An Ode to an Obsession
I never post twice in a day, but I had to share this. Many of you have probably seen this, but for those who haven’t: enjoy!
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Taking Stock of WiPs
This Peruvian alpaca is *soft*! It sheds a bit, but am loving it. The colour is so rich and I think I like the fabric I’m getting on size 5s. I don’t know what the pilling situation is, though. Anybody know? If it tends to pill I might move down to size 4.
Remember my Shaped Triangle Shawl? I didn’t take a fresh picture because it is a large black blob right now not unlike the one taken two months ago. I got stuck at where the small cockroaches beetles that form the base of the pattern morph into more beautiful and complex things, like mountains and flowers and whatnot. (See this complexity in all its glory here. This part of the pattern is charted only half the way; the other half you have to make your own way backwards. Not surprisingly, I was unable to walk back properly by myself. I enlarged the pattern, photocopied it front-and-back and put the two sides back-to-back in a plastic sleeve to make it easier to read both ways (this is a *great* technique, btw, in theory) and even knit about ten rows before I realised that my beetles did not want to shape-shift. Mountains and flowers met the frogpond twice over. It’s to do with the thin black lace; the topography just doesn’t show up as nicely.
So what to do? It would be really nice if I could send the completed shawl to my MiL in a month for a special occasion, so I sat and figured that I’d just beetle it all the way through, and then attach some damned border. All she wanted was triangular black lace, not any particular landscape.
Then, Eureka!!! I saw Alison’s gorgeous Swallowtail shawl and recognized in it my beetles, and a totally lovely border with something called nupps (is nupps just polite for bobbles?). Some courageous determined arithmetic later, I think it can work. I have 12 beetle repeats to do and the border, and hopefully at the end of it, my Shaped Triangle will have metamorphosed into the Swallowtail Shawl. Fingers crossed.