It Takes Two

Have you noticed that Berroco has several different lines of yarn that come in matching colors but different weights? There are 2 weights of Blackstone Tweed, 2 of Pure Merino, 2 of Vintage, 3 of Comfort, and 3 of Ultra Alpaca. As it so happens, 2 of my favorite patterns from them this season use a mixture of weights: Wulfenite and Baudelaire. That is pretty clever of Berroco because that makes it much harder to find yarn subs if you need to!

My LYS doesn't carry the Blackstone Tweed or Blackstone Tweed Chunky that's required for Baudelaire. Even if they did, the yarn contains mohair and angora, and I've found that I am sometimes sensitive to those fibers, no matter how soft they feel on the ball. Luckily, though, I already had some Berroco Remix from my daughter's dress, and I realized that if I doubled up on it, I could get very close to gauge for the chunky yarn. Yay!

I've had sooo much fun knitting this pattern. The main body knits up pretty quickly in chunky weight. There are so many fun design details to keep your interest along the way. So neat!

Here she is, then: my finished Baudelaire.



I have lots more pics and details on mods on Ravelry.

Waiting Game

I have finally been able to get enough buttons to finish Baudelaire. I had already picked out the ones I wanted, by my fabric store only had 2 button cards, and I needed a 3rd one. I kept checking back every week, and finally, I was able to get them from a different location.


And look! Something else I've been waiting on arrived...


I'll have some updates to post soon, so stay tuned. (Yes, you have to wait too)

Not a Total Loss

I went to my knitting group last night and was so scattered! First of all, I was supposed to be starting the first sleeve for Baudelaire, but I left my pattern booklet at home and hadn't brought any other projects to work on. I decided I'd call home and have someone read the directions to me, but then I couldn't find my phone at first. Turns out I had put it in my knitting bag instead of my purse. After that problem was solved, I got my daughter to read me a few lines, and then she emailed me some more directions. I cast on for the sleeve and halfway through the evening, I realized it looked small. No wonder! I hadn't put on my size 10-1/2 needle tips and was still using 7s! Okay, so then I started over with the right sized needles. It still seemed small, but I checked my gauge and it was fine, and of course I couldn't refer to the diagrams.

When I got back home, realized that I cast on the wrong number of stitches! I just plain miscounted. So all I had to show for an evening's worth of knitting was



a big pile of yarn.

Oh well. At least there was good company and good conversation! :-)

Accidentally on Purpose

I'm working on another great pattern from Berroco's Cirilia Rose, formerly of Skrilla Knits (I used to love her blog). It's called Baudelaire. There are all these fun ruffle details, and I had the idea of highlighting them with a contrast color. I'm using the Remix yarn again, the same one I used for Simo, so I had originally planned on using the leftover red yarn from the scarf as the contrast color.

However, when I needed something to make my provisional cast-on for the sleeves on Simo, the bits of scrap yarn I had in bag were some orange GGH Bel Air I had left over from several other projects. I liked the resulting color combination so much that I decided to use it!