Sunday, October 18, 2009

Counting also helps...




On October 5th I received the third kit in the 2009 Year of Lace. This shawl is called Centrino, designed by Laura Nelkin. The yarn is Schaefer Yarn Anne, the pattern calls for 2 skeins. The yarn is 60% superwash Merino, 25% mohair and 15% nylon. I'm not a big fan of mohair (not big into fuzzy), but the fuzzy effect of the mohair is hardly noticeable. It is a circular shawl, knit from the center out.

It has been pretty easy knitting. I love working in the round, it is my usual knitting practice. This time I did use stitch markers between the pattern repeats. The only thing I did not like was starting out on double point needles, but I was able to switch to 12" circulars about half way through chart A. I also had to start over after almost making it through chart B when I realized that I was short a stitch on one of my repeats. I traced back to find the error - a missed yarn over, but it was too hard to fix it and it was just as easy to start over. I made one other mistake that caused me to rip back a couple of rows, but other than that it has been pretty smooth knitting.

If I were writing the pattern, though, I would have called for 12" and 16" circular needles, in addition to the 24" and 47".

After the mistakes I started counting as I knitted, and when I got to chart D I actually wrote the number of stitches between the yarn-overs and decreases. So far it has kept me out of trouble.