One For You, One For Me

Before my wonderful vacation which after less than two weeks of dreary grey home seems like a vague and distant dream, I'd started beading a sample for a kit I'd planned for my Etsy shop. It didn't quite get done, and I optimistically took it (along with two other beadweaving projects and a beaded kumihimo project, not to mention two other knitting projects that didn't even get started) with me to Australia.

I managed to finish it over the weekend. Guess I should list it one of these days.

Even though I'm teaching next Tuesday and the instructions aren't quite done, and even though I just submitted projects for the months of February through May but should anyway be thinking about the next set of classes, I decided to work on something for me. I guess it could in theory be teachable.

It starts off with this long zig-zag strip which has to be twisted on itself before joining, and that's already problematic in terms of explaining it, which I think will not be teachable as the strip took about four or five hours to stitch.

That's not counting the false starts for size and colour.

It was quite straightforward to insert and attach the embellished bezelled rivoli.

It's a little floppy, though I think it'll be fine as a pendant hanging against a chest (mine, preferably), but I'm not too sure about the neck-strap.

It needs something flat. I'm a little tired of diagonal peyote, though that probably makes the most sense. The flat spiral I started looks ... not ideal. Perhaps I should try St Petersburg stitch, but that doesn't really give me anything that diagonal peyote doesn't, though it may be quicker. Or not. Or I could do some daisy stitch variant.

Nothing excites me, and sampling is so dull and annoying.

I think what's really at play here is my current knitting frustration.

Back in November I started knitting for the nieces and nephews and my cat-sitter, and so had not been able to work on the project that was languishing until about a week ago.

It's a sweater which started with set-in sleeve knitted in the round, then the underarm stitches were picked up and the side panels (about two or three inch wide strips to be positioned essentially along the side seams) were made. I picked up stitches from hem to hem along the side panel, the armhole, and down the other side of the side panel, knitted a row to make a garter stitch ridge and left them live. Both sleeve/side panel pieces.

I did a provisional cast-on for the back (or perhaps the front), and started knitting back and forth, joining to the side panels as I went.

I completed the back, and worked the front using a different yarn. This was the plan all along: the sleeves and side panels are striped, and the back and front were supposed to use two of the yarns (I had three yarns in sufficiently large amounts).

Here's the problem.

Back is lovely. The yarn is something in a light taupe superfine wool, perhaps a merino or polwarth, I don't actually remember, but it's next-to-the-skin soft and cushy.

As planned and expected, I don't have enough of that yarn for the front, so I used a creamy white slightly novelty-ish yarn comprising one ply of a wool and something blend, and two plies of two other things I can't remember. To the eyes, the yarn has a slightly boucléed texture, caused by the difference in draw-in between the plies. To the fingers, there appears to be a little angora. To the chest, it actually feels like kid mohair. Very, very soft, but definitely poky.

I can't tolerate the poky, but I could work around it (wear something underneath or repurpose it as the back where I'm less sensitive).

The yarn unfortunately yields a slightly bigger gauge than the back, so it's about half an inch wider and half an inch longer. That could work if it was the front, but a bigger back is just wrong.

Since each ply is a slightly different shade of creamy white, the knitted fabric looks a bit dingy in spots, and since the bouclé is so slight, it looks like Bad Handspun. It would probably be fine in some sort of textured stitch pattern, but as stocking stitch it just looks messy - as either the back or the front.

So I ripped the whole thing out (the white front, not the whole sweater).

The other yarn of which I have enough for a front (or a back) is slightly more lightweight - not enough that it matters in the striped area, but it'll make a smaller back/front, which would make the sweater altogether too snug and I'd need to adjust the row count but my swatching has over the years proved to be inaccurate and unreliable though I suppose I could guesstimate and fudge it, but I'd so been looking forward to Knitting Fun For Me and so suddenly it's not.

Fun.

Perhaps I should start a new project.