I’m very glad to have your various endorsements for
recipe boxes, and look forward all the more enthusiastically to my first one,
next Monday. Ivy, I do so agree that thinking
is the hardest part of meal-preparation. Barbara M., I have read several
newspaper discussions of recipe boxes and they all seem to think that (with
most firms, anyway) “meals for two” are so generous that you could feed three.
So you might be able, after all, to feed your hungry husband and have something
left to keep the wolf from your own door.
Knitting
I have advanced to row 51 of the shawl borders and am,
in a manner of speaking, back in the saddle. The stitch count is right. The
rows relate to what was done in the rows (immediately) below. Altogether, there
are 99 pattern rows and then another 8 of garter stitch during which decreases
continue to be made. So it’s safe to say I’m half-way through.
However…
Today I discovered another fairly horrendous mistake.
In Chart C (like Chart D) I was supposed to repeat the first section a few
times, then the centre section once, then the final section a few times more. I
was meant to be creating, thereby, a single roundel in the middle of each
border, surrounded by lacy zigzags. But I didn’t. I just knit the chart and
knit it again until I got to the next corner. So there are several roundels in
each border, none exactly in the centre.
Now (Chart D) I am doing more or less the same thing, and
doing it right -- with two roundels in the centre of each border, which were
intended to be one on either side of the Chart C roundel. But of course, they’re
not.
Another ten rows or so, and it may be possible to
photograph the result for you. It may not be as bad as it sounds. Although still not Buckingham-Palace-worthy.
When I knit this shawl for Archie, “lace weight” was
an adventure for me, and I felt I was helping with the pregnancy, knitting
sturdily on while nature knit the baby. Archie’s elder brother had died at 6 ½ weeks
the year before; it was an anxious time. If I had made this sort of mess then,
I would have been in despair.
Are there any signs of spring flowers near you yet? Toronto is slowly getting more sunlight but we are far from the magnolias of San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteWere there flowers in Palermo?
LisaRR
One thing that to me is a real challenge with a project like that is not being able to see the overall pattern and what you are really doing. It will surely be pub and drool worthy!
ReplyDeleteLooking at the pattern on the J&S website, I think there's sufficiently many things going on in the border that the repositioning of roundels is not going to be noticeable, particularly when folded over on itself and wrapped round a baby.
ReplyDeleteIt's a different form, but Fairisle knitters traditionally never bothered to make the different rows of motifs relate to each other, nor be centered. They just started at the edge and knitted until they got to the other side, and let the motifs fall wherever they happened. Also, shawls that aren't set up for display are always wrapped around a baby or folded for storage or even wrapped around and tied in back (haps). I suspect that many historical shawls had interesting design features.
ReplyDelete