The knitting bug has bit me again. It’s been a few months since I’ve done any knitting, but I’m back! Last week I finally got around to doing a project I’ve had in mind (and had the yarn for) for months: I made a little recycled sari silk poncho for my daughter. I think it’s about the right weight for spring or for warmer fall days.
This is the yarn I used. I just love the wild mix of bright jewel tones. I love even more how this yarn is made. The yarn is spun from the scraps produced by sari silk fabric mills. These scraps would otherwise have gone to waste, and what a shame to waste something as precious as silk! It is a fair trade product which is hand spun in dignified working conditions. The version I’ve used, the “unrefined” version, is rather scrappy and very, very soft.
At the critical moment, I couldn’t find my yarn needle so I improvised as only a wire wrapper would:
Perhaps this is no surprise, as I also use my knitting needles when I’m making my jewelry! If you’ve ever wondered how I make the tiny coils on my coiled beads, I will now reveal my secret: size 1 knitting needles!
This is a great project for new knitters. Here are the instructions. (It is so simple that I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it a pattern!) I made this for my two year old daughter, but it is free sized and I expect that she’ll wear it for several years. It could be knit to any size desired by continuing on with the process, but I’ve not calculated how much yarn would be required for that. For this size (about 24″ across the top), I used two 200 gram skeins with a little left over. Be careful when buying this yarn. It is sometimes sold in 200 gram skeins, sometimes in 100 gram skeins, so make sure you check the weight, not just the number of skeins.
I knit at a gauge of 3.5 stitches per inch on 14″ size 10 US straight needles. There is no need to make a gauge swatch for this project. Just start knitting, and if your gauge doesn’t match adjust the number of rows you knit. (If you want to make the same size that I did, count the number of stitches including partial stitches over exactly four inches, divide by 4, and multiply this number by 24).
Cast on three stitches.
Knit across once.
On the next row and every following row, increase 1 by knitting into the front and back of the first stitch, knit across, and increase 1 by knitting into the front and back of the last stitch.
Continue increasing in this way until you have 84 stitches on the needle (or the number you need according to your calculation), then bind off.
Make another piece the same as the first.
Sew the pieces across the top from each end, leaving an opening in the middle for the neck. For a 24″ poncho the opening should be about 5″ across.
