Rainbow spotting.

Black can be such a dull colour for a little one:

But mixed with rainbow colours:

Neon bright and beautiful:

It makes for a cardi to brighten the rainiest of days:

Yes, finally finished the rainbow bright. This was a pain of a top to work on. I wanted to use up all the jewel like colours in my scrap bag and thought a top for Heather would be a good idea. But how to work the stripes? I didn't want to stripe across and also didn't want to twist lots of colours together so I had the bright (sorry!) idea of working the top sideways in garter stitch rows. So I guessed at the underarm to hip length and began knitting, 2 rows in each colour. I reached the point where I had to cast on for the armhole to shoulder length to come in and couldn't quite get the length I needed. Three times I ripped back before I was happy! And then I was away. I worked the one side and then reversed the stripe combination for the other side. And then I realised I wasn't going to have enough bright yarn to do an allover stripey knit. The solution, after a couple of days deliberating........black! Because I wasn't working the stripes I decided to work this side in plain stocking stitch working from the bottom up to the neck. Much easier to work out the necessary measurements but very boring simple to get on with. I finished off with a black garter stitch edging to the armholes ( I wanted sleeves but was very low on the black by this time), neck and bottom edge. More picking up of stitches for all the edging but much easier than on the last knit, 140sts around the bottom but all in one straight row, no curves to work around this time thankfully.

I did write the pattern for this as I was going along but I really don't think it would be worth sharing as it would need an exact tension due to being worked in two directions. Besides I'm fairly certain I won't be trying it again so I don't think anyone else would ;-)

Technical details:

87g of black DK from the scrap bag

Roughly 15g each of cerise, blue, pink, purple, yellow and aqua DK again from the scrap bag.

Worked on 4mm straight needles.

This took about 11 hours in total over the past week.

The idea came during that hazy period before finally succumbing to sleep.

So it's onwards and emptywards with the scrap bag. I can fasten the zip now without having to push down on it, so it's gradually going down. This is it tipped over the floor earlier whilst I rummaged for a scrap of black to finish the seams on the cardi:

 

Thinking cap back on whilst I decide what next can magically appear from the bits that no-one in their right mind would want.

And tomorrow I might even have a rummage through the yarn stash proper and maybe plan a few gift knits. Or failing that at least share a glimpse of what marvels are hiding in there.......

-x-