Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The Joy of Swatching
Or maybe I should say the pain and agony of swatching.
After seriously contemplating joining the Design your own Tank KAL at Knitting Help, I finally decided to just go ahead and knit Calla from MagKnits instead. I realized I was spending way too much time trying to design my own version of Calla. It's a lot less brain damage for me to knit Calla rather than "reinventing the wheel." Plus, the cool thing about knitting is that I don't have to design my own FO's unlike scrapbooking in which it's always considered best to design your own layout, techniques, paper, embellishments, and so on. Of course, I'm being a little facetious, but I love the freedom of being able to do whatever I want with knitting without worrying about some "police" judging my work. It's very liberating.
Anyway, I digress. Back to the swatching. Since I'm working with Debbie Bliss Wool/Cotton (which I recently learned has been discontinued) and it's not the same gauge as the original Calla, I have been forced to make a swatch. I didn't think I could find the original yarn locally, but I did find a great sale on the Debbie Bliss at my LYS, which is sadly going out of business. So far I have attempted at least 5 different swatches, but I keep frogging them all. And I'm not even frogging because of needle size. I'm just trying to get used to the cable and lace pattern and restarting it after I make a mistake. Plus, I'm attempting to alter the pattern for knitting in the round. I find it rather frustrating to make swatches knitted in the round because of all the extra strings hanging in the back. The funny thing is that all of this effort for the last 4 days has thrown me back into scrapbooking. I attempted to make my first page in a long time last night. It's not going well either. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I'll figure out something tonight especially since it's TV Turn Off Week for Clark, and we're all working at not watching TV, although honestly it's much more difficult for me to not get on the computer. Leave it to me to finally try to catch up on my blog during TV Turn Off Week, when I'm not even supposed to be on the computer! So don't tell Clark, but I will work at trying to get caught up, since I have a lot of completed objects to post photos on.
After seriously contemplating joining the Design your own Tank KAL at Knitting Help, I finally decided to just go ahead and knit Calla from MagKnits instead. I realized I was spending way too much time trying to design my own version of Calla. It's a lot less brain damage for me to knit Calla rather than "reinventing the wheel." Plus, the cool thing about knitting is that I don't have to design my own FO's unlike scrapbooking in which it's always considered best to design your own layout, techniques, paper, embellishments, and so on. Of course, I'm being a little facetious, but I love the freedom of being able to do whatever I want with knitting without worrying about some "police" judging my work. It's very liberating.
Anyway, I digress. Back to the swatching. Since I'm working with Debbie Bliss Wool/Cotton (which I recently learned has been discontinued) and it's not the same gauge as the original Calla, I have been forced to make a swatch. I didn't think I could find the original yarn locally, but I did find a great sale on the Debbie Bliss at my LYS, which is sadly going out of business. So far I have attempted at least 5 different swatches, but I keep frogging them all. And I'm not even frogging because of needle size. I'm just trying to get used to the cable and lace pattern and restarting it after I make a mistake. Plus, I'm attempting to alter the pattern for knitting in the round. I find it rather frustrating to make swatches knitted in the round because of all the extra strings hanging in the back. The funny thing is that all of this effort for the last 4 days has thrown me back into scrapbooking. I attempted to make my first page in a long time last night. It's not going well either. Oh well, back to the drawing board. I'll figure out something tonight especially since it's TV Turn Off Week for Clark, and we're all working at not watching TV, although honestly it's much more difficult for me to not get on the computer. Leave it to me to finally try to catch up on my blog during TV Turn Off Week, when I'm not even supposed to be on the computer! So don't tell Clark, but I will work at trying to get caught up, since I have a lot of completed objects to post photos on.
