My Mothers Day Gift To me

Cinne is complete and ready to make her fashion debut on this family weekend, hosted by  Sis.

 

 A finished sweater is a great Mothers' Day gift.  Especially for a knitterly Mother like me. And doubly great since it involved ripping and re-knitting a lesser garment  for better results.


Cinne is the latest  Chic Knits pattern.  Another uniquely constructed, but easy-to-understand piece of knitting brilliance by Bonne Marie Burns.

Details
Yarn - Calico by Sirdar.

 DK weight yarn  in a light shade of what I call mint green.  Yesterday at knit group, Sandy B commented that it was an unusual colour for me.  I wear a lot of green but this is - for me - an unusual shade of green. I am more an 'olive'  than   'mint'  girl.  With  only five 50 g  balls in my stash I was surprised to have 30 grams left over. 

That means the sweater weighs only  220 grams - just under half a pound for those of us who talk more Imperial than Metric.   In either language, that is light weight.  A perfect piece for summer, should we ever get any hot weather here.

Needles - The body was knit with 4mm  circulars and the ribbed edges with 3.75mm.

Modifications.
I shortened the sweater a bit.  When I tried on the pre-ribbed Cinne I knew that adding another inch or so to the bottom of the sweater  would make it too long for   me.  So I ripped back a inch or so, added the ribbing and have a 22 inch CInne.  Perfect for me.

I also didn't pick up  for the ribbing  stitches in the ratio advised in the pattern.  Bonne suggests the ratio of four to five.  That ratio in percentage speak is 80%.  Definitely more ribbing stitches than the three for four or 75% ratio I favour.  So --- I ignored the pattern suggestion and ribbed at the ratio of three for four.   And ??  It is a bit tight and pulls the sweater fronts up.  Proved wrong once again.  I have blocked it as  much as possible and will give it the wear test over the weekend.  I really don't want to rip out that neck band. Two and a half inches  up one side, across the back and down the other.  Here's hoping the blocking will work.  Maybe  I could hang a couple of weights on the bottom front corners.

The only other modification I made was to short row the neck band.  Even without the neck trim the back neck was high.  I couldn't imagine another two & a half inches climbing up the back of my head.  If the ribbing was to be that deep, for comfortable wearing, the back neck trim would have to be folded over.  Folding the back neck trim might,  it seemed to me,  alter the way the front bands behaved.  Instead, I  chose to  short-row the neck band.  Three times, I knit from bottom up, but stopped at the  shoulder line, wrapped and turned to  knit back down to the bottom.  That gave me six less rows in the back and it seems to be just fine.

Two little quirks that hopefully will iron themselves out with wearing.  Either way,  I will let you know.   I'll wear it on Mothers' Day, try to  remember to get someone to snap my picture and   Monday, I'll let you be he judge.  In the mean time - Happy Mothers Day to all Mothers.  May your day involve knitting.