Proceed At Your Own Peril
The downside of knitting without following a written pattern reared its ugly head for me this weekend.
There’s been a rash of pregnancies and newborn babies in my circle of younger acquaintances and I had the clever idea to design and knit a baby blanket for one newborn. After looking through some baby patterns and finding nothing I particularly liked, I decided to just wing it and design it as I knit. I was limited only by the yardage of my chosen yarn–an aran weight wool.
It was a nice, mindless, take-along project until I decided to get fancy and insert an intricate lace pattern into the piece. I probably should have practiced on some waste yarn before diving ahead on the actual blanket, which at that point consisted of more than 400 live stitches.
The mechanics of the stitch pattern worked out fine, but I just don’t *heart* the way it looks. So, one skein of yarn and many hours later, I’m looking at the frog pond. But to ease the pain, I did what any illogical, disorganized knitter would do . . . I cast on a new project.
Yup, the tried and true Forest Canopy Shawl. Sometimes you just gotta give in to the comfort of familiarity.
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17 comments Susan | knitting, shawls
Grrl…that is the truth. Designing by the seat of ones pants can lead to major proplems. Glad I’m not the only one.;-)
I can only sympathize. I have many family members also somehow catching this strange “pregnancy” flu. At my sister’s blessing party, there were at least three, if not four very rotund bellies that carried small people in them and I shudder to imagine trying to knit for them all.
Enjoy your shawl, it is a very good pattern.
Bummer about the blanket.
i *double heart* the Forest Canopy. still working on my red on in red Cotton Ease, yeah RED
remember your baby hat with the star on top? someone reminded me of it on the about dot com forum. i plan to start that as soon as my hands heal up a bit from the fall i had on monday. ouch my thumb,!!!
There should be a law against bunches of babies popping up.
I’m stalled on my (smaller gauge) Forest Canopy (long, long, rows) and might whip out one in a more appropriate yarn.
I love to use soft shawl patterns for baby afghans. I particularly like those that have a solid center of stockinette or garter stitch with a lace border and edging and ROUND is so impressive and wraps a baby so nicely.
I’m sure the sting of frogging a design concept isn’t new to you Susan, with all the great patterns you’ve created. I’m trying to design something right now and I never realized how many times it must be frogged and/or restarted due to pattern tweaks, etc, and this isn’t even anything complicated.
Ah, an illogical and disorganized knitter, one of my own kind.
Based on all of your beautiful designs, I’m sure the baby blanket is just a minor setback.
Oh, do I ever know that of which you speak. Not fun. However, to make you feel better, my FCSS is the same size as yours in the pic–but I’ve knit a whole lot more stitches on it than you have. ;o)
I somehow can’t imagine you either illogical OR disorganized…. but whatevah. You’ll get it turned around. I feel sure. And you have that lovely lace to entertain you until then.
PS – Zephyr is drying today.
Oh, man. I’m so sorry. Forest Canopy, here you come!
Hey, nothing wrong with casting on a new project, right? Who cares if you have another 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6) on the needles. Variety is the spice of life, “They” say. Maybe They are right for once! The Forest Canopy shawl is lovely…Think I’ll go home and cast on a new project of my own!
I’m fighting the urge (but really I’m not fighting that hard…) to cast on Forest Canopy. What the hell. I’m off to find some needles and yarn now!
Speaking of Forest Canopy, I was wondering if it’s one of those patterns where the edging is keyed to the pattern repeat, so you can knit as many full repeats you like and not have to do Dreaded Math to make the edging work…?
I hear you. When the knitting gets weird, I cast on socks.
I wish I could design period. You should give lessons.
I so agree about the familiarity of your Forest Canopy Shoulder Shawl. I am a big fan of your wonderful design and find your Forest Canopy pattern to be a really fun knit! Thank you for your lovely comments about my 2 shoulder shawls.