Case in point: The new love of my life, Lelah. I'm determined to make this out of some of the yarn I bought at the All Yarn No Football party at Unwind in Burbank (50% off the back room, 30% off the front. It was beautiful). So I sat down and swatched, maybe not as thoroughly as I should have, but I obtained gauge and decided to start my top. (Using Blue Sky Alpaca Cotton in a dark khaki green, if you're interested) Two abbreviated nights of knitting and 8 rows later, I realized I had twisted the stitched when I joined. *sigh* Isn't that rookie mistake? Shouldn't I be over that by now? Oh well, so I frogged it and began again. Only then I realized "Wait a sec! I bought two skiens of the dark green, not three! This patterns requires three! What was I thinking?" So now that we've established that I'm a moron, I decided to use my Lamb's Pride Cotton Fleece in Sedona Red instead. After swatching with that (with a little Hercules therapy in the background to calm me down) I
realized I liked the bulkiness of the green cotton more. *sigh* So my current plan is to hit up Unwind sometime this week and hope they still have some of that dyelot left.Another resolution is coming along nicely - "Learn fair-isle." On the left you can see my sample swatch for my Endpaper Mitts. I'm very pleased with how it turned out - ignore the bottom few rows, because that's where I was figuring it all out. I've figured out a rudimentary way to knit with yarn in both hands, though I have to confess this swatch took me an entire hour to do. This doesn't leave me
filled with much hope as far as finishing the darn mitts goes. A part of me wonders if I should just hold off until I get better at not just fair-isle, but also knitting with such tiny (fingering weight) yarn on such tiny (size 3) needles. I'm a bulky/worsted weight kinda gal. On the right you can see the K1P1 ribbing that I'm supposed to do for 18 rows. Excuse me while I peel myself off the floor from the shock. I'm thinking of changing it to a K2P2 or something just so I don't lose my mind. I ended up doing those few rows with the wrong needle size, which explained why it wouldn't fit over my hand. So, right now my endpaper mitts are merely a swatch and a dream, to be resumed shortly ;)
1 comment:
i'm really loving your endpaper mitts. i like the color combination a lot. i've seen some out there (maybe even the one on the site, i can't remember) that just make me wonder what made that person put those colors together. garish. but yours is pretty and reminds me of trees. trees are good. :)
i'm anxious to see a swatch of the lelah, mostly because it's green and i love green and i want to know how the cotton knits up. i'm thinking of using more cotton for my knits, since i do live in florida and cotton usually isn't gathered by cruel means. :) the thing is, i buy all my yarn at box stores (or online if i've used it before and trust the color/texture or the person recommending it) so most of my yarn is rather low-quality (a.c. moore has surprised me, though). where do you buy online? i'd go to my (one and only) lys, but a) the women are cranky and menopausal; and b) i'd rather pay the s&h than the store mark-up.
any chance of a pic or two of your gypsy scarf? i'm intrigued!
Post a Comment