Full Frontal Knittery Back, again, heyyyy, hello! Doing some swatching for a steampunk shawl, see ab

Full Frontal Knittery Back, again, heyyyy, hello! Doing some swatching for a steampunk shawl, see above. The yarn: Jaggerspun Zephyr, 50% Merino wool & 50% Tussah in Suede. It’s a subtle dun-tan color and the silk gives it the vaguest frisson of a metallic sheen. It’s my favorite lace weight yarn and I want to eat it with a spoon, even colors I don’t like, even though it’s 50% merin-ugh wool. It jumps through every hoop I’ve ever put it through, drapes like a narcoleptic snake and shines like a good deed in a evil world. *Happy, satisfied smile and sigh* Look at that glorious bastard. Love it. Tennyrate, I’m swatching it on 0’s, 1’s & even 2’s. I am a very loose knitter and usually choke up pretty hard on my gauge. I can, and happily do put Lion Brand Fisherman’s Wool on 2’s. Yes, really. I want this shawl to sing, sing like a diva, so needs must I find the gauge that’ll be best for the lace, twisted, traveling and cable stitches I intend on putting in it. All the stitches, baby. All of them! *maniacal laugh* I’ve got 500 yards to swatch with & 1000 yards for the actual tester shawl. Details: I started with a long tail cast on at first and got through the 0’s section before my inner knitter started clearing her throat pointedly & fidgeting that the cast on looked kinda choked. After sighing at myself for getting in my own way yet again, I yarded the first part of the swatch out and started again with a knit cast on. Look at it. So sexy. My lace section is 40 stitches, with a four stitch garter selvedge front and back, slipping the first stitch of every row purlwise. The actual lace repeat is two rows, a multiple of 2: ROW 1: *YO, K2togtbl; rep from * to end. ROW 2: *K2tog, YO; rep from * to end. When one remembers to use one’s row counter, it comes out to a lovely, open, simple netting. I only do twelve rows, which is more than enough for me, in my opinion, to get a feel for what the stitch was going to do. I did the 0’s section on metal straights YET AGAIN, after the swatch decided to eat shit and take a screaming noser off the needles during the 2’s lace section at a local coffee joint. My own fault for using circular needles under 24” for a flat piece of work. I knew full fucking well it’d bite me on my copious tuchis and it sure as shit did. The 1’s section was done on square metal straight 1’s, which I love. I’m pretty sure the tester and final shawl will be done on 1’s, but I’m continuing on with the 2’s sections, because a) aforementioned yarnsplosion, and b) my gauge has changed significantly over the last year & I don’t want to be 20 rows into the tester and change my tiny little mind again. For the solid pattern of the swatch, I like to do a simple set of reverse stockinette, a 4 stitch cable between it on either end with a section of stockinette in the middle. Usually about 20-24 rows to show how the cables are gonna act, easy like Sunday morning. In personal knitting; I’m making myself an earphone pouch in some leftover sock yarn in which I made my mom mittens. It’s several different shades of yellow *delicate shudder* which I personally can’t stand. But it’s an easy color to see, and losing my earphones drives me nearly as nuts as misplacing my friggin debit card. I saw a pattern floating around here on tumblr that looked easy enough to reverse engineer, and a quick knit. I need to buckle down and work on that outline for knitting world domination, I’ll probably poke at it later today, or start it at work tomorrow night. I do so like making outlines and lists, them break things into little bits so I don’t get all panicky and wind up doing nothing I intended to & hiding in bed in a welter of self loathing and frustration. All right, knitters. See you next time with more random updates, hood design ideas and silliness. -- source link

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