Friday, March 21, 2008

Circles Ring Round

Is it a whimple? A smoke ring? A snood?



This was the result of trying to figure out what to do with 225 yards of an exotic, handspun skein of yarn. It's clearly a nod to the Rosemary Hill's Ice Queen pattern seen in Knitty recently. I simply didn't want to knit feather and fan, yet again. It's a lovely and simply lace pattern, but I wanted something more uncommon. When I saw a stitch pattern for "wheels" in the Barbara Walker collection I, of course, saw them as circles and just had to incorporate them.

Beyond not knowing when I would run out of yarn and having to pull out the cast on edge to make adjustments- I'll write another post about an obviously wise thing I might have done to help myself out - the biggest challenge was creating smaller wheels. It wasn't as simple as I thought it would be to extract the inner rings and leave out the outer. After quite a bit of work sorting it out, I discovered that those patterns were in the book, too - albeit a bit differently than how I accomplished it. Ah well, it was worth the learning process.

I think it came out lovely, don't you? (I'll get photos of it on a person soon.)

Thursday, March 20, 2008

15 Rows to Go!

and a few buttons and weaving in of ends. But, really, almost done!

Believe me, there have been a lot of obstacles, both within the project and from without. So, it is especially sweet to see this baby heading into FO-land. Who ever knew I'd be so happy to get rid of a "U"?!

So, here she is. Esther doesn't really do her justice. Without arms you can't see how the bodice really fits.







Plus, she has this odd back end that is flat and wide. I mean flat as a counter top. I don't know any human being with this kind of anatomy. I really wouldn't mind, but what you don't get here is how flattering those lines down the back are. They highlight the feminine curve whilst also minimizing the sense of width. Also, this hasn't been blocked yet. I think the lines will be even more stunning after that.

So, 15 rows and some finishing. Once this piece is finished, I'm headed into some serious pattern writing time. I have at least a dozen patterns to publish. (Yes, I've managed to work on other things in the year that this has taken!) I'll show you one of the tomorrow....