Rip It Good

Work In Progress Wednesday #18

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Before I begin, I want to plug my guest-post over at the Toonopolis Blog, in which I review an old cartoon for Jeremy: The Pirates of Dark Water. Jer’s always looking for guest poster to review older cartoons, so if you’re interested, be sure to let him know!

Now then: down to business.

I finally remembered to take a group shot of what I worked on this week along with what I am reading this week.  This is for the Yarn Along meme.

On the nook, we have Shelby and Shauna Kitt and the Dimensional Holes by P.H.C. Marchesi, which I am reading as part of a Read-A-Thon with Back of the Book Reviews. It’s part of their book list. Have to find out if books not on their list count. Anyway, it’s science fiction and has some interesting ideas. Sometimes I feel like I’m being smacked around by adverbs, but I’m genuinely interested in how a group of positive-energy kids save the world from mean old unhappy monsters. :)

Normally I don’t have more than one physical book going at a time, but my nook needing charging so I started in on Mogworld by Yahtzee Croshaw, which was one of my birthday presents. Love it so far! It’s a great parody of RPGs/MMORPGs and the high-fantasy genre already.  I’ve only gotten through like 30 pages and I keep giggling at it. :)

Not shown in the group shot:

My phone continues to not warp the color too badly.

As for the rest of what’s in the shot, it’s hard to tell but I got 6 or 7 rows of the Adelei shawl done and have about 15 rows left. Still worried about the yarn yardage, but as I’m doing this on 4s and not 5s like I thought, I’m thinking that I ought to be okay.

One thing I did change for the second set of leaves is very visible. I initially was doing the M3 as knit into the front and back and front of the stitch similar to how you would for a nupp, which resulted in a more closed center of the leaves. For the second set of leaves, I tried the knit/purl/knit into the front way, which left a hole up the center. I like this effect even though it doesn’t match now because I think it helps differentiate the leaf sections, since this second set lacks the YOs on the edges.

Also this week, I started a new project. Initially it was going to be Baile, but I chickened out and decided I’d never finish it since it was knit on size 3 needles. Instead, I am switching to the Spiderweb Skirt, which is similar with it’s slimming upper portion and lacy lower portion. Maybe I’ll make Baile someday, but not for a while.

Swatch in CotLin: Blackberry

I started off making the swatch as written in the pattern, and I came out to about 14-16 stitches for 4 inches and 16-18 rows for 4 inches (depending on how I stretched) . I figured I ought to make the size 44 because of how small my swatch was, but this was not to be.

Starting off in CotLin: Black

My stupid, stupid brain tried to make up for the crappy stitch count, and after chaining 120 foundation stitches I realized, “Oh hey, this is totally bigger than the widest part of my thighs (which is where the patterns says this will sit)!” In fact, it is big enough to go over the widest part of my hips even after crocheting 10 rows, and the pattern has increases to help it get over the bum, so if I manage to keep this stitch gauge it will fit fine.

Proof that this thing is fitting where I want.

The problem is that starting off with 120 stitches is the pattern for the size 39, which is nowhere near the predicted size 44 or even my regular size of 41 at the hips. SIGH.  So I’ve went with the size 39, trying to keep my gauge loose. I’m likely going to have to make up the row gauge, but that shouldn’t be too bad. The weight of this skirt will pull on the fabric some, so I might just add a few extra rows here and there to help make up for some lost inches while unstretched.  This first block calls for 14 rows, and in gauge this means it should be 4 inches, but it ain’t gonna be 4 inches. Bleh.

For more works in progress, check out Tami’s Amis WIP Wednesday post for this week!

Tami's Ami's WIP Wednesday

7 Comments

  1. Your shawl looks great! I always have a hard time deciding which increases to use when they aren’t specific in the pattern.

  2. I can’t imagine doing either skirt!
    The shawl is looking lovely.

  3. I hate when gauge issues seem to make no sense. Hope you manage to figure it out, because it is a very pretty skirt :)

  4. Ooo, I like the Spiderweb skirt even better!!

    I LOVED Prince of Hazel and Oak, but I didn’t realize there wasn’t another book already out when I finished it. I raced to the Kindle to find I had to wait until NEXT YEAR!! *faints*

    • I listened to the free podiobook for Shadowmagic YEARS ago when podiobooks.com was still pretty young. I didn’t discover there was a sequel until just last month, so I re-listened to Shadowmagic and then picked up the sequel. I don’t mind waiting a year for the third one. :)

  5. ow…my head hurts. If I had to classify my yarning habits it would definitely be A Wing and A Prayer or maybe Anything But Algebra or perhaps Math Belongs in Mothballs, Not in Malabrigo. ;)

  6. I have no doubt you’ll work the needed changes out. It’ll be great to watch you de-construct the pattern and make it fit for you.

    The shawl — lovely work as usual.

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