shrug

Today I put the knitting away. Tucked away for when the colder weather returns. I also wanted to share this shrug I finished. It's a simple rectangle design that I saw in the winter edition of Cotton Friend magazine.

The best bit is that it does a bit of a transformer depending on how you button it up. You button it up along a seam to make sleeves. (the mister wanted to know if I "was planning to finish the rest later" because it's quite short on the back) Or you can button it up in front to make a shawl - and while I have not worn shawl before, I really like this version.

I used some soft nobbly yarn found on one of my thrifting expedition. It is part wool, part acrylic. The dimensions of the rectangle are about 120 cm by 40 cm. I really could have done with one more ball of wool.

Then buttons were added either side. You need to put the rows of buttons on opposite sides if you want to use it as a shawl too.(I did not put in button holes as the buttons can fit through the knitting) To work out how far the buttons should go, just measure from the cuff to the armpit. My row of buttons goes up about 30cm.

Pretty straight forward and quick if you want to squeeze in another knitting project before it really warms up.
edit: The yarn I used recommended a needle size of 6mm, so I stuck with that. As I need to make it 40 cm wide, I did a small test patch and worked out that casting on 15 stitches made a 10cm patch, this meant that to get a width of 40cm I had to multiply 15 x 4 and this meant I cast on 60 stitches and then I kept knitting until the length was 120cm.  My knitting skills are very much beginner's level and I had to guess a lot from the Japanese magazine so I  hope that these instructions are some help for  you Angelique :)