I’ve been itching to design, lately. That sounds like something that involves a rash. “Yep, I’ve got The Itch. I tried the ointment, but it didn’t help. Don’t come near me, it might be contagious.”
Alas, the small size of my stash and the smaller size of my yarn budget means that I have no materials! Pffft. I need to become a Big Established Designer so that yarn companies will send me free yarn to design things. I’m sure they’ll be lining up to have their yarn associated with something as professional-sounding as Half-Assed Patterns. Heh.
But wait! There is hope! Hope in the form of a Happy Fun Box of Yarn* from Elann! Probably my last Box of Yarn for awhile, and it’s only a little one, but it should keep me occupied for a little while. What’s in the box? What’s in the boooox?
* Do not taunt Happy Fun Box of Yarn.
Well, first, there’s some Rowan Chunky Print.
This one isn’t itch ointment; I already had a project in mind for it. I saw this scarf on Ravelry and I waaants one. I tried to turn my skein of Lady Godiva into one, but it was having none of that because Lil’ Missie Godiva is a picky bitch. (Oh, I will talk about this later. Not today.) And I thought, well, what I really need for this pattern is something bulky, something that isn’t variegated, and something with a bit of handspun-esque texture. And then, poof, Elann has Chunky Print for cheap, in the exact colour that I had been eyeing-but-not-buying on Webs’ site (I am apprehensive of ordering from there after the previous shipping debacle). It’s a sign!
(Why does every “it’s a sign!” moment result in me either spending too much money or doing something incredibly stupid?)
I was playing “guess the colour from intarwebs pics” game with this, because I wanted it to match this adorably hideous faux-vintage coat I have. I say faux-vintage because it is so very, very faux. Because I bought it at Urban Behaviour shutup shutup.
Works for me!
Okay, next up we have some Elann Incense.
I’ve been dying to try this yarn since I saw it in Elann’s newsletter before it was even available. Wool, silk, and bamboo for 4 bucks a ball? Yes, please!
The good news is that it’s very pretty, and soft, with a nice sheen from the silk. I got it in “Brick”, and played “guess the colour” with this one too – a little-known, harder version of the game called “guess the colour from Elann’s crappy, crappy swatches that are always wrong, but you have no other choice because the yarn’s so new that nobody has photographed it yet, and if it’s orange or pink you’re going to stab it in the neck, and yes I know that yarn doesn’t have a neck but IT’S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING DAMMIT”. It’s not a fun game. I don’t recommend it.
But I WON, because it’s not orange, and it’s not pink either, but a genuine true neutral red. Score.
The bad news is that out of 4 skeins, there are visible knots in 2 of them. No, I haven’t rewound them. This is just out of the bits of the balls that I can see. Who knows how many more knots are lurking in their depths. 50% wool yarn will spit-splice, right? Right?! Don’t tell me it won’t! Lalalalanotlistening…
It’ll be a scarf. The scarf of the Horrible Yellow Acrylic experiments. The scarf that I tried to turn that Lady Godiva into, but it was also not having that. Oh yes, I will definitely be talking about that skein of Lady Godiva later, loudly, angrily, possibly involving as many impolite words as I can think of.
Anyway. The scarf that is my own design! Take that, itch. I’ve tweaked it after the Lady Godiva fiasco and have most of the pattern written up. Now I just have to knit the thing.
And now, the final inhabitant of the Happy Fun Box of Yarn is…
Two balls of Elann Tweedy Silk that I bought for absolutely no reason other than wanting to see what the yarn was like. (Answer: it’s boring. Typical rough silk, kind of pretty, whatever. We’ll see how it knits up, though.) I ordered two balls because I figured I can’t make squat with just one. Not that I can make much of anything with two. Maybe I just wanted an excuse to type “two balls” a lot.
But while I waited for the Happy Fun Box to make its way through holiday mail hell to me, I had an idea.
Or rather, a long time ago I had an idea, but could only think up a crappy implementation of it. This time I thought of a much better implementation. A smallish version of which could easily be done with 208 yards of boring silk tweed.
It is the NERDIEST IDEA EVER and you will all think it is stupid but that’s all right. It makes me happy! And I need to go knit it and write it up because it won’t make any sense until it’s in FO-and-pattern form, I don’t think. So for now I will call it the Secret Nerd Scarf. Which is actually not that different from what I’ll probably call it in the end.
Ahhh, the Happy Fun Box is filled with Happy Fun. And it has the potential to treat The Itch. Worship the Happy Fun Box! Love the Happy Fun Box!
Well, I knit the damn mittens. And I was right to fear them.
Pattern: mostly pulled out of my ass, but used Plaid Mittens as a guide and stole the finger opening of Peekaboo
Size: to fit freakishly skinny long hands
Yarn: SWTC Gianna, 2 balls (the small 41.5m balls)
Needles: US 10.5
Yeah, they look innocent, don’t they? Cute, warm, cozy. But there’s a problem. There’s a big problem. Maybe more of a big-and-small problem. Can you see it?
How about now?
They were knit with the same yarn, with the same needles, with the same exact non-pattern (I counted stitches obsessively to be sure), something like one or two days apart with no other projects in between and thus no opportunity for my gauge to go wonky. And one is clearly larger than the other. Freak! Freeeeaaak! Keep your children away from the freakmittens!
Step right up, and see the yarn that spawned the freakmittens! Keep well back from its cage; it doesn’t like strangers!
On your left, ladies and gentlemen, is the yarn left over from the ball of yarn used for the first mitten. On your right, ladies and gentlemen, is the yarn left over from the purportedly identical ball of yarn used for the second mitten. Directly in front of you, ladies and gentlemen, is an angry knitter saying “What the fucking fuck?”
You see, ladies and gentlemen- yeah, okay, I’ll stop that now. You see, the two balls of yarn were not only the same yarn, but were from the same dyelot. The two balls of yarn were not only from the same dyelot, but from the same bag. But when I was knitting the first mitten, I was thinking, hey, this is a weirdly dense fabric on 10.5s and the ball band recommends 10s, what the hell are they smoking? And while knitting the second mitten, I thought, hmm, I don’t know what I was complaining about, this yarn knits up perfectly fine on 10.5s. I thought maybe I was just getting used to the yarn. But when the second mitten looked to be knitting up munchkin-sized, I started to see the horrible truth.
Could it be that one ball of yarn was actually thicker than the other ball of yarn?
I’m not crazy, right? The one on the right looks a bit thinner?
The first mitten’s fabric feels thicker, kind of quilted, while the second feels like normal knitted fabric. The difference is really noticeable. I pulled out a third ball of yarn from the bag and it seems to match the second ball, the thinner one. Maybe the fourth ball will be thicker again. Maybe the fifth ball will be Fun Fur! Okay, now I’m getting angry.
So I think, maybe they’re not that different in the pic, and maybe I’m imagining things, and I pick up the remnants of the second ball and it falls apart in my hands. Into two mini-balls that were apparently wound into one. And one is thick and one is thin.
From the left, Ball One (thick), Chunk of Ball Two (thin), Other Chunk of Ball Two (thick). I’m not imagining things, those are clearly different. The thick bit of Ball Two (which I guess I never reached in the course of knitting the mitten) kind of matches Ball One. The thin bit… doesn’t.
I AM ANGRY!
Because for once (ha), this is not my fault. I didn’t screw up the knitting. The mittens look exactly like they’re supposed to, except that they’re made in two different yarns that claim to be the same yarn! What what what crapmonkey crappy crap is this? And you know, I actually liked the yarn. It’s pretty and soft and cozy, but now I will never be able to trust it.
You deceived me, yarn! How could you to this to me?! WAAAAAH!
I don’t know what to do with the freakmittens. Both of them fit okay and don’t feel all that different when worn, but the little obsessive voice in my head is going the mittens must be identical or I will kill you in your sleep. (I’m already angry at that voice for pointing out my Giant Left Boob. Now my Tiny Right Boob has quite the inferiority complex, thanks to that voice.) I could frog Mitten One and re-knit it with Ball Three, but I have no guarantee that Ball Three will match Ball Two, and even if it does it could turn into Ball One thickness halfway through and GAH I knew I should have been suspicious when Elann was selling a whole bag of this freakyarn for like 20 bucks.
Fear the mittens.
Um… am I missing the point of NaKniSweMo if I finish in 10 days?
Pattern: Drops Jacket in blah blah long name purple monkey dishwasher, modified up the wazoo
Size: Small (roughly)
Yarn: MMMMMMMMalabrigo merino worsted in Cinnabar, every last little scrap of 4 skeins
Needles: US 9
Here’s a brighter pic, but it shows less details. This sweater doesn’t like to be photographed, apparently. I don’t like to be photographed either, but I’m still on a “no more headless pics!” mission.
So. 10 days. Wait, what? Granted, I did all my pattern reworking, and swatching, and blah dee blah before November. That’s allowed, right? Didn’t cast on until November 1st, though, and finished last Saturday. I haven’t blogged it until now because it took FOUR DAYS TO DRY. Which worked out fine, since I wasn’t able to go button-shopping until yesterday anyway, but still.
I’ll forgive the sweater, though, because I loooooove it.
Yeah, it ate all my yarn, but I had just enough to finish. And I mean just enough. I kept going back and forth between the sleeves and the body, monitoring how much yarn everything was eating. I do not recommend this. Yes, you can make this sweater (in size small, with some modifications) with 4 skeins of Malabrigo. However, you will go mad in the process. Is it worth it? Huh? Is it?
(I already went mad long ago, so what do I care?)
Whether you take the path of sanity or not, make this sweater. It’s yummy. I was very wary of the idea of an A-line sweater, but it works, it does sort of a ruffly thing at the bottom instead of making you look like a giant umbrella.
Yeah, I modified the crap out of mine, but all the unmodified ones on Ravelry look great too, on all sorts of body types. Make it! Make it now! It only takes 10 days!*
* If you’re a lunatic.
So. About the modifications. As written, it’s a bottom-up sweater knit in pieces. I made it as a seamless top-down raglan. And then I got a whooole bunch of messages asking for details on how to do that. Here’s the thing. I took really sparse, messy notes. Mostly they are a bunch of numbers scribbled in my sketchbook. And then I ignored or changed half of those numbers on the fly when I actually made the thing. So no, I cannot rewrite this pattern for you as a top-down raglan, unless I start over from scratch and do it, and I’m not gonna, because I hate writing patterns.
But!
I’ve seen a lot of people on Ravelry and elsewhere trying to turn standard sweater patterns into top-down raglans, whether it’s because they like raglans, or like knitting top-down, or hate seaming, or whatever. So I’m thinking I might write up a tutorial on how to do just that. With any pattern, in general, not necessarily this one. Is there any interest in that sort of thing?
Other mods… let’s see. I left out the 2×2 ribbing at the bottom because I couldn’t figure out why it was there and it looked funny; just went straight to the garter stitch (which was enough to stop any curling). I ignored pretty much everything the pattern said to do with the sleeves. I made the bottom edge smaller than the pattern wanted, because the numbers seemed huuuuge; I think I took off about 4 inches from that measurement. I tweaked lots of the numbers slightly, like, by 2 stitches or so, little things that aren’t really worth documenting and are mostly just me being a control freak.
And then there was the collar. I’d heard horror stories about this collar, and with good reason. I read the instructions for the collar and went “WTF?” I read them again, and got it, but then went “WTF? Why are they doing it that way? Why seam the edges when you can just pick up extra stitches as you go?” So I did. And it seems to have worked out fine. By the way, picking up stitches along a curved edge SUUUUUCKS.
Like the buttons?
I found those within a few minutes of entering the store, then spent a zillion years looking at every damn button in the store, only to go right back to those in the end. It figures.
So. I guess that’s NaKniSweMo all done. I picked something quick and easy to take the pressure off, but I guess I should have picked something slow and impossibly difficult. This wasn’t masochism, it was fun! This is all wrong! Where’s my standard November pain and suffering?
Well, my next project is the Back to School Vest from Fitted Knits, and I hear it’s crawling with errata and weird increases. That sounds promising in the masochism department…
In typical last-minute fashion, I’ve decided that NaKniSweMo is a go. And the sweater to be knit in a month will be…
*drumroll* (yeah like you really care)
DROPS jacket in ”Eskimo” or ”Silke-Alpaca” with A-shape and ¾-long or long sleeves – yeah, what kind of crapmonkey name is that? I’m not typing that over and over. I’m not even copying-and-pasting it over and over. It will be called the Mmmalabrigo Jacket. Because it will be made of Mmmalabrigo. And it is a jacket. Except, it’s really a sweater, but they call it a jacket, so I will too.
I’ve gone and rewritten it as a top-down raglan. Partly because of my usual seaming-phobia, but mostly because I totally don’t have enough yarn to make it. I have 4 skeins of worsted Malabrigo. That’s 864 yards. I’m making the smallest size, and probably going with 3/4-length sleeves, and not flaring it out as much at the bottom, but I’m still going to run out of yarn. So making it top-down means I can run out of yarn at a spot where I can go “oh well, it’s long enough, I’ll just stop”, instead of, “oh crap, I have no left front shoulder!”
And I thought that this would be the perfect time to finally try a compound raglan. I’d taken that Maggie Righetti book back to the library already, but I remembered the principle – increase every other row down to the shoulder tip, every 4 rows down to the underarm, and every other row for another 1-1.5″. Okay. No problem. Wheeee!
Then I started doing The Math.
The Math told me that the distance from collar to bust with the original pattern would be between 7 and 8 inches.
The Math told me that the distance from collar to bust with a traditional raglan line (increasing every other row all the way through) would be between 7 and 8 inches.
The Math told me that if I did a compound raglan the armholes would be somewhere around my waist. That seems like a problem, since that’s not where my arms are.
I think The Math is screwing with me. Or I screwed up The Math. Or my arms are growing out of my neck and I just never noticed. Whyyyy doesn’t it work? I don’t know. I’m tired and don’t feel like figuring it out. So traditional raglan it is! But I’ll get you someday, compound raglan. I know where you live, compound raglan. You can’t hide from me.
I’m sticking pretty close to the numbers of the smallest size in the pattern and I’ve worked out everything except the collar. I haven’t decided what to do about the collar. I think it might eat me, so it’ll have to be modified a bit.
I’m swatched and ready.
And after a week of knitting, I’ll discover that I got all the numbers wrong and have to frog and start over. Yay! Looking forward to it! Kill me now!
Ahhh, now that feels more like November.
I usually do NaNoWriMo every November. I’ve done it for four years and have written some truly horrible and hilarious novels. I just opened up last year’s novel, and it includes such chapter titles as:
- The Case of the Missing Back Hair
- Suck My Godly Cock!
- In Which Nothing of Interest Happens
- NinjaPirateZombieViking
- The Inevitable Jello Orgy
- Hippopotamus, Revisited
That is the sort of “great” “literature” I produce every November. But I’m not doing it this year, for a bunch of reasons that are mind-numbingly boring so I won’t speak of them. It doesn’t seem right to be doing nothing at all, though. November is Masochism Month! I need some ridiculous challenge that will make my life miserable!
So perhaps I should try this NaKniSweMo thing. I have two sweaters* that I want to make and already have the yarn for, right? The textured tunic and the Garnstudio jacket thing? I could be ready to start either one by November. But which one to make? Textured tunic would probably be the easier knit, but the jacket thing would be at a larger gauge and probably quicker. Hmm…
* As I typed “two sweaters”, the universe laughed loudly at me.
But. Buuuut. There’s always a but, and really it’s more of an ass, in the “oh ass crap fuck ass ass ass!” sense. My pile of indecisive Silky Wool has crawled inside my head, not unlike a brain parasite. I was poking around on Ravelry and spotted this pattern.
Now, I don’t want to make that sweater. Of course not, that would be too easy. But it gave me an idea. So I pulled out the sketchbook and drew up a little exercise in v-necks and asymmetry.
Hmm. Cute. Cute, right? Stockinette and moss stitch only, nothing more complicated that would melt into yarn poo. Just a little weird with the angles of the front panels. Okay. I could maybe make this. I could see this in Silky Wool. Good. Okay. Problem solved.
Poke poke poke, around the internets, for nothing in particular because NOW I KNOW WHAT I’M MAKING HA. Oh, look, the Winter 2007 Interweave Knits preview is up. Well, I’d better take a look, just in case there’s something even more suitable for the Silky Wool. You never know…
Ha ha ha, sez the universe.
I went through the whole list, and nothing caught my eye. Until I got to the very last pattern. Rosemary’s Swing Jacket.
Well crap. That kind of reminds me of the Thing I sketched, except weirder and better. Moss stitch everywhere! Crazy asymmetrical front with a crazy asymmetrical collar! I wants it!
But, well, it’s written for worsted weight yarn, so I’d have to do lots of The Math to make it work in Silky Wool, and it’s shaped kind of weird, and the front panel doesn’t look like it would stay put in Real Life, and the mag doesn’t come out for awhile, and I don’t know whether it’s full of icky seaming and and and wait. WAIT. I am a fucking designer. A crappy wannabe designer, perhaps, but was I not already dissecting this sweater, trying to figure out the construction and what the hell the big collar was connected to and… I don’t even need a pattern. I can make this right now. It’s actually a really simple sweater, just with angled front panels and a collar that’s attached to the back front panel then folded over the front front panel.
I can make that as a standard top down raglan cardigan, then pick up stitches at the neck and do a sort of asymmetrical (there’s that word again) trapezoid-shaped collar. And I can change the bits I don’t like. I can do one angled front panel and one straight one, because I like the contrast. I can make it more fitted. I can move the pointed bit of the front panel downwards and add a button. I can lengthen the sleeves and bell them a bit.
And best of all, since I am blatantly ripping off someone else’s pattern, I will feel no obligation to write up a pattern for this thing, since it ain’t my design. Yea!
What do you think, O Temperamental Pile of Silky Wool? Is that what you want to become?
I don’t know about NaKniSweMo. Now there are THREE sweaters that want to be knit (not to mention my still-neglected Fifi), and I am no good at project monogamy. We’ll see, I guess. November isn’t November without a good healthy dose of masochism!
I am a bad blogger. I haven’t been updating often, I’ve been flaking on replying to comments, and also my head is all over the internets with a monster on it. That last bit has nothing to do with being a bad blogger, I just wanted to bring it up. Brainmonster got linked all over the fucking place and it’s freaking me out. I guess more hits are a good thing, and more Brainmonsters are definitely a good thing, but I was all squishy and comfortable with semi-obscurity. Oh well. I’m sure nobody clicked through to the blog anyway.
I am a bad, bad blogger. I will try to rectify that.
This is a bad, bad sweater. I will definitely rectify that. BY FROGGING IT. BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! SUCK ON THAT, SWEATER OF HATE. And yes, it’s going to become this:
Now, I skimmed that pattern and complained about it. Blah blah no waist shaping, but you folks offered some perfectly logical explanations for why that might be. Maybe negative ease would take care of it. Maybe the box stitch pattern stretched more than the stockinette. Maybe bits of it were knit on smaller needles. Maybe the shaping wasn’t immediately obvious in a quick skim of the pattern.
So I read through the pattern more carefully, and as it turns out, I was wrong to complain about it the way I did. Yup, all wrong. I should have complained much, much more. I should have written a novel about how this pattern is a blight on nature and on books called Fitted Knits. There should have been cursing and lots of it.
There is no concealed shaping. There are no smaller needles. There is no negative ease.
THE SMALLEST SIZE IS 34.5″. That’s actual size, not “to fit a 34.5″ bust”. That’s 34.5″ all the way around. 34.5″ at the waist. I am not a tiny girl. Maybe slightly on the small side of average. And the smallest size would be a potato sack on me. This pattern wants me to spend hours and hours knitting a potato sack. This is so wrong. SO WRONG.
So it’s pattern-rewriting time, and just when I had sworn off thinking, too.
First there’s the matter of waist shaping, of course. This one’s easy. I’m stealing the shaping I used in Maddy, because it fit me so perfectly. I had to rework all the stitch counts anyway since I’ll be using worsted yarn instead of bulky, so I just went all the way and ignored the pattern’s numbers completely. I’m shooting for a 32″ bust and 27″ waist. Negative ease, yea! Then rapid increases to a 37″ hip.
Can I rant? I’m going to rant. What the hell is wrong with my demented body that I have to design a sweater with a 27″ waist and 37″ hip to fit it properly?! How is that even possible? Did someone slice off my bottom half and replace it with someone else’s? I think I would have noticed if that had happened, but it seems the only reasonable explanation.
Okay. So. The next issue is this:
It seems like a sketchy idea to put a textured panel at exactly the fattest point on one’s arms (and by “one’s arms” I mean “MY out-of-shape, slightly flabby arms”). It’s not a problem on the model because a) she probably weighs 97 pounds and b) her sweater is clothes-pinned and photoshopped into impossible dimensions anyway. But is it a problem on a Real Person?
I looked up some finished ones on Ravelry. And, surprisingly, none of them seem to cause any Phantom Arm Fat. So the fat panel stays. Congrats, you wretched pattern, there’s one thing that you maybe didn’t get wrong.
Issue #3: The buttony bits at the bottom. It took forever to figure out how they are even constructed, thanks to the useless pattern that doesn’t show a picture of that section. Ravelry to the rescue again, and I also learned that there is often a GIANT GAPING HOLE between the beginning of the side slit and the first button.
Hmm, I thought, how can I rewrite that bit so that there’s no hole? And then I thought some more. Thinking is always dangerous. But yeah. If I put black buttons there, they’d barely be visible, so it would be a whole bunch of effort for nothing. And if I put red buttons there, they would act as signposts to the widest part of my body. “Hey look everyone! Giant hips! Right here! Just follow the handy red buttons!” Hrm.
So that whole section is going to turn into some simple, non-buttoned side slits, surrounded by a triangular section of seed stitch like in the pattern.
Is that all? That might be all. Oh, and I’m taking out the slit at the top. I like it, but it ain’t practical. Imagine that, something about this pattern not being practical. The shock! The horror!
So I’m ready to go, except that I haven’t frogged the bad sweater yet. I can’t quite do it. I’m going to remake it later with a lighter weight yarn and some mods, so someday there will be a non-hateful version and I really need to frog the hateful one. I just have to get good and mad at it first. Maybe I’ll try it on again; that should do it.
Stay tuned for Part II of Mad Sweater Science, when I’ll deconstruct a perfectly good pattern and rewrite it for absolutely no legitimate reason. Yay!
Aww yeah.
It should have been up earlier this week, but I have a real excuse this time, which is that I’ve been sick. Okay, we all know that I’m sick, but this time I mean in the medical sense. But hey, not even a whole week late, go me!
It’s been re-christened “brainmonster” because “monster hat” is just not a name. There is a story to this name, but it’s so dreadfully boring that I refuse to tell it.
Pattern: Brainmonster
Yarn: KnitPicks Wool of the Andes in Amber Heather, 1 skein; Patons Classic Wool in Winter White, much much less than 1 skein
Needles: US 7
Oy. The long tale of the monster hat, where do I begin? Something like a year ago, I saw this hat on a LiveJournal community. Not this hat, but a hat with teeth and eyes and earflaps. I had to have one. But there was no pattern! No problem, said I, I’ll just make one up. So I did. The one I saw had knitted eyes instead of my googlies, and the teeth were a bit different I think, but I can’t take any credit for the idea; I stuck pretty close to the one I saw.
I had no intention of writing up a pattern, since it wasn’t really my concept, but I posted my finished hat on LJ and people went nuts over it, and I started to think I may as well write it up. People wanted to make it, so I may as well save them the trouble of figuring out a pattern when I had a perfectly good one in my head.
Except I didn’t know how to write a pattern then, so I didn’t. By the time I came back to it, months later, I totally couldn’t remember what I had did. And so I made Brainmonster II and this time wrote everything the fuck down. Hooray! We have pattern!
I actually figured out how to make stockinette teeth that don’t curl. (Answer: slip stitch edging and centered double decreases.) And the earflaps are muuuuch nicer than they were on the first version. I think this is a pretty solid monstery hatty pattern.
When I took the googly eyes out of their package, I saw this:
Okay, I understand why there are warning labels on everything. I do. But you’re really supposed to keep giant googly eyes out of the reach of children? Who is going to use giant googly eyes besides children and moderately insane adults who make monster hats? Giant googly eyes are for children! They belong in the reach of children! Perhaps the warning is there because they’re coated with lead paint, like all children’s toys (apparently).
Now here’s the other reason I put off posting the pattern. Yeah, I was sick, but not so sick that I couldn’t finish the hat, and photograph the hat, and write up most of the pattern. But I needed some action shots of the hat. Oh, hell.
Sweaters are easy, I just chop my head off. Hats require visible heads. I DO NOT PHOTOGRAPH WELL. And when I say that, I don’t mean “ugh, I’m not very photogenic”. What I mean is “I am so completely un-photogenic that any picture of me resembles a retarded monkey, will scare children, will also scare adults, will also scare me and prompt me to walk around with a paper bag over my head for several weeks”. Which is actually unnecessary because I look perfectly normal in person. It’s just photos. Fucking evil photos from my fucking evil camera that won’t be satisfied with simple phantom backfat but has to ruin my face too.
I’m not bitter.
I sucked it up and took two separate photoshoots, and was rewarded with a whole bunch of retarded monkey pictures, and posted a couple of the least horrifying ones with the pattern, because I’ve gotta post something. But ugh. I need to find other people to model my knits, I think.
And because I love my readers, you all deserve to see me look like a fool, so here is the obligatory “OH MY GOD IT’S EATING MY HEAD” shot. (Which is not on the pattern page, for what I hope are obvious reasons.)
Hee hee hee.
Okay, that’s quite enough of that. Go forth and make monster hats! You know you want brain-eating creatures on your head.
Goldilocks and the Three… Pairs… of… Scarf Edgings…
Once upon a time, there was an Unnecessary Yarn Order. A wee little order, just one skein of Finest Silke. And your Narrator waited and waited for notice that the Yarn was on its way, but no notice came.
Oh woe, thought the Narrator, and promptly contacted the Purveyors of Ye Olde Yarn Crack. But still, no notice came. Your Narrator worried that perhaps her missive had been eaten by a Dragon. On and on, she waited.
And finally, there came a distant message from yon Purveyors of Ye Olde Yarn Crack. Sure enough, Emaile Dragons had intercepted the missive, but all was well. The Yarn was being painted by Magickal Yarn Faeries, and would be on its way shortly.
Day after day, your Narrator waited for the messenger that would bring the Yarn. A fortnight passed, and there was no sign of any Yarn. On the plus side, there was no sign of Dragons either, or Burninated Peasants. So, there was that. Finally, just when your Narrator was about to give up all hope, an envelope arrived.
Your Narrator opened the envelope to find a…
Oops, hang on, that’s a bundle of tissue paper.
Oh, come on, that’s just a tease. Get with the yarn porn already.
Right, that’s better. Okay, where was I?
Ahem. Your Narrator opened the envelope to find a most lovely bundle of Finest Silke, painted in colours of such beauty only achieved by the most talented of Magickal Yarn Faeries.
And waiting for the Silke, in a shocking display of pre-planning and utilization of your Narrator’s Whole Asse, was a pattern for a lace scarf. Er, well, a lace chart of sorts. Lace Charte? I can’t keep this up much longer.
All that was left to do was find a matching cast-on and bind-off to edge the scarf, and your Narrator could start knitting with the Finest Silke, instead of writing insipid fairy-tale blog entries about not knitting with The Finest Silke.
Some scrap Yarn was procured, and the swatching began.
First, your Narrator tried an i-cord cast-on and bind-off. “This porridge edging is too hot messy”, said the swatch. “Also, your cast on stitches are all loose, because you suck,” continued the swatch. “Shut up, swatch,” replied your Narrator.
Next, a simple long tail cast-on matched with a purl bind-off. “This edging matches perfectly fine, but you’re not going to use it because you’re so obsessive-compulsive that it’ll bug you that the bumpy purl-y bit is smaller on the cast-on than the bind-off,” said the swatch.
“Swatches can’t talk,” said your Narrator.
“And you’re totally telling this story wrong anyway,” continued the swatch, “aren’t you supposed to be talking about cold porridge at this point? And where are all the bears?”
“I have sharp, pointy knitting needles,” your Narrator replied.
“I’ll be good,” promised the swatch.
Finally, your Narrator tried a few rows of garter stitch at each end. “There’s nothing really wrong with this edging,” said the swatch, “so you may as well just use it.”
Your Narrator eyed the swatch critically. “Ehh. I guess it’s okay. But… I don’t think I really like it. I want something better.”
“Haven’t you been listening? This is the part of the story where you’re supposed to say that the edging is just right. Well, the porridge, but you’ve obviously decided to take some creative license on that,” complained the swatch.
“But it isn’t just right,” insisted your Narrator, “I don’t like it.”
“Look,” snapped the swatch, “nobody likes an open-ended story. You need some closure here. Pick an edging, live happily ever after, and for fuck’s sake stop capitalizing random words.”
“Never!” Yelled Your Narrator Jubilantly. “You Will Pry My Random Capitalization From… yeah, okay.”
“So? The edging?”
“Um… well… hey, look over there! Look at that lovely yarn porn!”
The Most Evile swatch was eaten by a Dragon, and your Narrator and the Yarn of Finest Silke lived happily ever after. The end.
.
.
.
I AM NEVER DOING THIS AGAIN.
… hey, so, anyone have a suggestion for a nice matching cast-on and bind-off and/or edging for a lace scarf? Just… no picots. Don’t talk to me about picots.
It whispers to me. When I close my eyes, I can hear its seductive purr. “I’m so beautiful,” it murmurs, “so soft, so silky. I’ve seen you watching me. I know what you want to do to me.”
“Knit with me,” it urges. “Just do it. Do it now. I know you’ll be gentle.”
I am weak, very weak. I knew it was waiting for me, sitting quietly in the yarn bin, tempting me. No hurry, I thought, trying to ignore it, but I can’t fight it any longer. The Mini Maiden wants to get on the needles, and I am powerless to resist.
Oh, Mini Maiden, what am I going to do with you?
Rhetorical schmetorical, I choose to interpret that question literally and in fact I know exactly what I want to do with it. In an effort to become a Real Designer (snerk), I got myself a proper sketchbook. A nice big one, so that I could work out all the pattern details right next to the sketches, instead of scribbling them on the back of a printout of English Mesh Lace (again). I tracked down my old, neglected sketching pencils. For some reason, they were inside a furry black drawstring bag. (Not that one.) I… don’t know.
I was rewarded with a sketch that is at least 3% nicer than the ones I draw on lined paper with whatever pen[cil] I find lying on my desk. Totally worth it. Uh… right?
Effort is overrated, I think. Still, I like not having LINES going through my sketches. Hooray sketchbook.
I once hand-wound a skein of laceweight yarn from Knitpicks, 440 yds of it, and swore that I would never do it again. Well, mostly I just swore. But the “never again” thing was said too. I guess I technically kept my self-promise, because 547 yds of fingering weight is not the same thing as 440 yds of laceweight.
The yarn whispered some more during this process. If I didn’t know better, I would swear that what it said was, “neener neener, you don’t have a swift and ball winder, because you suuuuck.” But my beloved Mini Maiden would never say something like that.
By the end of it, I had noticed two things.
1. This yarn is really really fucking gorgeous.
2. This yarn is really really not my colour.
I knew about #2 (and for that matter, #1) when I bought it. It was a deliberate attempt to buy yarn that wasn’t so firmly seated on the warm-toned half of the colour wheel that it had made a permanent ass-indent. Variety! Spice of life! And so on.
I can wear those colours, I think. And they are very pretty. Particularly that bright teal-y sort of shade. I must embrace the world outside of my comfortable little corner of red and coral! Yeah. Whatever. I guess I should go and swatch.
P.S. Guess what size needles I’ll be using. Hint: madness may be involved.
P.P.S. I have become obsessed with Artfibers. I WILL purchase a giant heap of their beautiful, beautiful yarn. (When I can afford it. Which isn’t now.) Don’t tell the Mini Maiden. I don’t want it to fly into a jealous rage.
It just had to be brown yarn, didn’t it.
Dear Large Pile of Silky Wool,
Would you like to be a Tangled Yoke Cardigan, or a sweater of my own design? Please let me know as soon as possible.
Thanks,
Cyn
Inanimate objects are notoriously bad at correspondence, so while I waited for the Silky Wool’s reply, I decided to grab some needles and swatch.
The ball band suggested 6s, so that’s what I tried first. Right away I could tell that something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. The stockinette wasn’t too bad, but as soon as I tried anything else, well… why don’t I just let you see for yourself. The swatch is helpfully labeled for your convenience.
Yep, all those intricate patterns promptly melted into a sea of nondescript yarn poo. Noooo! The Tangled Yoke Cardigan has that lovely twisty cabley thing that needs to stand out. The sweater in my head (is it healthy to have sweaters in your head?) is all columns of texture. Yarn poo is completely unacceptable in either case.
All wasn’t lost. I decided to swatch on 4s, the smallest needles I have on hand, and see if a tighter gauge would make the stitch patterns pop. I gave up on the aran braid cable too; I think that may be put to better use in the Thing that I plan to make with my Misti Cotton, but that’s a subject for another time.
Well, I have good news and bad news.
The good news:
Much, much better. Not at all resembling anything that rhymes with Mecal Fatter.
The bad news:
OH GOD NOW I HAVE TO KNIT A LONG-SLEEVED SWEATER WITH SIZE 4 NEEDLES KILL ME NOW THANKS.
So what if the last garment I knit on 4s nearly drove me mad? It won’t be like Maddy. It won’t be like Maddy… right? With either sweater, the stitch patterns will be much simpler than Maddy’s lace, it’ll be mostly mindless and go much quicker. Yes. Graaaah. I love the way small-needle knits look. And I don’t even have a problem using small needles. If my feet weren’t so beastly I’d be all over sock-knitting. But a whole sweater? Graaaaaaah. I am not a patient person. Crap, crap, crap, boobs, crap.
As if I wasn’t confused enough, I then received a reply from the Silky Wool.
Dear Cyn,
Remember that pretty sweater you saw on Craftster? The one that was made in Felted Tweed, which means that it would work quite well in Silky Wool? The one that is all stockinette and garter so you wouldn’t have to worry about stitch definition? Maybe you should look into that pattern, huh?
Sincerely,
Large Pile of Silky Wool
P.S. Stop saying that I look like poo.
Oh, great. Just great. The pretty sweater is Patti, from some Rowan booklet and now available on their site for cheap. It doesn’t look too pretty there. But here’s the one I saw on Craftster, which proves that it has the potential to be adorable.
What to do, what to do…
I think I will shut the Large Pile of Silky Wool in the yarn bin, as punishment for confusing me like this. It can take some time in there to think about what it has done. I’ll tell the Malabrigo to give it a little poke every now and then.
Oooh! I forgot that I had Malabrigo in there!
… oh noooo. Now I’m going to start angsting over what to do with the Malabrigo.