Cirkeltroje Started!

I don't seem to have found time to visit blogs recently so must do that in the next day or so but I just want to say thanks to everyone who commented on the Spring Things shawl in my last post.

Remember the circular lace cardi from the Danish book, Feminin Strik, that I was desperate to knit? Well, I've made a start! Here's how far I've got.


I've hit a hiatus until I get some more needles though. The circular needles I have are:

Denise set (inherited from MIL);
Knitpicks Options set;
a selection of Clover Takumi Bamboo;
a selection of Addi needles in both wood and metal; and
various Inox/Prym.

The colour of the Knitpicks Options needles make it difficult to see the stitches against them with this shade of yarn especially as the stitches are so fine (being KSH). Apart from that, the cords are far too long to use until quite a substantial amount of the knitting is done. Why aren't there shorter lengths of cord with Options?!! I checked Get Knitted and, yes, you can buy individual needles with shorter cords but you can't seem to buy shorter cords to screw into the existing needle ends of the set. You can even buy spare needles for the set but no shorter cords! The Denise set, on the other hand, has loads of different cords so you can achieve all sorts of different lengths by combining shorter or longer cords but the problem with them is that the join between cord and needle is so nobbly that, with fine yarn like KSH knitted on a relatively large needle (5.5mm for this pattern) you have to fight to get the loops to pass over. The Clover Takumi also have nobbly joins and I didn't have anything shorter than a 60cm when I initially needed a 40cm. The Inox, Prym and Addi were all either the wrong length or the wrong size.

After having tried, seemingly, all the different methods for a circular start including the famous Emily Ocker one, I opted for a start on two circular needles and achieved a nice neat centre which I'm quite pleased with. The DPNs I have were too long and heavy to start KSH and eight stitches on but I have to admit, having done it on two circs, I find this a really neat and simple way which will probably end up being my favourite. When it was big enough to go on one circular, I had to resort to the Denise needles and I've fought with getting the stitches over that nobbly bit until I'm sick and tired. So, knitting of Cirkeltroje will resume when I have some more suitable needles for the job and I'm hoping, when it's finished, it will look a bit like this.


Anyone else knitting this/any of the other knits in Feminin Strik or intending to, might be interested to know that there's now a group on Ravelry called Feminin Strik Knitters.

In the meantime, I'm working on the Rakuten Indigo sweater (details in this post).


The front, above, is finished and I've almost completed the back. I subbed the yarn for Rowan Bamboo Soft so had to calculate for the differences in gauge and I've also added shaping as I wasn't keen on the A-line of the original.