Friday, January 27, 2006

Curly Whirly Madness

Wow, has it ever been a long time since I posted here. There have been a few projects since the Cotton-Silk Challenge, some involving wool importing, but the only pics I've got on hand (or disk) are of my CWs.
This was my first one. It was an initial cast-on of 700 stitches and ended up as more of a ruffle since there was so much of this beautiful boucle from Touch Yarns that I didn't want to stop knitting when I got to the end of the decrease so I increased again... The final product was given as a gift to Jewel Staite at the Serenity Squared convention.

This was my second one which took a lot longer because, as pretty as it is, I do not enjoy working with Kidsilk Spray. I assume the same will hold for KSH and KSN too. Much too fine and fussy. This one is being modelled here by the birthday girl and recipient, Tam, who I met through Serenity functions (premiere and convention). Another reason this one took so long is that I did it on the increase - starting with 150 stitches, doubling, doubling, and doubling again. Turns out that casting off 1200 stitches in KSS takes me about four hours.

After Tam's I didn't think I'd want to do another CW for a long, long time but it was a flatmate's birthday recently (not Sarah, the flatmate pictured above, but Kylie who didn't want her picture taken) and she seemed to like the one I made for Tam. This one only took a few days. I used Wendy Jazz, a novelty yarn (shudder) which, to be fair, is exceptionally soft and comes in some lovely colours. Having learned my lesson with the increase CW, I cast on 600 stitches with this one and halved every five or six rows. Came out a little on the short side (see below) but Kylie's happy with it.