Sunday, July 22, 2012

Bill King Bolero #2

Finally, I'm giving up on getting a good picture of my Bill King Bolero that I made for myself.  I'm not sure what the issue is!  The first pictures I took were over a light beige dress.  I thought it looked good, until I looked at the pictures.  Too much contrast (though it showed the design details).  Then I tried over a brown top.  Hid the stains on the t-shirt well, but not very good for getting photos of.


I used two strands...one of the Forsell 2ply that I got at the Peterborough seminar I went to in early May, and one strand of probably the oldest cone I have in my stash (well, the one that I've had the longest), of a 1ply boucle.  The boucle is a cool dark brown, and the Forsell is a warm brown which really fuzzed up when washed.  I think I got gauge with this combo.

 I started the sleeves with 20 groups of 3, I think, but the sleeves are still quite floppy and loose.  That's why when I did the next one--the white one I gave to my niece--I started with even fewer.

 Yes, that's my man hiding behind the cardi.
I knew I had taken a close up of the original swatch, to show how the colours blended and the texture, but I can't find it.  The sun washed this photo out too much.  The cardi is quite warm, despite weighing nothing, due to the 2ply wool.

I'm not getting any more machine knitting done, since the machines are in the basement and the kids haven't been down there in the past couple weeks.  I have been doing some sewing--refashioning some dresses I bought last summer.  And another crochet square baby blanket, and a pair of handknit socks are on the needles.  I really need to plow through both my fabric and my yarn stash!

Yarn In:  13 966gr
Yarn Out:  11 821+ 187gr = 12 008gr
Balance:  1958 gr more In than Out
Costs:  $306.30/209 days = $1.46/day

2 comments:

Marg Coe said...

Tracy, I really like the casual look of the Bill King Bolero. It looks very light and drapes well. Not having had an opportunity to view the pattern I'm not sure how you would reduce the fullness in the sleeves but as we all know if there is a will there is a way! Love the yarn combo - very pretty.

TracyKM said...

Thanks Marg. I did taper the sleeves quite a bit on the white one (cast on 16 groups; knit 10 rows, inc 1 st on underarm seam edge EOR till 24 groups, knit 10 rows (or 12?) till 70 rows knit.
However, that yarn did bias in the swatch, and I noticed the sleeve seemed a little twisted. Don't know if it was because of biasing, but I will still try it again. It was still pretty loose at the opening, but the math worked out good, LOL.