Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The monitor turns out to be fine. A friend was here recently taking our wi-fi-extender in hand. She unplugged it. This room resembles a WWI field station in its proliferation of wires. Thank you for the information, however, Knitlass (about how to dispose of a dead monitor) – it will one day be very useful.

I finished the square, and folded it. I'll send it off to London, but what worries me now is its bulk. The Juniper Moon stuff, perfect in all other respects, is a DK. One is required to make three folds, which means that six thickness's of fabric must be crammed into the wearer's pocket. I fear – trying it in my own shirt pocket – that it's going to bulge. Maybe men's pockets are more accommodating?

I went back to Ravelry, however, to see what yarn those gents actually used for their pocket squares, and sure enough, fingering predominates. I did some cyber shopping at Loop, without success – all the possibles seemed to be out of stock. I did a bit better at Eat Sleep Knit, along the lines of Handmaiden silk mixtures. But colour? Perhaps email ESK or Webs (and Webs) and throw myself open to suggestions.

Mary Lou has sent me a stunning skein of Shibui linen, the perfection of colour but so fine that I tremble.

For size, I realised that an education is some use after all. The first fold is made along a corner-to-corner diagonal, and by the time the subsequent two folds have been made, the width of the finished object is 1/3rd of that diagonal. So all you have to do is decide how wide you want it, and then work back to the question of how long to make the sides via Archimedes.

Or just guess.

For actual knitting yesterday I pressed on with Tokyo – and, oh dear, discovered another mistake. I have corrected it without frogging – at least it will be right from here on out, exactly the attitude I used to adopt when I was 15.

The pattern rows are: k20, k2 tog, k48, yo. Repeat. So when I was casting on I put markers at 20, 70, 90, and 140 (after which there are 20 more stitches, knit plain) and knit cheerfully forward without subsequent counting. That works fine, it turns out, for the two k2togs in the row. They are stacked up as they should be on top of each other. But the 50-stitch sections are shortened by one stitch each time, and the marker ought therefore to be moved one stitch to the left. The yo's aren't properly lined up.

In fact, I think the result will pass the galloping horse test. First there is a little spray of YO's leaning to the right, and then they start leaning to the left (after I started doing it correctly). It's an effect that lace patterns often incorporate deliberately. I can repeat it at the other end of the shawl if I really want to.


I'm a bit more than half-way through the first 20-row band. The plan is to establish the second band – which will involve winding a second skein of wool yarn in a new (dark, subtle) colour – and then bring Sous Sous into the scheme.

3 comments:

  1. Life intervened Monday. My praises today on your sweater. It's gorgeous. That yarn looks yummy.

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  2. Have you tried DyeForYarn on Etsy? They're a hand dyer duo from Germany. They have lovely silks in different weights and lots of colours, including a range of blues. I personally like their tussah silk. It's got a very woolly quality to it and isn't as shiny as the mulberry silks.

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  3. Could you knit the Shibui linen double, if everything else is suitable?

    Also, never throw out a computer (or recycle, etc) without deleting everything on the hard drive. But I'm sure you knew that already, just wanted to be sure.

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