Citron

Pattern: Citron by Hilary Smith Callis
Yarn: Wolle’s Color Changing Cotton in Mellow II
Needles: US 6 – 4.0 mm
Ravelry Link: Click Here

This is the present I gave to my mom for her birthday! I always said I’d probably never make a Citron because stockinette is SO BORING, but using a gradient yarn makes it more interesting to make, and I knew when I saw this color that my mom would totally love it.

The yarn is a bit of a pain to knit with. It’s made with four separate plies of cotton that aren’t twisted together at all, and the color changes are made by switching out one ply at a time with the new color. The plies are knotted together and the knots are really small, so they just blend in with the work.

As long as you use a really sharp metal needle, the splitting can be managed, but you still have to keep watch for dropped plies so you can tink down a bit and pick them back up. I wouldn’t use this for a true lace project, though. It’d be harder to fix the split plies.

I was surprised at how well this yarn blocked, too. You can see the difference pretty good in the gallery below. I didn’t think cotton blocked well, but apparently good-quality thin cotton will behave. :)

I didn’t have quite enough yarn to finish this project even though the yardage should have been more than enough. Apparently the cotton works up differently and I ended up a few rows short. I used as much yarn as I could in the last ruffle, and then used the yarnless crochet bind off to finish since it didn’t have to be stretchy.

Go to Tami’s Amis to see what other people finished this week!