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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Repetition

I am still in the middle of my deadline project (the one I can't show you), but at least the end is in sight. My self-imposed goal to finish it is this week; I'd like to have it done by Thursday at the latest so I have time to block it and let it dry in time to get it in the mail by Saturday. It has to cross the Atlantic to its final destination, and I'm anxious not to hold it up any longer than I have to (the original deadline for the sample and pattern was this Friday, but the editor gave me an extension due to the lateness in the arrival of the yarn).

While I can't really tell you much about the knitting, I can talk about the yarn, which I've really been enjoying. It's Debbie Bliss Rialto DK, a really round and bouncy 100% superwash merino. It's a cabled yarn, meaning that it's made up of a bunch of two-ply strands twisted together. That construction makes it a bit messier when you're trying to weave in ends (there's a tendency for the cut end to fray quite a bit), but the stitch definition is excellent. It's been a while since I've knit with any Debbie Bliss yarns, mainly due to lack of local availability; there was a time when her yarns were among my favorites. I'm working this item at a fairly dense gauge for a DK-weight yarn, six stitches per inch, largely because my colors are white and a dark teal and I wanted the fabric to be dense enough that the dark color wouldn't show through the light. The fabric I'm getting is nice and squishy and very soft, and I think I can coax a bit of extra width and/or length out of it when I block it.

I did spend a couple of hours on my Waiting for Rain over the weekend, though it hasn't seemed to make much of a dent thanks to the length of the rows. Once the deadline project is off the needles, it'll be getting most of my attention until I can finish it up. I'm hopeful that the long weekend will help with that.


I am also planning ahead to the next collection design to go on the needles, which will very likely be the mittens to go with the hat you saw last week. I've got to do a little math first and figure out how many sizes I can do given that I need to accommodate a certain stitch repeat for the colorwork motif. I officially apologize to the math teachers I had years ago who I told I would never use math once I finished high school!

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