Five Hundred and Eighty Three

No, this is not a length of yarny intestine.  It's a 60" circular needle, with my Butterflies scarf in progress.  Sexy, no?  

There are 583 stitches in every round.  I'll wait while you consider that. 5.8.3. Possibly the biggest round of knitting I've ever made.  And you know what?  I twisted it when I made the join.  Not that I could tell that until I'd already knit 2 inches of butterflies.  

But of course, this is not the big deal it might seem to be.  I'm going to cut the thing open at the end, so all I have to do is try not to think about it and keep knitting until it's time to make the cut.  

Try not to think about it (there's a twist in my round) while I'm grocery shopping.  Try not to think about it (there's a twist in my round) while I'm picking up the kids.  Try not to think about it (there's a twist in my round) while I'm gold-leafing the Thanksgiving cornucopia.  So far, It's working out great.  I predict this will be the fastest knit of my career, because knowing there's a twist in my round is causing me a fair degree of discomfort, and the only cure will be to get done knitting and cut the sucker.

And in the meantime, I'm stopping often to admire my work.

This is the marriage of pattern and yarn I was looking for, and I'm so glad I pressed on after my first false start.  

Thought for Today:  There are people in my house who actually think they know what it means when I say "As soon as I get to the end of this round..."  Ha ha.

I Still Have some Thursday Stuck to my Shoe

O, what a strange week this has been.  On Monday I had everything figured out, and every day thereafter, I got a little bit Wrong-Er.  

I briefly posted an actual jpg of my Butterflies chart without even thinking about the fact that anybody could just knit right from it.  I don't want to sound un-generous, but it's hard enough to make a living as a knitter without accidentally giving away the store.  I realized I had shot myself in the foot and took down the chart.  But not before I got several gracious thank you notes for posting the "free pattern".  It WAS my mistake entirely, so if you managed to save a copy of the chart before I removed it, good on you.  Just please do me a favor and don't sell it or share it.

And then there was yesterday's bizarre re-sending of a post from July (yeah - I got that too - FeedBurner must have really liked that one?) to all my subscribers.  Sorry to spam you with old news; I have no idea why that happened.

But the biggest Wrong Thing I did this week was to declare with certainty what yarn would be in this year's Madrona knitting kit.  Before I swatched it.

A funny thing happened between my design and the beautiful Sincere Sheep yarn I was planning to use.  Turns out my stranded colorwork design was totally wrong for the gorgeous, subtle natural dyes that I love so much:

What's wrong with this picture?  Other than the fact that the unblocked knitting is kinda wobbly?  CONTRAST.  Or lack of it.  Sincere Sheep's naturally-dyed hues all have roughly the same value; resulting in butterflies that don't stand out from their background enough to be read. My design just didn't do the yarn any favors.  And as much as I wanted it to work, I had to grit my teeth and start over.

Now I've done a total reversal.  And this time I know it's really going to work.  Because the new swatch is underway, and it's HOT.  This is Kauni, from Denmark, whose crazy self-changing colors are going to make everybody's project just a little bit different from the others.  And what could be better than that?

So, what have we learned, Dorothy?  

1.    Sometimes the first pancake has to be fed to the dog.  It doesn't mean you stink at pancakes; You just have to try again.  The hardest part is admitting you've made dog food.

2.    We don't just swatch for gauge.  Things I also learned from the first pancake include: I don't really like two-color castons for corrugated rib.  I don't like corrugated rib for this piece in the first place.  The background behind the butterflies needed to be a tonal fade of ombre, rather than delineated stripes.

3.     Stranded Colorwork swatches worked flat (which I was doing to estimate yardage) should be against the law.  Purling back in pattern is totally sick and wrong.  Which I know you know.  It just needs to be repeated from time to time.  No need to try it yourself to prove if it still sucks; I've done it for you.  You're welcome.

I'm spending the weekend knitting butterflies.  See you on the other side.

Hypotenuse

My FLAK is big.  Really big.  It measures correctly, but spread out flat like this, it seems less like a sweater and more like a motorcycle cozy.  Which would explain the prodigious rate at which it's gobbling up yarn. Granted, these skeins are pretty short, but I've done so many spit-splices I'm starting to dehydrate. I'm about halfway down sleeve #2, and nearing the end of the 12th skein.  And speaking of sleeves, notice anything special about these?

How about now?  That's right!  Reverse-Hypotenuse sleeve decreases! Which, for the non-mathy (such as me), means that the decreases happen on top of the arm, rather than at the underarm.  The legendary Joan Schrouder cleverly pioneered this architecture.  It results in less fabric under the armpits, so bunching up is greatly reduced.  And look at what a pretty curve happens at the shoulder, right where you want it.  I think it's dead sexy.  Thanks, Joan!  

Groovy thing about top-down sweater knitting: Not sure what kind of edge treatment you want for neckline, cuffs and hem? No problem! Just put the stitches on holders and figure it out at the end.  Who knows? Maybe I'll even devise some fancy way of continuing the cables down into the ribbing, ala Kathy Zimmerman. 

But first I have to get ready to join skein # 13.  I need a drink of water.