Here’s my new project, up and running after three false starts. It may not look like much now, but it’s tickling me no end now that I’ve ironed out a bunch of glitches.
It’s a new yarn for me, my first alpaca project. The label says “Mystic Alpaca, quality texture from nature” and I got it on eBay from peru4less. I hoped it would be soft. It is. I didn’t know what weight it would be. Seems to be sport yarn. I didn’t know what needle size to use and decided to try whatever the label said. It said nothing!
So I played around with it and discovered after some swatching that I like what I get on US size 2 needles. And I envisioned a nice lightweight long-sleeved body skimming v-neck sweater that would keep me warm like alpaca promises to do and yet be lightweight. I recently discovered how warm and wonderful a thin silk sweater makes me feel, so I’m into exploring natural fibers.
It took me quite a while to settle on a stitch design, then hit me all at once one day while I washed dishes. It made me smile to realize I could use the bamboo rib pattern from The Encyclopedia of Knitting. I knitted socks for my daughter a couple years back and we both liked the bamboo rib socks the best.
I figured I’d invent my own pattern, but got hung up over how to knit from the top down with a V-neck. I googled it and discovered Wendy had just what I want in her Essential Stripes pattern. I knew that. I read her blog all the time. Just slow about connecting dots because she’s talking stripes and I’m talking a solid with textured knitting. Duh. Still works a treat.
So why three starts? Well, first I jumped in with both feet and started knitting without too much attention to how the ribs would work out. I bought two circular needles in size 2 when I discovered I had none, then I started knitting with one despite it being much like a corkscrew from living in a package forever. I decided to ignore that.
Wendy assumed I would be knitting plain stockinette and said to increase by knitting in the front and back of a stitch. Fine. Except it was very confusing to do that while trying to maintain my bamboo rib pattern. Then about two rows too late I realized I was supposed to do the cross rib part of the pattern. That was mistake number two. Too much for me. I started over on the second needle.
This time I looked up the pattern to make sure I was right about the pattern being a multiple of 8 plus 2. It wasn’t. It’s a multiple of 8 plus 6. So I cast on the number of stitches I needed for the repeat, once again fighting the corkscrewed coil. About two inches of knitting later, I realized the pattern has to match up when I start knitting in the round below the armholes, not at the neckline. And by then I was really tired of the confusion every time I needed to increase a stitch. While taking a bath (does water have magical properties?) I realized if I knit one stitch before and after every marker where I’m to increase, and Make one stitch out the side of that resulting rib, life would be so good. And I tried it, and I loved it.
So that led to start number three. I smartened up and put a small amount of water on to boil, dipped my stiff new circular needles in it for half a moment and almost squealed. It’s like magic how the coil relaxed. So here’s my knitting on a relaxed needle, with the suggested number of stitches, minus one in the center back for the sake of my ribbing needing 32 instead of 33, and using the Make 1 increase In Pattern as needed. It’s so much fun now! I just want to knit all day.
I love it when a project catches fire and makes me want to knit, knit, knit. Don’t you?