Summer Jacket, almost done

Without buttons, my latest project pinned shut for a photograph

Since summer kind of came out of nowhere it’s now too hot to do much that doesn’t involve cotton, or linen, or I don’t know what that doesn’t make my hands all horrible and sweaty. It’s made worse by the fact my flat is in the roof, therefore gets all the heat. Gah. Currently because it’s too hot to knit I’m making a dinosaur, with acrylic yarn, God help me. This wasn’t a wise decision. After I’d been burgled I couldn’t find my knitting, so I kinda bought this by justifying that if I couldn’t knit I’d drive my roomie crazy.

My balls are ready to go!

Sadly I can’t wear my pretty scarf like creations, or hats, or much, I need to knit myself a summer shawl. But time, and money, and excuses! Instead I made a stunning jacket out of DMC natura just cotton. It came from a lovely wee shop not too far from where I live, but when you think of the size and transport system of Paris, nothing is too far from home. It’s called Une maille à l’endroit which translates to A knitted stitch and seemed kinda cute. They do classes and have a lovely selection of French based yarns, although a little limited, and some very nice needles and buttons. They only had a few colours of the DMC natura and it exists in so many shades.

While I was laying it out to get a few previews. Five colours worked great!

While I was still working on sewing in the ends. That was long and I’m not a fan of seaming, it’s evil.

It’s a 50g ball with 155m designed to be knitted as 4ply on 2.5-3.5 needles, machine washable and loosely spun. I used about five half balls on this jacket in the shades Prussian, Prune, Passion, Giroflee and Chartreuse. I found that this yarn went further than I expected as I was worried I’d have to buy more. I also bought some buttons in a sachet, but I don’t like to because it always works out more expensive. There wasn’t an orange in stock so I had a five colour rainbow to work with.

I worked this on my amazing Knit Pro interchangeable cable needles even though it was all worked flat. I used 4mm to make a loose summer fabric.

A close up of my lovely buttons. I love toggles, so vintage.

I fished out a pattern from January 2015 Simply Knitting with a child’s jacket, I can’t find the pattern on Ravelry, but it was a basic enough hoodie that I tweaked to do what I wanted. And I got a pretty good end result, although I should have just worked the whole thing in garter stitch, because the pattern was a pain in the ass, simple, but annoying enough that if you balls up it’s obvious. I balls up a lot at the moment with the dog to watch, he even pulled a sleeve off my needles while I was knitting it, but that’s another post for another time. I’d rather have worked it in moss or garter stitch. Anyway, I like how this turned out. I’ve got a few more ends to hook in and then those dreaded photos to take, but soon it’ll be up here in all it’s glory.

Sewing on the buttons, it was a long day but wasn’t too bad, the jacket looked great afterwards.

One last thing, I love how this fabric drapes and flows, for a cotton it’s very loose, very liquid. For a cotton mind. It flops I guess would be a better description.