October 05, 2003
Interlude, uh-huh!
This is my shawl. This is my shawl on drugs.
Um... that's not quite right. Maybe it's me on drugs!
This is my shawl on 4mm needles, with several hours of knitting completed.
This is my shawl on 4.5mm needles, just started over.
At this point both shawls are still in process, although shawl #1 is now on hold. I just grabbed the needles specified in the pattern and took off. And the fabric is feeling okay, but not as soft and light and drapable as I remember Candace's original shawl feeling. As I knit I kept having this niggling little feeling that I should go up a needle size and see how it felt. But since I was at this all-afternoon meeting, I just kept knitting.
Then this morning I realized I had missed a yarn-over several rows back. I also checked my gauge and found I was pretty much right "on" with the stitch gauge but my row gauge was way tighter. So I decided to try starting the shawl again on a larger needle with a separate ball of yarn and see what I thought. I'm not really far enough along to tell yet, but I suspect try #2 is going to be preferable. Another factor was the tightness of the slipped edge stitches as I started out. I didn't realize that I needed to have them very nearly "sloppy loose" to keep the edge flexible and stretchy so it will block out smoothly.
Ah, well, it's all a learning process, right?! The Koigu is absolutely delicious to knit with, and I'm loving the look of the shawl. I've done a bit more "futzing" with the fit for a larger body, and I'll detail that when I'm more sure of where I'm going to end up.
But I think this shawl turned into more than the quick interlude I had in mind. On the other hand, this shaping seems to have lovely implications for adapting all my triangular shawl patterns in a way that makes them fit and hang better.
Ah, just a note: the color of today's photos is more "true" than those yesterday. There looks to be a lot of purple in the yarn yesterday, and there really isn't.
Posted by Shelda at October 5, 2003 06:08 PM