tangled up

mini poncho experiment (cont.)

the knitting is finished and i still can't decide what i think. the pattern is made up of 4 mitered squares and i didn't anticipate the degree to which the yarn would stretch, so that they're now mitered rectangles. not surprising, I guess b/c there's so much give in the stitches knitting on size US11 what would usually have been knit on a US6. live and learn. question is -- can this poncho be saved? i've pinned it now so that the neck opening is about right and will probably do a round of single crochet around the neck, but it may be that the front dips too much and the shoulder pieces stay too short. maybe i should stick to knitting from patterns? this is certainly incentive to finish the Vintage poncho....

time flies

i sat down at the computer at 9:00am and am just now writing this post after messing around with photos and other stuff for what turns out to be 2 1/2 hours. where does the time go?

at the end of a nice afternoon yesterday, i wandered into Knit & Stitch = Bliss, which has the benefit of being close by and staying open until 5:30 on Saturday. i was looking for space dyed yarn to possibly use to make the pooled color scarf in the new Interweave Knits. Didn't find anything suitable for the scarf but a very helpful and knowledgeable salesguy pointed me to some beautiful Great Adirondacks 100% alpaca in Sierra Copper. I already have several skeins of the Old English colorway in my stash waiting to become a sweater this winter, but the deep coppery brown and aubergine combination, touched with gray, was really appealing (see the flower basket shawl photo album). an expensive impulse purchase, but what the hell....

when i got it home, i looked through piles of books and magazines to see what it should be and landed on what had been my first thought, the Flower Basket Shawl in Fall 2004 Interweave Knits. because the skein has 600 yards, it's about perfect for a smallish shawl. there's a flower basket shawl knit along started by Sarah Elizabeth at Knit One Spin Too (still need to figure out the linking thing) and i thought it would be fun to be a part of that.

winding all 600 yards at once made me grateful to have gotten a swift and ballwinder this summer -- two knitting tools i'd highly recommend. some small doubts crept in when i swatched it. to get the right gauge, i had to move up to US8 but the stitches looked a little loose to me. US7s were getting me 18st/4 inches rather than 16st/4 inches. i went with the US8s.

i went though the first chart and the first repetition of the second chart pretty quickly. the photo posted here is just of the first chart because that seemed to be closest in terms of color (i'm back to the camera phone again). the yarn knits up beautifully, is unbelieveably soft, but because of the way it's dyed, the pattern is almost undiscernible. that might work itself out as i get farther along, but it might not. i'm going to try starting again (without frogging the current piece) on the US7s to see if that makes the pattern any cleaner looking.

separately, i haven't abandoned the mini poncho experiment. if i can make up for the lost time sitting at the computer, it will be complete today. i'm about 85% finished. problem is, it doesn't look right now like it's going to be a success. there may be an option or two to salvage it, but i've got to complete the primary knitting first. photos tk.

weekend blogging

DC is expecting rain this weekend thanks to the tropical storms down south and I'm expecting to get lots of knitting and posting done. I may even try to block a Charlotte or two. The mini poncho is about 2/3 complete. Definitely should have a picture by tomorrow. Still can't tell if it's actually going to work out, but I'm hopeful.

One goal today is to send off this cabled baby blanket. The pattern came from Knitting for Baby by Melanie Falick and Kristin Nicholas. (ah, another project is to figure out how to do bold, underlining and linking using the Mac b/c typepad doesn't have the buttons for it.) Instead of using cashmere as the pattern called for, I used Plymouth Wildflower DK Fancy. It took seven skeins that had been sitting in my stash from a spree at Woolwinders last summer or maybe even the summer before. While not as luxurious as the cashmere, the Plymouth knit very smoothly and the new parents will be grateful, I think, that they can just throw this baby (I mean the blanket) in the washer and dryer. Lots of friends having babies right now. Also on the needles, another baby-sized Rambling Rows (photos tk).

poncho update

no new photos yet of the mini poncho experiment. i abandoned the alpaca -- if it's not right, why go all the way with it? i started again with some lavender Venue by Classic Elite i had in my stash. the yarn is knitting up much more nicely and i think the pattern just might work. hope to have a final report by the end of the weekend. Venue, unfortunately, has been discontinued, so if it does work, i'm going to have to look for substitutes.

all this thinking about the poncho made me pull out the Vintage Poncho that is sitting half completed. not sure why i'm unenthusiastic about it -- the yarn combination is a pretty good one. need to turn back to it soon, so Mom may end up with two ponchos.

i'm going to have to go back and repost the photos from the other night. they're huge and i didn't realize they had to cut down in pixel size. i'm semi-illiterate in photo shop so many of the aleys i've turned up are blind ones. i've got a lot to learn, which is always fun.

here's a glimpse of the vintage poncho in progress:

the mini poncho experiment

here are a couple of photos of the mini poncho experiment in progress. it is a very simple construction -- can you guess how it works? i'm not going to tell just yet. i'm using Peruvian alpaca that my friend Rachel brought back on a cone from Lima. i'm going to finish this prototype with it, but I think I can already tell that this particular fine yarn on so large a needle (11) is too unforgiving (at least for my skill level). i'll cross that bridge later if the design works out. in the meantime, it does make a nice open design just in garter stitch.

i borrowed a digital camera to take pictures and have realized very quickly that my problem isn't just the camera phone, it's my photography skills. i need to find a tutorial for how to take photos of knitted work, particularly for posting on the web. with so many knitting blogs, someone must have written one. if you know of one, please point me to it. i did get a pretty good photo that shows the actual colors of the Toscana Wigwam.