I’m in the process of knitting a variation on Colinette’s Madelene pattern. It’s in the Parisienne book, but I’m knitting it with Banyan instead. I succumbed to a bargain lot of Banyan on Ebay, and I quite fancied a loosely-knitted cotton jumper for the summer. The colourway is Neptune.
This is the back, and it feels as though it’s taken forever to knit. It’s actually worked up quite quickly, as every fourth row is knitted on a 10mm needle, but it’s garter stitch so it’s incredibly boring to work on. It’s also hurting my hands quite a bit, so I’m not spending as much time on it as I’d like to.
I don’t know why this particular project should be hurting my hands so much. Perhaps because the yarn doesn’t stretch and give. Perhaps because it’s heavy. Perhaps using the different sized needles is awkward – that certainly makes for slower knitting. Perhaps it’s because all I’m doing is knit, knit, knit, without the variation for my hands of purling every alternate row.
It’s a shame, as I really like the way this fabric is knitting up, and I’m really looking forward to wearing the jumper. I had been thinking of making some more, perhaps in some of the Cadenza colourways, but I don’t think that’s going to be a very clever idea.
Perhaps I’ll go back to my 1980s Patons “Odpins” book. All of the patterns in there are knitted with various combinations of large and small needles. I must be able to work out something similar which isn’t going to be so hard on my hands.