Kauni Disaster Averted

Something really annoying happened with the Kauni yarn. I was knitting along with Strand 1 going red, orange, yellow, green, blue and it turned back into blue, green, yellow and was beginning to be orange. I hadn't encountered a knot, so it must have been spliced quite well. And going backward? Does that mean the yarn is twisted the other way?

The yellow was turning into orange at about the same time as the other yarn was turning from red to orange, so I was going to be knitting the Zilboorg pattern (page 34) with two strands of yarn the same shade. Very Zen, don't you think?

I got sort of apoplectic for a while, I mean I could have handled an abrupt change of colour with a great big knot because I would have seen that and dealt with it before I'd knitted another 20 rows of pattern, but having this sneak up on me was a bit much.

However, I eventually decided to be philosophical about it - in the Alan Bennett way; 'Be philosophical about it, don't give it another thought!' I cut the yarn and pulled the other end from the centre of the ball, tied a great big knot in it, and carried on.

I've decided it was actually a blessing in disguise because it will give me more colour combinations. In fact, I could do it deliberately after this pattern. Here we have yellow and blue together, which wouldn't have happened if the colours had continued correctly, and which is agreeably Monet-ish. And since then it's turned blue and orange, like blue corn chips and regular corn chips. Mmm, crispy snacks.

Another Zilboorg Pattern in Kauni

You haven't seen Kauni for a while. I finished the rows of little hearts and started another Zilboorg pattern. It's on page 34 and it's called 'Turcoman's Earring'. When I first started it, I couldn't understand why it didn't look like the sock in the book, until I worked out that she had reversed the light and dark yarns between the photo and the chart. She recommends that you try the patterns both ways as you get very different effects and I was looking to forward to the rainbow yarn doing that for me, but I had forgotten that momentarily.
There are no rows with long carry-overs, the occasional one with five stitches, where I choose to do a carry-over with the middle stitch, but nothing more than that. It's quite extraordinary the variety of forms and the elegance that she achieves with such simple variations.

If you think you can see a mistake in the above photo, it isn't. There is a Major Mistake, but you can't see it here; what you can see here is where the number of stitches in the pattern (14) doesn't go into the number of stitches in the row (240). I chose 240 because it would accommodate patterns of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 12, but I didn't think of 14. So at the end of the row (indicated by the large jadeite heart marker) there's a sort of coggle. Since this a sampler cushion, I am allowed to do that. I must remember not to photograph that bit again, but I tend to stop-n-snap at the end of a row.

Then, I had a problem. I'll do separate post about that.

Spring Vegetables

I'm doing another pattern from Fancy Feet with the Kauni. I've got past the length of maroon yarn, thank goodness. It's really one of my least favourite colours, maroon /burgundy. I'm only happy to see it in a bottle or a glass.
I'm knitting orange and green now; the orange is real carrot and the green is young and fresh so it's like knitting with the diced vegetables for Spring Vegetable Soup - three carrot and one celery, three carrot and one celery...
I'm doing this with a 4mm bamboo circular. I tried 3mm, the recommended size, and 3.5mm, but they both came up very tight. I expect this yarn to bloom and soften quite a lot when it's washed for blocking so I thought it best to come up to 4mm. I even swatched with 4.5mm, but came back down to this.

I promised to photograph a swatch of the Malabrigo, but the weather has been so grey that it hasn't seemed worth it. The sky is much the same colour as the yarn, but without the depth and shifting shades. I've been poring over the patterns for the Rib Warmer, and peering at other people's, but I still foresee a lot of ripping out in my immediate future. I'm going to have to size it up to accommodate my bazooms, but I have narrow shoulders so I will have to be careful not to make it too wide at the straps.

I think this may be one of those patterns that one has to work through, only to arrive at the end and say, 'Oh, I see!' and tear the whole thing out and do it again properly.
These are 6mm needles in a lavender blue plastic, which I bought because I liked the colour. I find it very difficult to knit with long needles now, as clamping the right one under my arm brings it far too close for me to see properly unless I take my glasses off. I find it a bit uncomfortable to hold them on my lap, but I had better get used to it or I'll have to give away all my long needles.

Ah, the wonders of youth, when one could knit and watch the television at the same time without waggling one's head about behind a few-hundred-pounds'-worth of spectacles.

Kauni Continued

I've done a few more bands of this pattern. When you first look at it you see the dark birds flying to the left, but if you let your eyes unfocus, you'll see the light birds flying to the right. Or at least I do.
I can't decide whether to do any more of this design, or whether to start another one.
I'm not the only blogger to hit upon the combination of Kauni and Anna Zilboorg's Fancy Feet: String Theory has done it too and is making a wonderful Turkish cardigan.

Kauni Started

I bet you thought I'd stuffed the Kauni down the back of the couch because I couldn't decide on the first pattern row. Well, I didn't. I did spend a long time trying to decide where to start the two yarns, which colours I wanted to line up with one another. This is my notebook with ROYGBIV lined up in a variety of ways: did I want Green with Blue, even if it meant also having Yellow with Indigo?

I looked at quite a lot of Kauni cardigans on the web too, but decided that the lighting and the photographs introduced too many variables and I eventually just decided to get started.

A friend recently lent me her copy of Anna Zilboorg's Fancy Feet, which has a lot of two-colour patterns which she recommends you try with the colours reversed, so I've started with one of those - no. 17, Heart Crook. It's a sort of sideways-Rorshach or Escher pattern, where the colours mirror one another. I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this but it will become clearer the next time I photograph it.

I keep the balls of yarn in plastic bags (a.k.a. 'yarn holders') marked '1' and '2', so that I will be able to keep track of what I'm doing once the colours change, but I expect I will get muddled anyway.

I had two rows of one colour while I was watching a film the other night, and I skated past the end-of-row marker and have got to take it back a bit now. I was watching Broken Trail, which I rented before it won all the Emmys but hadn't actually watched. I'm not usually a Western fan, but in my snotty way thought this one might be worth watching for its historical value which it is. Robert Duvall is always excellent and it was good to see Thomas Haden Church in something so different from Sideways. The women looked real, which is something of a novelty for a Hollywood production - well, Greta Scacchi's teeth were far too good, but I'm prepared to overlook that.

The autumnal cotton from the mystical yarn company has never turned up; I'm fairly sure this is Royal Mail's fault as there are a few other things which have evaporated, including a parcel that they left me a postcard for but are now unable to lay their hands on. I can't decide whether to get some more autumnal cotton from somewhere, or just wait until the babe is born and knit a BSJ in boy or girl shades. After all, the mother-to-be doesn't know I was planning to knit a coat to go with the Pumpkin Hat, so she won't miss it. And I had better write a cross letter to Royal Mail, which I know is a waste of time but one has to make a stand. Their Customer Service section writes the most amazingly unhelpful letters; they should really be called the Customer Disservice section.