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O'ahu born and Rockville bred, both Maryland and Hawai'i are home. Middle-aged knitter (believe me, my 40 is NOT the new 20) seeking the courage to live consciously, each and every moment. Now if I could just remember where I put my keys...

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Cultural Digressions, Oreneta Tee

Poor Chester.

Not only was this picture taken at the ass-crack of dawn, on a Sunday, but the sweater shows a little too much decolletage.

(When does a Golden finally slow down? When he gets up after you on a Sunday!)

And that pink thing is still going on.

Anyway, proper pictures below. This is a Colinette pattern from the booklet Catalan. The yarn is Giotto, and I have the Sunrise colorway. This is my second of these t-shirts, and it is probably the most functional Giotto pattern for Giotto, after adaptations.

I LOVE Giotto. It's the yarn that got me back into knitting. the colors are like candy, like chocolate, like crack, and the textures you can make when you knit are glorious. The yarn is a like a two-lane road: one side is cotton, and no sheen, the other is rayon and provides sweet little glints of shine in little pebbly stitches and nice long stretches of glow in longer dropped stitches.

But Giotto deserves its own posting. This one is about the pattern "Oreneta" in the Catalan pattern book by Colinette.

I've made this T a couple times and plan on making it a couple times more. The second time I knit it I made the body in the round instead of as two panels, and finished the top front and top back separately.

Reasons I like Oreneta:
  • Pattern is fairly easy to read. I'd say it's a great project immediately upon graduating from scarf or hat school. There's enough detailing to make a pattern reader learn to pay attention while the stitching itself is fairly easy. So if you make a mistake in your counting, it's not totally crazy making to look at the stitches and figure out what you might have done wrong. (Ask me how I know about this...)
  • The finishing is pretty forgiving - the colors of the yarn and texture of the reverse stocking stitch very nicely hide awkward first-time, learning it on your own finishing. I sew the sleeves on using a very simple, very dense version of the satin stitch. (Hate to swatch, hate to finish... but I swear I am getting better and more disciplined at both.)
  • Giotto is easy to care for in THIS pattern - I machine wash, then depending on how much the garment has stretched (and Giotto stretches A LOT), I air-dry flat or on a hanger, OR throw it in the dryer.
OK. I'm late for work but here are a few pictures of the shirt as it looks off of Chester:



and


Detailing around the neck and of a side seam where I sewed on a sleeve - you can barely see the stitching - and I wasn't super anal about it! Nice, huh?

Time to go to work... see ya!

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