Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Left: Rowan Tapestry for the Japanese Cape Sweater. Ordered from yarn.com. I'm back into neutrals again. The color is "Country" with bands of the softest greens and browns. Beautiful.
Middle: Brown Sheep's Wildfoote sock yarn. Purchased from a yarn store in Taos this past weekend. It had teeny tiny selection, but this is the first time I've heard or seen this sock yarn. Two different colored yarn plied together. Cheap too! 200+ yards of superwash wool and nylon for just over $6. I couldn't resist. Like the name too. So old English. I'm going to name my next cat or child Wildfoote. Whichever comes first.
Right: Trekking XXL also from yarn.com. I ordered this before I came upon the Wildefoot. They look kind of similar, but there are more colors in Trekking, and it's softer. I've never worked with it before so I'm curious. It's destined to become a pair of man socks.
The pottery mug: It's Duck's handsome new coffee mug, handmade and handpainted at Rainbow Gate. We found this beautiful store over the weekend and my mom went beserk. She looooves pottery. Turns out, I do too. We were there for over an hour and she bought a very nice dinner set for six in all the colors of the rainbow. Duck picked out the goose mug, I picked out a few things as gifts, but nothing for myself because I couldn't make up my mind, mesmerized into indecision by all the different combinations of colors and paintings. There were a few mugs with cats on them, you'd think that would be a no-brainer, but I am more into REAL cats than I am into painted cats or cat whatever knick-knacks. Just so you know.
ANYway...
Ripple Weave Socks and Correction
Tell me the truth. Can you discern the ripple pattern in this sock?
I've used the Wildefoot for the Ripple Weave sock from Fall 06 Vogue Knitting. It might be a bad choice. :(
By the way, there's an error in the chart, which I haven't seen a correction for on the website yet. The 3rd row should look like this:
Capelet Sweater, or A Lot of Number Crunching That May Not Interest You
Thanks to Japanese reader Izumi for helping me to further make heads or tails of the Cape Sweater pattern. It is the total antithesis of Debbie Bliss patterns which are all words and no charts. This is all charts and even though I can pick out the basic words, the numbers still don't add up...
The top image are instructions for decreases the cape portion, worked bottom-up. According to Izumi, 31~1 for example means, "On row 31, decreases 1 stitch once."
But there are 4 numbers total. Bear with me here as I think while I type:
31 ~ 1 ~ 10 ~ 1
First number (31) indicates row, second number (1) indicates stitch, fourth number (1) indicates how many times. What I don't know is what the third number (10) is for. Is it stitch position? If so...
The chart below is the charted version (I believe) of the decrease instructions. Green portion is for my particular pattern. If 10 means 10th position, on the chart it looks like you do a decrease after knitting 16 stitches. And then there is a little note that I think says you repeat the *k16, dec* pattern 9 times.
The numbers aren't adding up.
OH WAIT!!!!!!!! Epiphany as I'm typing this! The numbers do add up! That 3rd number tell you how many times to repeat the decrease. You are really repeating that decrease on Row 31 10 times in all! The chart illustrates the first K16, dec. Then another K16, dec and that is where it says to repeat that 9 times. So 10 in all. OK so that is what the 10 means.
YES? Hmm I'm still not 100% sure....Like if the 2nd number tells you how many stitches to decrease, and 3rd number tells you how many times to do it, what's the point of the 4th number now?
And, why does the second dec. instruction say
24 ~ 1 ~ 11 ~ 1
while on the chart the second repeat row begins on Row 55?
But 79 rows in all MINUS 55 = 24. So 24 on the chart means 24th from the top? But 31 doesn't mean 31st from the top...Whut.
And what's with the multiple dec instructions for Row 8? (Or is that 8th row from the top?) (ERGH)
Heh, are you even following me at this point?
OH WAIT ANOTHER EPIPHANY! The math also works out this way: 31 + 24 = 55. The first number is the number of rows to work AFTER THE LAST ROW YOU DECREASED. So after row 31, work 23 more rows straight, then decrease on the next (24th) row. Or in other words, decrease on row 55 as illustrated in the chart.
YES!
Dang. I'm spent. Too many ways to write the same thing. Might have been easier for me to ignore the words and just follow the chart.
Just like it's better for you to ignore the words here and just stick to the photos. That's what I would've done anyway.
I LOVE NEW MEXICO
OK I lied about keeping this entry to knitting. Just look at these bizarre rock formations.
We took my parents to the Kasha Katuwe Tent Rocks. It was an AWESOME surprise, and is now my favorite U.S. park. Better than Bandelier (which is just next to it), better than Zion, and possibly better even than the Grand Canyon!? Maybe it's apples and oranges. I say that only because Tent Rocks is accessible, small, but still incredible. And not overrun with other tourists.
I've never seen such rock formations. It is ODD. We were able to hike into it, at some points the foot trail was no wider than your foot, rock walls soared and closed in all around you, it was intimate and breathtaking. It takes a lot of effort to actually go into and especially to hike the Grand Canyon. With the Tent Rocks, you drive a few miles from the city and BAM you're right into the thick of it. We're going to make this regular, after-work hike.
Man. I can tell it's going to be hard to leave when the time comes. I'm working on convincing Duck we need to stay an extra week than he thinks we do.
Filed Under: Japanese knits | Socks | Ripple Weave | Travel | Santa Fe