I have finished a top and a cardigan recently, and both shine and shimmer beautifully but for different reasons.
Bijou
I have been thinking of knitting something with sequins for several years now. I might be late to the wagon, but I never really cared to have the newest fashionable items.
My mother gave me the beautiful Cosmos yarn by Katia as a birthday present. It definitely is not an easy material to work with. The strand that carries the sequins get caught in things and pulls out all the time. I have decided to cut it off for tubular bind off, and it was a brilliant solution to create a neat edging.
However,the resulting fabric is stunning. The tiny sequins give it a very noble glitter and are not as itchy when worn next to the body as I thought they would be.
The construction is top down classic raglan. I used the same calculations as for the grey sweater, but the front neckline is deeper.
Having worn it a couple of times, I think I need to make the body longer – thankfully, with top down construction it is not a problem.
Summer Nights
My other shimmery project of the summer is the cardigan in dark blue yarn with a metallic thread – Alize Forever Sim. I love that the metallic thread in this yarn is the same colour as the main one, so the glitter is very subtle and noble.
This is my second attempt to crothet this model in this yarn – the first one was a swatching and math disaster and fitted my daughter in the end. We need to take a family look picture with her!
I used a pattern from a Japanese magazine Let’s knit series NV 80397 2014 crochet, but had to do a lot of calculations as my gauge was very different. I really love the Japanese patterns, how they give all the detailed information about measurements, and how visual they are. Especially for crochet, I am so much better with charts then written instructions.
This time round I managed to get my calculations right, and the cardigan fits quite OK. It is rather heavy and warm. I used 350 grams of the yarn (280m/50 gr) and a 1.75 hook.