July 22, 2008
Nuance
Those of us who dabble in photography consider light both our best friend, and our worst enemy. Truth be told, I have been less than thrilled with my photographs of the 21-25 scarf, or more specifically, the gorgeous yarn from which it's knit: the colors have been coming out too uniform, too flat. The oomph and pop and interest that I see in real life have not materialized very well in two-dimensional images.
While knitting this weekend, I finally realized the issue: I have been blasting the project with too much light! I've been putting the fabric against a light-colored background, and illuminating it with as many lamps as possible. This, I think, creates too much contrast and everything "dark", no matter how many different tones comprise this "darkness", comes out looking uniformly black! The expression "harsh lighting" comes to mind.
But look at what I got when I placed the knitting against black fabric, and snapped a photo on a very overcast night, at dusk:
The image has been cropped slightly, but I didn't find it necessary to do any color corrections with a manual exposure of 1/500 sec, ISO 800.
The color nuances amaze me. Do you see them, too? Grays, purples, browns, blues? So moody and dark! That's talented dyeing, I tell you!
I specifically worked on getting a few shots of the border for you, because that's an area where I've made some changes to the pattern, and I wanted to share them with you.
As you remember, my mild case of tetraphobia combined with a limited supply of yarn resulted in my decision to make the scarf a bit more narrow than prescribed. Specifically, the pattern's 4 border repeats result in 58 stitches in the center of the scarf. In contrast, my 3 border repeats evolved into 44 center stitches, 14 fewer. (Yeah, that's a whole lot of evil fours to battle, I know! Fortunately, 44 stitches are not as immediately obvious as, say, 4 border repeats!)
Where was the nipping 'n tucking? Unfortunately, VLT
The eliminated stitches are highlighted in purple. I nixed a column of eyelets on each side, so that the main pattern is surrounded by 3 columns to the left and right instead of 4 (surprised??). I also ditched the garter stitch border, because I felt the fabric had enough stability from those wedge-shaped indentations (also garter stitch). And at the end, my version looks like this:
Pardon the wrinkles: this scarf is far from complete, and certainly not blocked. Not even pinned, just smoothed out with my hands!
July 18, 2008
Eye Candy Friday: relief edition
I don't think I've ever been as happy as I am right now to see two completed sock toes! Two sock toes which belong to two identical socks, I should add, with a little ball of leftover yarn to boot! I really couldn't stomach another frog-a-thon, so let's hear a big "whew!" for the finished Belle Époques!
As you know, the Maths and I are BFF, and once again I was not disappointed with their powers. Miraculously (or is it, predictably?) all the calculations worked out and I got as much fabric out of the JitterBug skein as I possibly could. The little ball of leftover yarn weighs in at 3.3 grams, and each repeat of the pattern takes 2.8 grams, so I couldn't have squeezed in another repeat (for both socks) even if I wanted to.
Not that I would want to! Currently the socks have 13 repeats each, which is an excellent number in my book. If I added one more, that would make 14, which, naturally, sucks. Not as much as 4 because it's tempered with the goodness of 1, but close. It's weird, I know.
I'll show you just how good 13 looks after the socks are blocked! The stitches are a bit wrinkled from all the frogging, so a long soak is in order. Until then, since it's an Eye Candy Friday post, here's the same photo as above, but with a bit of processing to highlight the gorgeous bursts of red in this colorway:
July 10, 2008
Chicken
And after all was weighed, calculated, and planned, I decided to frog the first sock and re-knit it to match the shorter one.
The decision was instantaneous. Well, I first tried to thread a lifeline through the round in question for 15 minutes, but after that, it only took an instant to frog the majority of that first sock!
If you've ever tried to knit (or frog!) something from the "opposite direction" - not from where you were last knitting, but from the cast-on edge - then you know that stockinette loops look the same whether you're working up or down. Ribbing is trickier, because the working loops are between knits and purls - it just looks odd, but functions okay (as long as you aren't trying to knit more ribbing, because it will never match up).
In the case of Belle Époque, however, I was dealing with eyelets and decreases, patterned on every round, which proved to be beyond my level of patience and persistence. Fifteen minutes later, I declared, "not worth it!" and frogged with absolute assurance! As far as I was concerned, this was the one and only solution all along ;).
Every good plan needs a Plan B, right? Can't say the Maths were wasted, since I still would have needed to crunch the numbers to know how much to frog ;).
Yes, I have several sets of those dpns, for situations just like this one, and for multiple WIPS, should the need arise. No, I don't recommend walking around with that getup on your feet. Not because you might trip and fall, or stab yourself... but because the needle will slip right out and you'll lose your stitches!
