I did block the Scarf, p. 80, from Victorian Lace Today, but I will have to wait for decent light to photograph that and I have something else to show you. I finally cracked yesterday and ordered some Kauni rainbow yarn from Jannette on eBay. My excuse was that since I was buying ball of Jaeger cotton to knit a Pumpkin Hat for a baby that's due on Hallowe'en, that cost a little over £2, I might as well spend nearly £17 on some Kauni. That figures, doesn't it?
The yarn arrived this morning and I have been swatching feverishly most of the day. I started on 3mm needles, which seems to be the usual, but went up to 3.5mm and then 4mm because it seemed to be quite dense. It will presumably bloom quite a lot when it's washed, and the 4mm needles get a good effect. I wonder if I should try 4.5mm. It's very tempting to tear ahead, but there's no point in being annoyed half way through because it's not what I want. I did the swatch backwards and forwards and the actual knitting will be in the round, which I assume will be tighter, so maybe 4.5 is worth trying.
I'm not going to make a sweater for myself. I'm going to make one for the great-niece, who is still tiny enough that one can rustle something up relatively quickly. I was thinking of a sweater, but she would get more use out of a cardigan, wouldn't she? And it would give me an opportunity to steek.
I decided to break away from the box pattern that the famous Kauni Cardi is in; it's good but I've seen a lot of it and I would like to go for a more varied effect. I sat last night, before the yarn arrived, with some graph paper and my copy of Mary Smith and Maggie Twatt's 'Shetland Pattern Book', copying out patterns. It's a brilliant collection, and I find the fact of copying the patterns out a) makes them easier to follow, and b) gives me an idea of how tricky they might be to do.
I don't want to do the same pattern throughout; I would rather use bands of different stitches as Fair Isle does.
Something with curves might be interesting too. I have a copy of Solveig Hisdal's 'Poetry in Stitches', so I'm considering some of those. She's Norwegian and the yarn is Danish so something from that part of the world would be fitting.
You can see where this is going, can't you? Total indecision strikes again.
5 comments:
I couldn't find an email address for you, but in response to your comment on my blog, thank you. That meant a lot.
Now then. I have been happily able to resist Kauni because I don't want to do the boxy check thing that everyone is doing... and I managed to persuade myself (sometimes I'm known as "she who can't knit a pattern w/o changing it") that the yarn wouldn't work for anything else. It was a defensive little fiction.
You've ruined it for me!
Now I'm all thinking about what fun I could have with that yarn if I worked up my own pattern.
Seems fitting, I suppose, for someone who shares my name to remind me of the way I knit.
I love your colour choices for this! Very striking...
Re. indecision: we all suffer from it from time to time, I think. I have very luckily received lots of yarn on swop recently, which has thrown me into a complete tizzy about which projects to do now. DH tells me I'm wandering around like a fart in a trance.
Your writing style is great. Thanks for your comment on the Montego Bay scarf on my blog... it is a wonderful project for that "just one skein" and I highly recommend it for using yours up. Seems like one of the best ways to get maximum use from the 400 metres of sea silk. I have two half-skeins and had thought about a top but don't think it would work out.
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