The other day, I made my first sight-unseen yarn purchase. Yes that's right, I bought yarn without first having the opportunity to fondle it. I don't think I'm going to make a habit of it, especially as I have so many great yarn stores at my disposal here in the city, but I was too impatient to order a sample card, or track down a store that carried it, so I took the plunge and I'm kind of excited to see what I bought.
The yarn is Rowan Felted Tweed and I bought 1 skein each of 156 wheat, 143 cocoa, 142 melody and 146 herb (I actually ordered from Yarn Market after comparing a few other online sites - it wasn't the cheapest but not all the other sites had all the colors I wanted). I totally ripped off this idea from Nona Knits. I came across her site during a random search and wander mission (I haven't really figured out the lay of the knitting blog land yet, in fact, I don't even have a handle on RSS and feeds and all that kind of stuff that I imagine makes keeping track of blogs easier). Nona made an impression on me in part because of Nona Swatches where she posts a different swatch daily - I love her "improvisational knitting" and she uses gorgeous colors.
But it was her version of Uniscarfity that she knit for the first round of a Knit-Off (check the home page for updates) that really had me enraptured. I totally fell in love with what she did and thus was inspired to order the same yarn to, yes, knit the same scarf. Is such blatant plagiarism allowed in knitting land? Hopefully I won't be disappointed when the yarn actually arrives.
As for Uniscarfity, well, apparently there are some rumblings online (ok only one rumbling that I found) that it's not really a pattern, it's a stitch. Regardless, I tried knitting it up out of my blue and white Shepherd's Worsted and, well, the first swatch was a DISASTER!! It came out looking nothing like the pattern. I was very confused about the yarn overs especially because they were followed by a slip stitch. I also found the pattern itself hard to follow with the way it was written so made myself a diagram like this:
Anyway, it was pretty obvious that the Susan Bates description of yarn overs was onky going to take me so far. I needed help and luckily, help was at hand only a few clicks away via a google search. This site gave me some helpful information on both the brioche stitch and yarn overs in general and combined with wikipedia's take on both these things (here and here) I managed to figure it out. Yippee! Alas my joy was short lived as that evening, when I tried to continue the swatch while watching tv, something got screwed up and all was shot to hell.
I did also try this alternate and much simpler method of achieving the same pattern. Yes, it seems to be same pattern, and it’s a much much easier way of knitting it, but the way you knit the stitch below rather than slipping stitches means the stitches are not as clear, they are kind of bunched up, so unfortunately I don’t think it’s a good alternative.
Right now I'm back to my nice simple mindless 2x2 ribbed scarf. I'll return to the brioche stitch with my new yarn. My one consolation is that apparently many people in the knit-off struggled with the pattern. Now, I see it as a challenge I am determined to conquer!
Pleased to be your one rumbling ;) I do plan to swatch it someday, but stitch patterns presented as an object pattern are a pet peeve for me. Oh well... Hope you figure it out soon!
Posted by: bellamoden | Monday, May 14, 2007 at 01:28 PM
What a pity I miss seeing all those gorgeous knits! Thanks for sharing the photos.
Posted by: Jordans 2 | Sunday, June 06, 2010 at 09:41 PM