Sunday, September 18, 2005
yes, i'm nocturnal now
I am not mentioning my job search in this post. You may interpret that in as negative a fashion as you want, and it'll probably be true.
argh.
I've had about as much luck with my current project for String (a burgundy men's vest in Filatura Di Crosa cashmere, mmmmm) as I have with that thing I'm not mentioning. I swear to god, I've never had this much trouble with gauge in my life. I have almost textbook tension these days; I rarely have to switch needle size to get my gauge. This makes me very happy. So when Ivete said I'd probably get my 4.75 sts/" on a 7 needle, I took her word on it. I swatched, it was tight, so I went up to an 8. This seemed fine when I swatched, but by the time I got up to the armpits I realized the back was a couple inches too small. I frogged and went to a 9; same thing happened, except that I noticed only a few inches into the body. Now I'm on a 10 and just barely making gauge with a pretty loose fabric. It's driving me absolutely mad, because I've gone up 3 needle sizes and only picked up like a quarter of a stitch. After two weeks of knitting, I've only just finished the back. It makes me a little miserable.
On the bright side, my Alpaca Cloud showed up yesterday (er, it probably showed up on like Tuesday, but I only made it to the post office yesterday), and... wow. It's so soft and lovely and alpacalicious (and after this much cashmere, me praising softness is a big deal). But um... okay, I knew laceweight was thinner than sockweight. I knew it was meant to knit up light and loose on biggish needles. But like... I've seen sewing thread thicker than this stuff. A teeny part of me is afraid it'll break if I blow on it too hard. I almost never get intimidated by knitting these days, but geez, color me scared.
Not letting that scare me away, though, because my craving for a lace shawl grows every day. (This might be due in part to my wanting to one-up the vastly overpriced travesty the Gap is calling a shawl this season.) So I'm open to pattern suggestions -- I'm eyeing Fiddlesticks' Peacock and Lotus Blossom shawls right off the bat (I actually prefer Flirty Ruffles to either of them, but I have neither enough yarn nor enough money to justify ordering another hank). I'm looking for a semi-circle/Faroese style, something pretty and fairly abstract and interesting, and the cheaper, the better. So, let's hear it!
Lauren posted at 3.16 on 09.18.05
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