Saturday, January 31, 2009

Almost there!

I've been working on, obsessing about, and basically living my earth stripe wrap. It's almost done. I decided to leave off the fringe, and put a border on. It's only one strand of kidsilk haze, on size 5 or 6 needles (needle gauge is awol, as usual...and I even got a new one!). The stole itself is on a size smaller needle, double stranded. I'm using feather and fan, in garter stitch for the border. I picked up stitches all around the stole. I can't be bothered purling for garter stitch, and since I'm changing colors each row, I don't even need to wrap and turn to knit on the wrong side, since I already have to weave in the ends...I'm just knitting a row, then turning, and adding in the new color!

I just started casting off. I did about 6 inches, and realized that I meant to use pink to cast off, but I was using the purple. And I really prefer the pink, so I had to frog, although it's not ripping, it's picking! Mohair doesn't like to ravel!

beginning borderESW

Now, if you do a bit of a swatch on the side of your work, to figure out how many stitches to pick up, and it comes out a little loose....then you pick up that way all around, and then start working feather and fan, would you be surprised that you were getting a bit of a ruffle? Well, why was I surprised? As it turns out, I think I like the ruffle. I hope so, because I don't want to frog a week's worth of mohair!

Now, here is my brilliant idea...put a safety pin through the tightening holes on Knitpicks interchangeable needles. Stitches can't fall off!

earthstripe pinned needle