Iris yarn + a lovely Knitgrrl review
Check out this yarn, I want it! Beautiful, no? it really does look like irises. Also, here’s a knitting-group-tested review of Knitgrrl 2. I quote:
Each week, I lead a knitting group for kids—so I brought the book with me to get the reaction of the kids in the group. As Heather (who’s 14) flipped through it, I watched her eyes light up. Sure, there were some projects that she didn’t really like—but, for the most part, she liked it. Most of the projects, she pointed out, wouldn’t take forever—which is a bonus for teen knitters, who tend to like quick projects that give them almost-instant gratification. She loved the scarf. She loved the beaded projects. And although she once had a bad experience with a poncho, she told me that she might even give the poncho in this book a shot.
I’m curious to know how one can have a bad experience with a poncho, myself!
Back to the iris yarn — with something like that, I’d want to knit it in a really big openwork pattern to maximize the effect. How pretty would that be? Speaking of new yarn, I’ve got lots of purple-and-green hand-dyed on the way in multiple textures (some boucle, some plain wool, etc). I’ve got an idea for a “garden”-y cardigan. I also cashed in some yarn gift certificates for grey Cascade 220, on its way to becoming Forecast. I don’t knit other people’s patterns much anymore, but I can’t quite resist it. Stefanie, you irresistable designer, you. (Rogue-with-tree variant) and Clapotis will have to wait for now. There, those are my top 3.
I’ve also been sketching the heck out of a self-designed super-complex-cabled Aran, and I’m ready to move to the next step which will be annoying, but necessary: building a set of charts for each cable in their order used. I’ll laminate the pages and mark rows off as I go along with wipe-away marker so I always know where I’m at! (Photos to come when I get that done…I think it’s the only sensible way to go about it short of printing multiple copies of each cable chart and setting them up in a page-by-page format that I can mark off permanently. Although, that’s not a bad idea either…it’ll just have more pages! Decisions, decisions…)
Use the wrong yarn (texture and gauge) and a poncho can go very wrong.
About the marking of process when doing cables… When knitting something with a fairly complex cable (or lace) pattern, I usually have an extra piece of paper in which I write the number of the round I’ve just knit and also the number of the round in the cable chart. For example, the marking “48 7” could be for ’round 48 of the sweater, round 7 of the (repeated) cable pattern’. This way, it doesn’t take much time and the information is easily available (as long as I know where the paper is, of course…).