Let's Knit Magazine - Your knitting, your style

Hi
I’m hoping someone out there is knitting the Mimi Short and Sweet cropped jacket from the last issue (issue 7)of Let’s Knit.

I’ve bought the yarns recommended in the pattern and have been doing tension swatches as I’m coming back to knitting after many years.  I used to knit quite loosely and so am puzzled to find that I’m having to try a size 5.5mm needle when size 4.5mm is recommended. However the swatch in 5.5 is very loose and I can’t believe it’ll be right.  What am I doing wrong?  I’m wondering If anyone else is knitting this can you let me know how you’re getting on if you’ve used the yarn recommended and what size needles you’ve ended up using.

Sorry to be so longwinded for a first post!

Ruby

Hi Rubydooby, welcome to the forum. There are a few ladies who are/have knitted this so hold tight I’m sure they will be along soon to help you out. Sorry I can’t advise but I haven’t knitted it (yet).

I think Suse is knitting it,she may be able to help,sorry i cant.

Can’t help but WELCOME anyway.
Janet has made it but she is away for a few days. She changed the yarn but not sure what she used instead but SOMEWHERE on t’forum is a piccie. If you look on the thread for Tuesday 17th June I think it is there. If not try WED 18th.

AM HERE !!!!  I changed the yarn to Debbie Bliss wool, and increased the needles size as the pattern says to use 2 strands, mmm wish you could see the previous q & a I forgot what you were asking lol xJanet

I did run out of wool so adapted the pattern, but as I didn’t use the yarn recommended can’t really understand why it isn’t working out, x Janet

And hello lol x Janet

Hi Ruby,
I’ve nearly finished Mimi (just one more pocket to attach! Yay!).  I used 2 strands of the recommended yarn and the recommended sized needles throughout and it’s worked out ok - all the measurements are the same as in the pattern.  Although I didn’t do a tension swatch (naughty me!) so there may be a mistake in that??  Also I have noticed that it says 6 balls of each for a size 14 and I only ended up using 4 and 1/2.
hope that makes sense, I don’t feel I have enough experience to start giving advice so please feel free to ignore me! 

Jess x

like your Mimi jacket Janet, mines in purple and lilac. Sometimes its best to adjust the needle size by only 0.25mm to get the swatch right.

Hi

Thanks to Jess, Susan, Jane, Gill, Cheryl and Nicky for their suggestions, help and support!

Yesterday I tried gently ironing my swatches under a damp cloth to see if that made any difference and the 5.00mm needle one seemed the best at 19 stitches to 10cm rather than the 18 sitches stated in the magazine.  However the work does look looser than what I can see from the pictures of Susan and Janet’s work.

Jess, I think that you’re right that there may be a mistake in their gauge, particularly as you’ve used the yarn and needles they suggested and it’s worked out OK.  So what I think I might do is go with .25mm up as Susan suggested just to be on the safe side which will compensate for any slight tendency there might be for me knitting tighter than I used to.  I know that trying a swatch is recommended but just looking at my 5.00mm swatch I can see that it’s way too loose so I’m going to go with the advice of you ladies that have knit it rather than the instructions in the mag.  The worst that can happen is that I’ll have to unravel and start again.

It was really good to see how Susan’s jacket is knitting up and I was further spurred into action seeing Janet’s finished article!

Thanks to everyone for their help.  It’s lovely to get such a friendly welcome .

I’ll let you all know how I get on.

PS How do you go about getting those cartoon pictures next to your usernames?

You go into your control panel and edit your signature strip. You can keep it simple with the smileys and colours etc provided or copy and paste stuff from elsewhere on the net. The pics/icons etc on the lefthand side of the posts are avatars and you can download anything you have saved to your pc though you may have to shrink it first for it to fit. Hope that helps.

janick123 - 20 June 2008 05:43 PM

I did run out of wool so adapted the pattern, but as I didn’t use the yarn recommended can’t really understand why it isn’t working out, x Janet

Thats lovely Janet.

Yours is lovely as well suse,i think i may do one later on.

Hi Nicky
Thanks for info on how to attach a picture. I’ve tried lots of times now and each time it says that I’m using the wrong type of file (despite the fact that I’m using one of the types that they specify).  Never mind - one day I might work out what’s going wrong!:-S
rubydooby