And I started the kimono.
I figured if I was going to do a swatch, I might as well just start a sleeve. Again, not a great picture. It's a dreary gray day here and the flash is not my friend in these photos. Anyway, the Mica is slippery enough that I am keeping each ball in a ziplock while I knit from it. But it's really a pleasure to work with. No catching on the needles and the stitches don't immediately run away if you should happen to drop one. And it's so pretty and glisten-y. I'm almost thinking that I ought to order another sweater's worth while Webs still has it...and might just do that if I had another pattern in mind that I thought it would work for.
I had a terrible case of the brain feebles when I first started this sleeve. I cast on and gaily knit 32 rows (two repeats of the pattern) and thought, "Huh. This is rawther different from the picture in the book, isn't it?" Well, instead of sitting quietly and thinking about what I was doing, I immediately went into high gear. I looked at the lace chart and thought, "Oh no, I've forgotten how to read charts!" Decided to check the DVD that came with the book, hoping for guidance. Well, the DVD contains tips for working many of the kimonos...but not this one. Then I decided that there must be errata...checked on-line. Nope. I would have just run up to the Black Sheep but I had already been there once already! So I thought I would call and ask Tracy. Ann answered and was with a customer and I said I'd call back. And in the 5 minutes before I called, I looked at the chart and thought, "Oh, you idiot! You do the first two stitches and then you repeat the part in the box until you are at the end and then you knit the last stitch on the chart!" (What I had done the first time was just repeat the first row of the chart over and over until I got to the end and, while that worked out well enough not to raise any alarm flags, I could tell it was not what was shown in the book.) So, brain function restored, I ripped out my first attempt and started over. The good part of all this was that the first attempt had wider areas of stockinette so it was easier to check my gauge...which seems to be okay.
In my defense, it's been a long time since I knit anything that was charted this way. I realized that most of the things I've used charts for recently have shown the entire row. And most the things I knit aren't charted, either. So there is a small excuse. But jeez, I felt dumb!
I sent the alpaca sweater up to Rachel and it should have gotten there yesterday but I haven't heard anything, so maybe it didn't make it. Or else she's just too busy with her new boyfriend to think of her mother. [/pathetic whine]
No comments:
Post a Comment