Monday, June 04, 2007

Nearly 3 weeks with no update?!?

All right... I guess I haven't had much to update lately.

Working away at the Clapotis (which just enchants me every time I hold it up to view); I think I'm on the 2nd repeat of 6 of the "straight" section. Am toying with the idea of leaving the raveling stitches alone, so I can play with them while I wear the Clapotis.

Nearly done with the Budding Lace on the Swallowtail Shawl, so I'll need to decide soon if I want to do more repeats to make a larger shawl, or to leave the second ball of Misti Alpaca Lace alone and use it for another project, sell it, or give it away.

Finished the felted bowl and it is nice, though hairy (perhaps that's the mohair). Not sure if I posted on this: managed to knit it in circular on two straight needles, inside out! Daisy size 17s (13mm). After contemplating doing a seam, I realized there was another way: I cast on 34 stitches and, joining them in the round(ish), did sl 1 pwise, p1 across. And back. And again and again, only periodically having to fix a mistake (found by reaching up underneath). It made a lovely st st fabric on the inside! I had meant to bind off at the base and pick up stitches with my size 13 dpns (9mm), but feeling to lazy to get up and get them and also relishing a challenge, I dropped & picked up stitches to put two same-side stitches together and periodically did p2tog to decrease, until I had 7 stitches. I pulled the tail through them and voila! a pretty nice little gray bowl.

New project
Mentioned We Call Them Pirates to my niece and nephew on our weekend away, and they were enthusiastic. So I started a hat on 5/30 for my nephew with black as the background but a bright green for the foreground. It is eerie and wonderful! After doing about 17 rows, I tried it on... and found it tight. Checked my gauge, and it was too small: exactly matching KnitPicks' gauge but not OK for Pirates. Unraveled it all, did some math, and re-cast on 144 stitches so I'd get closer to the 21" the pattern predicts. Instead of adding a full repeat of the pattern (32 sts), I repeated the vertical bars twice at the beginning of each of the four repeats (4 more sts, total 16 additional stitches around). Because my row gauge was too small also, I added one more horizontal line and line of pluses at the bottom. I'm already back to where I was and it still looks great. In fact, I'm halfway through the second skull and it's only been 6 days since I started this project. I love quick knits, especially ones that look so cool. The one for my niece will be hideous in red and purple (she will love it).

Pattern: We Call Them Pirates
Yarn: KnitPicks Palette, Green and Black
Needles: Susan Bates Quicksilver in size 3, Silvalume in size 1
Gauge: 7 sts/in, 8 rows/in

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