Leftovers

I really enjoy making things out of balls of yarn left over from other projects – it seems such a bargain, like getting two things for the price of one. I had about 120g of  Colourmart angora/lambwool yarn left over from the shell stitch wrap around cardigan , which I was thinking of using doubled to make a hat, until I rediscovered this pattern.

I had seen it before on knit on the net, and quite liked it, but it was difficult to know how it would actually fit (as you can see the model in the picture has her hands up to her ears at all times!) – I actually saw the finished  article at the UK Stitch ‘n’ Bitch event, and liked it even more in real life. The orginal uses cotton, but I think the angora/wool blend with make a lovely soft and light garment.
Talking of colourmart yarn, I received the olive cashmere yarn (to make another
top down round yoke cardigan )
yesterday – the colour is actually nicer than it looks on their website and it is quite a bit finer than the alpaca yarn I used for the orginal. This doesn’t actually matter as it is really easy to change the gauge using the knitware program. I have had quite a few requests to write up the pattern. I am slightly reluctant to do this as I think the nice thing about the cardigan is the fit and the drape, which I couldn’t guarantee in different sizes using substitute yarn. I think it is really important to work with the yarn, and find a hook size that gives a nice drape in the stitch pattern, and work with this, rather than trying to fit the yarn to a predetermined gauge. I have been thinking about posting a tutorial on how to make the same garment using knitware software (there is a free working demo) e.g. using the stitch pattern,shaping options and modifications that I used, but using individual gauge and size data. Any comments?