Sunday, September 18, 2011

A Smaller Girasole


One of the lace knit-a-longs that Oogy and I have done this year is the shawl Girasole, a pattern by Jared Flood.  Hers is the larger, blanket version, while mine is the smaller, shawl version, made with Knit Picks Palette in Iris Heather.  I was so happy to find a use for that yarn, which has been languishing in the stash for years, with multiple false starts in other projects.  I was so dismayed when I ran out of yarn about 2/3 around the border.  Luckily, the additional skeins of Iris Heather I purchased were a perfect match.  When does that ever happen?

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Purple Pain

I've been thinking a lot about the experience my friends are having as they learn to knit.  They've gone into the endeavor with the idea that it looks impossible, only to learn that it's really quite easy, at first.  Then things get complicated, like when extra stitches appear, or the yarn begins to shed.  It turns out that knitting is really very complicated, and even with 25 years of experience, mistakes happen.  These thoughts came to me as I was tearing out the Lutz and Patmos cardigan that I made from a pattern in the Early Fall 2010 issue of Vogue Knitting.  I used a different yarn, but the huge dimensions were as directed in the pattern.  The problem was that such a sweater is not meant for a larger person, with it's chunky yarn and big cables. Cables every inch!  I've had it sitting in the closet for a year now, so today was the day it got dismantled.
 It looks so nice, laid out on the floor.  I actually tried it on again, thinking maybe it would be OK, but no, it still looked like a big robe.
 Brownie, ever the helper.
I have vague plans to use the yarn to make a simple (no cables) V-neck sweater, with a matching scarf.