denver. It was life-changing: little Z is no longer covered in horrible itchy rashes and she SLEEPS every night through the night from about 9:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. (No more crying and itching herself awake until 1 a.m. and needing to be held all night long).

But alas, a few blissful weeks of sleep have not alleviated my own health problems. I've now had EIGHT serious sinus infections in the last six months with fever, chills and aches, four of which required antibiotics and oral steroids. Basically, I get really, really sick, am bedridden for 2-4 days, slowly start to recover over the next three weeks... and then after maybe two or three days of feeling OK, I get sick again (There's nothing wrong with my immune system, either.). A CAT scan revealed a severely deviated septum and other anatomical issues, and I'm scheduled for sinus surgery in a little over a week. I'm really looking forward to it—to having energy, to not being snuffly and exhausted and feverish and in pain all the time... to having more fun with my little girl... and to sewing again, of course!

So, two questions. For the knitters:

• Have you ever knit gloves?
• What's your stand on gloves vs. mittens vs. fingerless mitts?
• Do you do colorwork?

And for all of you: do you ever get that urge to tackle a project that is going to be really tricky and make you swear a lot? And how does that work for you?

Cardigan Conundrum: Which Color? (NOT Chartreuse Again)

So if you didn't already guess, the winner of my Sweater Girl Showdown: Shrunken Cardigan Edition was Brooklyn-based knit designer Alexis Winslow's lovely Georgina!

Oh, and if you haven't already ogled the pattern on Knit Darling, check out the fancy lace back view:

Source: knitdarling.com via Mikhaela on Pinterest

I've already purchased the pattern on Ravelry, and now I am left with the problem of yarn and color choice. My initial thought was chartreuse, because I am OBSESSED with chartreuse cardigans... I have one in wool, one in silk, and one in cashmere--plus a UFO sewn one in doubleknit--and I probably wear them more than any other sweaters I own, as evidenced in these three garment photos from my pregnant days:

But perhaps I need to branch out a bit, color-wise. I'm leaning towards periwinkle or blue, though I do have a soft spot for bright pink--like chartreuse, it seems to go with everything in my wardrobe! Check it out--I'm wearing pink AND chartreuse in both of these photos from 2007 (the one directly below is by Márta Fodor):

The two non-chartreuse cardigans I wear most often are this old thrifted red wrap cardi shown here in 2006 (when I still took photos in my bathroom with the mirror):

Speaking of ancient bathroom photos--I didn't even crop my laundry bag out of this one! Cashmere chartreuse cardi I still wear all the time, shown with my me-made blue wool tweed skirt:

And here's my trusty thrifted periwinkle cashmere cabled cardigan, which looks way better in real life now (and fits much better now that I'm not pregnant):

OK, enough already. I'm also self-debating over yarns and fibers. I don't know if I want to use a solid color yarn (to better show off the fancy lace and ribbing and eyelets and suchlike) or a subtly variegated semi-solid yarn... most of the yarns I was ogling were semi-solids but really, I think this might do best in a solid.

Anyway, this is the fun part, right? Now I get to go to my local yarn shops and feel up the squishy wooly wares and dither back and forth and... for as long as the toddler will tolerate, anyway.

You might have noticed I'm not even CONSIDERING a neutral color, because I find that I almost never wear the few neutral cardigans I own. That's just me, though--if your favorite sweater is gray or black or brown, I salute you and your yarny neutrality!

>So, fellow sweater girls (and boys?)--what's your go-to cardigan color?

P.S. In the meantime, I'm making socks (Ravelry project details here)! From yarn I dyed myself (ages ago), in a lovely super-bright ombre blue. In the Waving Lace pattern by Evelyn A. Clark from Favorite Socks, which looks super-complex but is really easy to follow/memorize:

P.P.S. Guys, I was ALMOST up to 200 followers... I was at 199... and then I suddenly dropped back to 198! Maybe I offended a die-hard sewist with all this knitting talk? (not that I care!)

P.P.P.S. Happy Easter and/or Passover! (We'll be doing both here).