Hanami, and new directions

So, Hanami is blocked at last:


The good:

• OMG, the fabric is so lovely. The drape! The silkiness! And it is so lightweight and non-bulky!


• It looks basically just as advertised -- the petal effect is absolutely charming.


• My "mistakes" in the final dense-yarnover portion totally worked -- the effect is much more random-looking than in the pattern photo.


• It's done!

The bad:

• I blocked it out to a rectangle, but because of the relative tension of the middle (low-yarnover-density) section and the end (high-yarnover-density) sections, it was really hard to block so that the width stayed even top to bottom, and I wasn't comfortable with the amount of tugging I had to do.


• It's not as big as it was supposed to be. This is largely my fault, but seriously, I'm unconvinced of the utility of gauge swatches for lace. Maybe this is just because I don't like to swatch. But still! A 10x10" square of lace doesn't act the same as a 19x70" rectangle. It just doesn't! And I don't know how I could have gotten the same number of stitches/inch in both ends and the middle.


• It's a little itchy.

If I had it to make again, I'd do something different in the middle. Maybe I'd go up a needle size or two, maybe I'd even increase a few stitches at the beginning of the petal section (leave out a few decreases?). I really like the finished object (wore it to work today, even), but I wouldn't make it again as designed.

New things
So, I said I was going to learn myself to knit continental. And it's going pretty well -- I knit another Bzzz Hat with the yarn in my left hand almost the whole time. I'm also working on a simple 3x3 rib scarf in Noro Silk Garden. I love Noro yarns -- somehow they manage to make hot pink and acid green look like earth tones, and it is so cool. I'm going to start a Wisp out of the mohair-blend stuff I dyed a couple weeks back:

I want to see if I can handle decreases in continental. (I did not have fun with the decreases for the Bzzz Hat, but partly that's because I was doing them on two circs, which I don't really like but I was literally too lazy to go in the other room to get my dpns. I know.)

Today I made myself a needle wallet, because I was annoyed that I couldn't find all my 000 dpns. So hopefully this will help me hold onto my needles. I'm also going to get rid of some older Susan Bates aluminum needles, in case anyone wants them (I don't).

Coming soon
I think I'm going to try a Dale of Norway ski sweater. I really like the women's Sapporo pullover in the red and gold colorway, as seen here. I've been wanting to do a big colorwork project, and this seems like a really cool one. Now there's just the question of yarn -- I could make it in the recommended yarn (Daletta, by Dale obv.) but I could probably make it cheaper in something else. But I can't find any local shops that carry Daletta to see what would work for a substitution. If, say, I made it in a Knitpicks yarn, it might cost around $30-$40, as opposed to $80-$90 for the Daletta. Assuming there's a sensible yarn to substitute, which is hard to say when you've never seen the other yarn. I'm going to check A Good Yarn tomorrow and maybe call over to Woolcott to see if anyone can show me some Daletta.

And another thing
I never posted my finished Blackberry Mittens!

Bonus points to anyone who notices the slightly glaring error...

The project I haven't been talking about

Well, that title makes it sound awfully dramatic, but actually it's just a project I rediscovered half-finished and have been working on off-and-on but never really posted about here. It's the Blackberry Mitten from Blackberry Ridge Woolen Mill.


I like them. They should go faster than they do, but I keep getting poor gauge (too big! still too big! too small! still kind of small! screw it!) and ripping the mitten back out and starting over. I know, I know, I should swatch -- but it would take me almost as long to swatch as it does to knit the whole cuff of the mitten. I rarely bother with swatches for small projects and unsized projects. Sweaters, absolutely. Tricky lace patterns that I'd like to get right before I cast on 200 stitches, sure. But seriously, the thought of ripping out four inches of mitten holds little fear for me.

One thing I like about this mitten is the braid detail. Check it out -- it's created by purling in alternating MC and CC with the yarn floated on the right side and twisted. On taking this picture, I notice that I've messed up the twist direction -- see over on the left-hand side? Maybe I should rip them out again -- that would make this the fourth or fifth time I've started this mitten. Imagine how quickly the left-hand one will go.

One thing I don't like so much about this mitten is the fair isle pattern. The floats are as much as nine stitches. I know that once I finish this will felt a bit and that won't be a problem, but I don't like it while I'm knitting. It does weird things to my tension.

Also in the up-close picture, I notice how hairy this mitten looks! Partly this is just the yarn. I like Blackberry Ridge yarns a lot -- they are wonderfully springy, the colors are nothing crazy or exciting but they're very attractive, and the yarns are both spun in the US and reasonably priced, which is nice -- but they can be a little on the scratchy side. Part of the hairiness is that I left this project out on the couch, with predictable results re: cat hair.

I was looking at the Blackberry Ridge website right now, and I noticed this pattern, which I am instantly in love with: Pine Tree Double Knit Mitten. It's a pretty obvious pattern, and I could do it on my own. On the other hand, I do like to support designers.

That's why I bought a totally adorable pattern yesterday at The Yarn Basket in Portsmouth. Check it out: Child's Kitty Cat Pullover. I just thought that cat had so much personality. I could have made something similar on my own but it might not have quite so much personality, and again, I hate to copy, especially from small-time people (I would have much less guilt about copying from commercial RTW designers, although I almost never do this, because usually the RTW patterns I like would be really boring and/or expensive to knit myself). Anyhow, I have no particular child in mind for the sweater, I just thought it was cute. And the yarn store woman said that the designer used to work in that very store.

Sadly, I didn't think to ask the yarn store to validate our parking, so we had to pay the full $1.50 on exiting the garage. Traumatic!