Yes, I've been very lax in my posting these days. It's a sorrowful thing. My computer and card reader have been living in different rooms, and generally when they're in the same room the computer is pretending to be a region 2 DVD player. I will endeavour to be more conscientious!

Anyway, here is my latest project on the needles:


(Blimey, that looks washed out...)
It's Rowan All-Seasons Cotton in the Dusky colourway, and that is a crossed-stitch basketweave stitch...they look like mini cables, but they're not really. It's a lot of fun, although time consuming. It was going to be the bolero on the cover of Simply Knitting from two months ago, but since I swatched the yarn in garter stitch and ended up using this stitch, the gauge is way off. By about one third. Yeah.
New plan! So, as it does fit nicely around my waist and I'd hate to rip out all that work, I'm going to make my own version of a bolero from the waist-up instead of neck-down. I want to do the one in SK as well, but I'm worried about having enough of this yarn so I'm just going to change tracks. I don't expect it will be too hard to make a pattern...I don't want it to fit like a proper cardigan, rather, something that you throw on over a vest or a t-shirt when you just want to be a little warmer...but not a shrug. And open-front cardigan. Am I repeating myself? Anyway...I'm excited.

Here is the only problem....look at the left side. It's beautiful. A perfect straight line. It's not even curling. Only, on the right side....

...we have horrible loopiness. I didn't see it becoming a problem until I got too far in.

The reason for this, I think, is that on the left side, I'm finishing on a purl stitch. On the right side, I start by knitting the second stitch first. So, the first is never properly anchored. I'll hide this by picking up stitches to do a border, but in the future I know to alter the pattern to include a selvedge. Live and learn. It's a really nice stitch, and I think it will look fantastic when it's blocked (I hope).

In other knitting news, I made two more Shining Star hats...to be photographed imminently. Oh yeah, and I want to play with my blog layout soon. Too much pink on this one.

posted by Christina @ 6/08/2006 11:11:00 pm