Sunday, December 18, 2011

Slinky Sleeves #Knit Arm Warmers from Vogue Knitting

One of the members of my knitting group found an amazing store called Fil, which is in Colonia Roma, Mexico City, D.F.  I was glad to have found a Mexican yarn store dedicated to mostly natural fibers from Mexico and Latin America.  I may dedicate an entire post to the store later, but right now I wanted to share a finished object made from beautiful yarn I found there. 

The Yarn: Lanai by TM Imports.  It's 100% wool and to my eye it looks like an aran to bulky weight yarn.  It's a beautiful, variegated, single ply yarn with long color repeats between raspberry, wine, light denim, and olive.  I found the yarn to be beautiful to work with and it produced a very pleasing product.



The Pattern: #21 Arm Warmers  by Twinkle.  Published in the 2011 Holiday Collector's Issue of Vogue Knitting.  (In case you are wondering, I haven't gotten tired of Vogue Knitting yet.  I hear they are coming out with a crochet issue soon!  Be still, my heart!)  The pattern is considered to be intermediate difficulty, but I didn't find it to be hard at all and I am DEFINITELY NOT an intermediate knitter.  I think the thumb hole is the reason that it rates so high.  But that's only 2 difficult stitches in each piece.  Not too bad!

Needles: Cheapo plastic 8mm knitting needles purchased from Telas Parisina.  Totally affordable and perfect for this project.  They are kind of long needles, though.

Time: About a week.  All told, this project could be completed in an evening.  I was going pretty slowly and I couldn't knit this in the car.

Tips: I wrote out the pattern repeats on a scrap paper and crossed off each row as I went along.  This allowed me to stay on track with the lace pattern, increases, and decreases.