Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Knitting: Insanity Halted

Well as much as I love the look of the Autumn Rose Pullover, and love the idea of knitting such a cozy thing, I think I'm scrapping my two inches of progress later today. I'm not even going to frog it, just save the needles and toss it. Why? Because when I started getting into the color changes, I really hated the way the colors combined. My yarn people may think their colors are decent substitutes, but I assure you when it comes to the "original" color scheme, they do not.

That, and the chart for this thing is set up in an insane manner. The light color yarn is indicated by shaded boxes, and the dark color yarn is indicated by white boxes on the chart. WTF? The chart is hard enough without having to have to think about which color is which at every color change... and there are a LOT of them.

I'm still thinking of charting my own pattern though... without the insane number of striping changes.

I'm pretty much finished with the blanket coat. It's wearable now, with the sleeves set in, but I think instead of stopping there as I originally thought, I'm going to go ahead and pick up and knit the facing for the borders.

Another change in my plans is regarding the pound of natural Oatmeal Blue-Faced Leicester I spun up, hoping to use it for the coat on the cover of the Fall 2009 Interweave Knits magazine. I've already knit one coat, I don't want to do two. So I've started a very simple shawl with it. They're Aran to Bulky weight one-ply singles... so the project is going quite fast. I've got about two feet done on a garter-stitch border, triangular shawl, and I've just started insetting a garter stitch in the center, using appropriate increases and decreases to keep the border and middle stockinette as an even stripe. It's kind of a chevron look, but the stripes are four inches or so wide.

So far I've used about three ounces of what I had spun up... that leaves a heck of a lot left, including a huge bag of the fiber that hasn't been spun yet. However, this is soft, incredibly fuzzy warm stuff. It will make excellent winter garments.

I will most likely have enough left for a very chunky-knit sweater. Here's hoping!

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