Follow a Pattern? Do Not Comprehend.

I know that it's stating the obvious when I say that there are many many many beautifully designed patterns out there. When I try to follow them it's like opening Pandora's box and the only contents are opportunities for me to screw up.

My friend Edith knit sweaters as a teenager and sold them in the black market in Belgium to survive WWII. She didn't follow a pattern. She just knit them. Many times she had to remember the size of the person she was knitting for and couldn't take measurements. The first blog I ever read was Wendy Bernard's Knit and Tonic so I've come to believe "it's not really knitting unless you do a little designing on the side."

When I was at Bloomin' Yarns I bought 2400 yards of Noro thinking- I'll just follow EPS or Barbara Walker. I hate following patterns.

Thus red-wine Malabrigo Salt Peanuts was frogged and I cast on for a top down pullover SWEARING to myself that I really need to do a few more of these so that I get the basics down before I start messing around with it.

Then the 365 stitches a year calendar started eep eeping from under the desk. Pesky stitch calendar.



It's hard to see, but what's going on here is your basic stockinette top down yoke with what the calendar calls "woven stitch 2" from September 11.

Did I swatch with this? Absolutely not. (I did swatch the stockinette) Do I have any idea how this stitch will behave in this garment in the end? Only instinct and well... let's not go there. Do I know how the sleeves will work? What about the collar? How about the bottom? No,no and again, no. At least, however, I know that these are things that I SHOULD know which shows progress.

At one point the thought crossed my mind to steek a V neck into the yoke and do the woven stitch up and around. The jury is still out on that.

They say that those who have lived with chaos in the past are destined to seek it out again and again, proving that they can control the situation. I've managed to get a handle on some of life's chaos. Knitting chaos? Not so much.




Seems like no matter the light, malabrigo doesn't photograph well in garments. All those pesky shadings making it look like bad variegated yarn. I do however, like what the stitch pattern does to the pooling, so that's a bonus.

Experimentation also allowed me to play with the light settings on the camera (along with the stage of what I thought was going to be the Best Shadow Puppet Theater Ever) and I was able to get close on the colors that I hope will be the Adult Surprise Jacket. Did I note every setting so that I would know which one will work next time? Please refer to the above thoughts on chaos.



I thought I was going to wait until good lighting and finished fabulousness to post- given that we may not have that until April, I jumped in.