Weekends are meant for not sitting at the computer all the time and working with my hands in other ways besides typing. At least for a few more weeks...then my weekends are shaped around the question "how many pages do I need to read before next Wednesday (Friday)?" Which happens to be the night that both of my classes are on, and 48 hours later the lecture videos will be up and I really have to have it done by.
But this past weekend I spent doing some leisurely reading both of a book and going through stitch dictionaries but not before I completed the next pair of socks for M's daughter!
I swear these are like popping your favorite gummy candy (spearmint leaves or orange slices in my case), one is just not enough! The yarn is actually from her M's dye pot. A color she had made for me for my birthday a few years ago and I had enough left over from a project to be able to use them for C's second pair of socks this year. There's just enough left over for lengthening the toes when needed. The pattern is Grow With Me Ravelry link. After her funky bright colored pair that I did first this year I thought she might like a pretty purple pair... I will be returning to the pattern again later in the fall when I make her brother's socks, but for now I'm taking a break from wee sock knitting. Although I am hoping I can get those Karira socks cast on today! I'm about halfway through the book for the KAL, so now I need to catchup on these socks!
Once I finished those socks up I pulled out the stitch dictionaries...the pattern I had wanted to use for another quick knit baby blanket wasn't working up in the yarns I had chosen.
The pattern I chose was a nice easy lace pattern, one that would be easy for memorization, look nice for a baby blanket and held just enough design interest to not get too mind numbing while crunching the numbers. My first swatch was in a cotton/angora worsted weight blend. While i could see the pattern it felt bulky in my hand and the decreases felt bulky. Wasn't making me happy. So I pulled out some DK weight dyed yarn. As you can see it got wrapped back up. I didn't even get past a few rows the pattern in the swatch before I could see that the variation in the hand dye was not going to work for this type of pattern. The loft was right, lighter, bouncier, but the coloring wasn't going to do it.
While the pictures aren't here, I went through several other yarns and yarn weights to see if I could find something that made me happy. Some yarn was slightly abused over the weekend in the form of being flung back into the yarn room where I couldn't see it. When I went in there this morning I picked them up and put them back on their shelf...letting them know it wasn't them, it was the pattern/me.
But after my lil yarn temper tantrum and a break with a few episodes of Le Femme Nikita on Netflix and letting my mind wander while I worked on another project that doesn't require brain processing power the light bulb went off.
Well what if I used....
which is a nice firmly twisted yarn, a DK weight which is perfect for baby gifts and the heathered look will give a nice stitch definition as well.
So I tried again the pattern I had originally in mind. While the stitches looked much better, I still wasn't happy with what I was seeing. I came to the conclusion that particular stitch pattern just wasn't going to work in a heavier weight yarn for me. So I grabbed the dictionaries again to see what else I had marked up.
Hmm, there are lots of stickies in here, some for later, some for rambling thoughts, ....now this one caught my eye and I liked the undulating wave the stitch caused in the fabric.
Sweet! (that's another 's' for your collection)
Posted by: Stu | August 10, 2010 at 09:08 AM