Oh happy day! A full day off work (my first since 25 March) and an FO to show off. This (the second picture, haven't quite mastered uploading images yet!) is the "holes scarf" from Iris Schreier's "Modular Knits" (Lark Books ISBN 1-57990-649-4) knitted in awonderful wool/nylon boucle from antipodean firm Touch Yarns that I gave in to at Ally Pally a couple of years ago. I'd been looking for the right design for it for some time, saw the holes scarf and knew that yarn and pattern had met their match.
The pairing is a happy one, but there were some tense moments along the way. Firstly, I cast on at Textiles in Focus and just couldn't get the pattern to work. I assumed that I was miscounting (as tends to happen when serving customers, chatting to the public etc). But when I got home and still couldn't hack it I turned to assorted Yahoo groups for help. turns out there was a missprint in the pattern. Once that was cleared up, progress was, initially, fast and I decided that this would be the ideal project to take to Skip North. Only somewhere between Cambridge and Howarth I forgot what you were supposed to do at the end of a tier of holes. Cue mobile 'phone call to DH, who was told where to find book and pattern then obligingly read out the bit I'd forgotten. This is some husband I have here, he may not knit but he can read out strings of instructions dashed accurately.
Anyway, knitted on happily throughout Skip North and all the way home but then work went wild with a major staffing crisis and knitting (alas) got put on ice (or, more accurately, in bag tucked under chair in staff room). Picked it up to take to a Cambridge KTog, lifted it out and, yes, found that I couldn't remember the pattern. Cue mobile 'phone call ... etc. This really is some husband I have here, he'll even read out the same thing twice without calling me too many rude names! Liz (Knitting on the Green) was highly amused by all this, as she's witnessed the initial cast on at TiF and both rescue 'phone calls. Knitting then went on hold again until last Tuesday's KTog, when I remembered to take the pattern! Cast off at home that evening and finally got ends and scanning pic conquered today. Ta Da! it will be popped in the post on Tuesday as a belated Easter present for my sister.
Meantime (first picture) I cast on some Wendy Knitit tape (think that's what it is called) earlier this week and am busily whipping up a scarf that reminds me of slug genitalia (don't ask!). I can highly recommend this yarn for knitting in public. You'll get lots of non-knitters coming up and saying "Wow" and lots of knitters coming over and asking what you are doing. What you are doing is drawing the tape through itself rather than wrapping it round the needle. You also have to keep the wrong side of the tape facing you (so that the top and bottom "curls" will be on the outside of the scarf, to form the frills) and I suspect that it would be much easier to work knitting continental style, so I'm off to find an online tutorial whilst DH is at church.
1 comment:
And the holes scarf looks even better in person. A well-trained husband can be an excellent knitting aid - mine has infinitely more patience when sorting out tangles than I have. (He does it properly - I tend to go for the "loosen it a bit and give a tug" approach, which does work most of the time, but when it doesn't...)
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