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| Labyrinth Tarot |
Talk about working your fingers to the bone ! Well, OK, I don't call what I do work - I like it too much - but I am busy, and then there is all that Xmas knitting I suddenly had inspirations for: why I couldn't have had all these ideas in June, who knows. You do know, actually - it is because it is The Law.
I bought these two balls of lovely Artesano Hummingbird Alpaca 4-ply a little while ago:
I realized I had the perfect person for this colorway, so I bought a pattern - yes, actually spent money on it - and started clicking away:
I feel terribly grumpy and cheated; this colorway looks great in the ball, and as with all Artesano alpaca, it is of a softness that the gods would drool over, but I am not at all loving how the colors are pooling in the shawl, it looks so randomly messy and unplanned that I have put it on the naughty step while I contemplate its future ie. while we sulk at each other for not meeting expectations.
As you know, a shedload of people who need to be knitted for seem to have appeared out of the gloomy darkness of my memory suddenly, so I just cracked on with other stuff - like using the James C.Brett 'Aria' that I found at my little LYS, which is mohair, wool, acrylic and polyester with SEQUINS. I know, I am all about class.
But you can see it is a lovely shade of pastel blue Brett (again) imaginatively calls 'Z3' and it is very beautifully amazingly soft and squooshy and I loves it. And at £3.50 (approx.$5.64) for 215m/235yds, it is not bad value for a hat. So there.
And I even paid for the hat pattern too - it is the Penselwood Hat by Jen Arnall-Culliford; I chose it because it is a little lacy and knitted flat: I'm in too much of a hurry now to mess around with Magic Loops and stuff. And she is approachable, friendly, and on Twitter: which made it easy to ask her about some modifications I wanted to make for a slouchier fit.
And when I am feeling like a challenge, I knit on this Seekret Project (which is deffo not for you this time Alison, I don't love you nearly enough to knit in black for you):
There is intarsia to come on this (imagine that vocalized in a portentous booming voice like that of James Earl Jones) so this won't be completed in any kind of rush, je vous assure.
And much as I love gassing with you all ? This stuff isn't going to knit itself, you know. You need to stop distracting me. While I am hard at it, pop on over to Tami's Amis to see how everyone else is doing ....
I know what you mean about disappointing pooling, however, there's patterns for dealing with that :D
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/fall-leaves-pooling-stole
Hey that's going to look super in the sparkly sequinned yarn! And you've got so much done already. :) Someone's going to be lucky this Christmas!
ReplyDeleteooh pretty sequinned yarn, i hope you solve the pooling question!!! have a knitty wednesday xx
ReplyDeleteI never knit for Christmas. OK, so rarely knit for Christmas. Well, usually end up knitting for Christmas. Gee, you sure can draw a confession out of people! LOL. Good luck with your plans.
ReplyDeleteI hope everything goes as you've planned:)
ReplyDeleteOne way of preventing pooling is alternate skeins. It works with hand dyed, so I would hope it might work with striping, provided you start at different points in each skein's striping sequence.
ReplyDeleteI hate it when yarn doesn't knit the way I dream it should. :-( Hopefully you and that yarn can come to some sort of agreement. I really like Stitched Together's suggestion above. That sounds like it might be a great plan.
ReplyDeleteYou're making some impressive progress! I usually don't mind when colors pool, but I'm with you on this one. There's something off about it that I can't put my finger on. It looks so pretty in the ball, though! Maybe it needs to be a sock. ;)
ReplyDeleteI agree, the pooling is odd. It is a fabulous yarn, though! Is it meant to be sock yarn?
ReplyDeleteYou've gotten some great suggestions on how to deal with the unsightly pooling (which I agree with you, ain't so grand) - but there is, of course, another alternative. You could *crochet* a shawl with it. I am always surprised that undesirable pooling in knit fabric can almost look camo beautiful in crochet. PM me if you want pattern ideas. I've got a few in mind that you can definitely conquer and might make that colorway sing.
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