Thursday, May 20, 2010

Tea Time

Hi Knitters,
I forgot how much I like to knit sweaters. I used to knit sweaters for myself like mad. I have a huge cedar chest packed full of handknit sweaters. I remember getting Vogue Knitting and Interweave Knits years ago and scouring them for sweaters I wanted to knit. I would dog-ear those magazine pages to mark all of my favorites. In fact, there was rarely a knitting magazine released where I wouldn't knit at least one of the sweaters in the issue. That all ended when I started writing books. There just isn't enough time in the day.

Even though I am not really on a lull as far as work goes, I became smitten with the Tea Leaves Cardigan. I decided to make it for myself and I am glad I took the time to do it.
The Tea Leaves Cardigan (click here to purchase) is an incredibly simple, fast and fun knit. The Madelinetosh dk is a squishy, interesting treat. I used the colorway called Burnished.
I made a few changes here and there but I made this for fun and I am not going to go into detail about the changes I made. If you look up this sweater on Ravelry you will find 557 posted Tea Leaves Cardigans with extensive modification notes and yarn ideas. There is a modification for just about any fit issue you could imagine in the Tea Leaves posted projects.

The buttons I ended up using are gorgeous buttons from Purl. Here is the link. They are the Ecrulet black scroll buttons. They are beautiful and perfect. I only had two of the copper ceramic buttons so I had to make a new choice. The original button spacing wasn't working for me when I tried it on so I had to change it. I had to place four buttons closer together to make it work better.
The yarn? Madeline Tosh dk purchased at Nina's in Chicago. Give them a call to get some!
The pattern for the Tea Leaves Cardigan? Look here on Ravelry for all of the details.

Now on the needles? Shalom in Cascade 128 in Summer Sky Heather #1910! It's going to be fast and furious. I will be adding four buttonholes to this sweater. I am going to see if I have enough yarn to add sleeves, maybe? We'll see.

In my time off from work knitting what do I do? Knit! I love what I do.
best, susie