Ooh, Maai
Thursday November 06th 2014, 12:09 am
Filed under: Knitting a Gift

Purlescence recently got a new yarn in, as in brand new, only just released. And I bought a skein of it in Blueprint to try it out.

I had a person in mind, I had a deadline in mind, I had a project in mind.

But as I tried to get the thing going it did not seem to want to mind me.

I had not swatched–I mean, when you’re knitting a one-skein cowl with only so much yardage at hand the thing is the swatch since to me knitting is not some new thing: you can eyeball so many cast-on stitches and get a rough guess of what a certain pattern will come out to, size-wise, pretty much.

So (whistling) when was the last time I knitted a chainette construction in a dk weight? There are not a lot of those out there. This both compacts down into its stitch space because there’s so much air squishing out and yet it blooms out without going all angora on me. Curious. I like it.

And then I read Stephanie’s post and just laughed–okay, I’m not the only one here.

And so I was coming out with what would make a good hat. Assuming it didn’t stretch much once it hit water. Which I would not know till I finished but no, it would make a very pretty hat, definitely, yeah, that would work.

But did I have enough yarn? And I had not set out to make a hat. I live in a climate where people do not mess up their hair with hats, generally, since there is no great need to. Here the citrus trees wear more layers in freezing weather than some of the people do.

Did I want to buy another skein, then, and would the shop have the same dye lot still in stock? (Are you kidding me? Did you see that stuff going flying out the door after that much-anticipated box finally arrived?) It’s not that a hat takes a lot more yarn, it’s that a hat has to continue till it’s finished instead of at some random point that works for the knitter.

But even though it would certainly go over the head, or at least mine, it seemed a tad small for the top of a cowl for a larger person (which I am not), the yardage was disappearing fast, and I’m afraid of emphasizing the size of the person because of the smallness of the cowl–and so it stalemated on me and simply sat there most of today.

But it’s a gorgeous yarn and a soft yarn and ooh-fuzzy feeling without being fuzzy looking and it wanted to be knitted and finally I picked it up this evening and finished my pattern repeat–and then I did that increase and declared to myself, there: that settled it. It is to be a cowl.

(Well, it could still be a big poofy hat if I bought more yarn…)

She’s going to love it. Even if I have to find me a different she. But I don’t think I’ll have to. Either way, I’ll let her settle it for me.

Eyeing that gorgeous big skein from Abstract Fiber, because, y’know, I can always knit another cowl.


1 Comment so far
Leave a comment

Pretty color, soft yarn, if the thing is the swatch and it turns out it needs to become something else, well, you get to knit more with soft yarn in a pretty color. Really, the penalties for not swatching have to be bigger than that!

Comment by twinsetellen 11.06.14 @ 6:16 pm



Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)