Sunday, October 26, 2008

You Said This Would Happen, and You Were Not Wrong

Tapestry Cowel


I've been playing catchup all week since getting back from Boston, and I keep telling myself that I haven't worked on Liberty (or much of anything) because I just don't have the energy to concentrate on stranded knitting. Then, on Thursday or Friday I saw the Tapestry Cowl on Ravelry, and all of a sudden I was up and running on a project that involves a much more complicated chart using a cast on I'd never done and a technique I've never used. Why not?

The cowl is double-knit, so the inside and outside layers are knit at the same time, on the same needles, with the pattern in opposite colors. Until the colorwork starts, the inside and outside are completely independent--it's very cool. When there's blue on the outside, there's green on the inside, and both sides are stockinette. Yes, the straw-looking color is really a celery green.

I'm using some Alpaca Silk that I bought while on vacation in August. I think that I probably should have gone down a needle size, as the cowl seems pretty big, but I'm going to knit a little more before I even think about ripping! I think that it will tighten up a bit in the patterned area, because there won't be as much give.

Initially, I thought that this would make a great Christmas gift, but with 220 stitches per row it's pretty slow going. I've not had concentrated knitting time this weekend, but I still expected to be further along. I don't think I'll have time to finish this, and work on Liberty, and finish the other things on my plate for Christmas--and let's not even discuss the Halloween projects, which I'm going to go and work on right this minute. Right after I finish that cotton coaster that I started a couple of hours ago . . .

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You Said This Would Happen, and You Were Not Wrong: "Little Time Bomb", Billy Bragg. A slower, video version here.

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