Mayan Garden - Beauty Shots

And here it is, off the blocking mats.


Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm), US 5 (3.75 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Finished!

All done and blocking!  Blocking circular shawls, or capes, is always challenging, but I try not to get too obsessive about it.  I lay out the shawl as closely as I can and start pinning, always listening to the fabric and not forcing it to do anything it really doesn't want to.  Take that keyhole where the front edges don't meet - I believe that is a result of the way the increases are done in this pattern and perhaps also partly due to the fact that I did not increase my needle size until the last couple of charts.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm), US 5 (3.75 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 14 Done

I made it part way through the 4th row of Chart 14 before I had to switch to skein 5 - row 174.  Just one more chart.  This time next week it should be done and blocked.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm), US 5 (3.75 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 13 Done

I have been working pretty steadily on Chart 13 this week, plugging away at the long rows - 759 stitches per row, if I've done the math right.  I switched to skein 4 at the beginning of the increase row between charts 12 and 13 and only have 10 grams of a 75 gram skein left.  Each row took almost 3.5 grams of yarn.  I'll switch to skein 5 somewhere in the 3rd row of Chart 14 and that chart will consume about 40 grams of yarn, so I'll be almost half way through skein 5 when I start Chart 15.  Chart 15 starts with another increase row, so the yarn consumption is going to go up once again - to almost 4 grams of yarn per row, so I will switch to skein 6 a row or two before the end of Chart 15.  Of course, that assumes that I don't increase the needle size again when I start Chart 15, but even if I do go up a needle size, I will still have a comfortable margin to finish the cape.


Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm), US 5 (3.75 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 12 Done

Despite being 13 rows, Chart 12 worked up very quickly, mostly because there was not a lot of patterning, and only two rows with beads.  I'm going up a needle size with the start of Chart 13 because there is a lot more patterning, and I may go up another needle size before I'm done.  It all depends on how the fabric is turning out.  I will be switching to skein 4 during this chart.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 11 Done

It has been over a month since I have worked on this project.  I finished Chart 10 on Sunday February 9.  I'm not really sure why I have let it languish for so long.  Regardless, yesterday I picked it back up again and whipped out three of the four rows of chart 11 and this morning I did the fourth row.  This is the last of the short charts.  Chart 12 has 13 rows.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 10 Done

Lest anyone think that I have totally given up knitting for jewelry and beading, I have been knitting as well.  I actually knit Chart 10 last weekend, while watching the game, but only got around to photographing it this afternoon.  Things get interesting again with the next chart - more patterning and beads.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 9 Done

I'm liking these short easy charts.  Quick and steady progress is always a good thing.  I started skein 3 on this chart so the gray is starting to come in, exactly where I wanted it to.  When I looked at this pattern this section seemed to me to be vines growing over ruins.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 8 Done

This last chart was a pretty quick and easy knit and most of the wrong side rows were rest rows.  I tried to spread it out so the vine motif could be seen.  I've almost used up all of the second skein so I will need to go wind skein 3 before I start knitting again.


Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 7 Done

The careful observer may have noticed that I made a mistake when I was working Chart 6 - I did the cabling on every one of the "vines" rather than just on every other one - so before I started Chart 7 I had to fix that.  It wasn't that hard, I slipped the stitches one at time to the other needle, and uncabled the cables when I came to them.  The only hard part was when I uncabled a cable that I wasn't supposed to and had to recable it.  Then I screwed up the three stitch crossing cables on the first row of Chart 7, but I didn't realize it until I was working the next right side row.  I tried to ignore it and tell myself it didn't really matter, but of course it did, so on the last row I fixed it.  It wasn't that hard.  The central purl stitch needed to be behind both of the crossing knit stitches, rather than between them.  I simply dropped that one stitch, laddered it down, fished it out from between the knit stitches and hooked it back up again.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 6 Done

As I said, the charts are getting shorter even though the rows are getting longer.  This one was only 6 rows, and most of them easy knitting.  The second to last row had cabling.  I decided to do real cables rather than the twisted stitch variety.  The next chart has more cabling and beads, so it will take a little longer.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 5 Done

I finished up Chart 5 yesterday while watching the AFC Championship game.  Even though the rows are getting longer (I'm using 60 inch cables and still cannot stretch it out all the way), the charts are getting shorter - at least for the next couple of charts.  The end of Chart 5 starts a new phase of the pattern - vines on a reverse stockinette stitch background.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 4 Done

Even though the latest Unique Sheep Mystery Knit Along started this past Friday, I am going to stay focused on my Mayan Garden Cape.  I really don't like doing more than one lace project at the same time.  This weekend I knit Chart 4.  Now that I have gotten the hang of the pattern things click along at a pretty good pace.  I made it through the first 4 clues with the first skein of yarn from my set.  I'll be switching to skein 2 on the first row of Chart 5.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 3 Done

I've gotten back in to my habit of working lace on the weekend.  Saturday morning is usually dedicated to lace while I listen to NPR.  We like Car Talk and Wait Wait.  This clue was easier than the previous two, I think I'm getting the rhythm of the pattern.  I am almost done with the first skein.  I'm going to use up each skein as I go, which should pretty much guarantee that I won't run out of yarn, although I do run the risk of ending up with a lot of the last skein left over but I can live with that.  The pattern calls for going up a needle size on row 69 of this clue, but I did not do that.  From what I saw on the forum, you don't really need to increase the needle size until the third needle size increase.  I might not even do that one.  I'll decide when I get there.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Second Chart Done

I got about half way through Chart 2 a little while ago, but put this aside while I worked on other things.  I picked it back up last night and made it to the last two rows before my brain started getting a little tired.  I finished up those two rows this morning.  Now on to Chart 3.  The pattern calls for going up a needle size half-way through this chart, but I am going to continue with the same needle size.  There is another needle size increase later on that I may or may not do.  I'll decide once I get there.


Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm)

Mayan Garden Cape - Chart 1 Done

You may recall that I had Kelly of The Unique Sheep dye up this custom colorway for me so that I could knit Kitman Figueroa's Mayan Garden semi-circular shawl as a cape.  Yesterday I cast on and today I finished the first of 15 charts.

I started out with a long garter stitch tab, knitting a long enough strip so that I could pick up 62 stitches along its length.  This gave me 68 stitches total with the 3 stitches on each end so that I could start with row 8 of the pattern.  When I got to row 25 I counted my stitches and realized that I was 4 short of the 135 stitches that I needed to do 16 repeats of the first chart.  On row 25 I did yarn overs after and before the 3 edge stitches, and on row 26 I knit into the front and purled into the back of the yarn over.  I was then ready to start with Chart 1.  The pattern is definitely for advanced knitters, with lace patterning on both right and wrong side rows.  The charts are beautiful, with wrong side rows shaded.  There is one complication with them - plain squares are purl stitches on the right side and knit stitches on the wrong side, while knit stitches are denoted by a vertical line in the box, so I had to retrain my brain a bit when I first got started.  Once again I am using my Knit Companion app on my iPad, which I find just invaluable when using charts.  There are optional bead placements indicated in the pattern and I happened to have some dark green silver lined beads in my stash that remind me of Emeralds.  You can see them glinting in the photo.  As I don't usually use stitch markers, I found them very useful for helping me keep track of where I was in the pattern.

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa, modified to be a cape
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in custom colorway Mayan Garden
Needles:  US 4 (3.5 mm), US 5 (3.75 mm), US 6 (4 mm)

Mayan Garden

On October 14 I was cruising Ravelry when I spotted Kitman Figueroa's new pattern Mayan Garden.  I immediately thought that it would look great as a cape in a Unique Sheep Gradiance set.  I  contacted Laura at the Unique Sheep with my idea and also a link to this picture of Mayan ruins that I found at Wikipedia (have you made your donation yet?).

It turned out that a custom dye job of an existing colorway - Denali - would work, so Kelly (she dyes Denali) dyed me up a beta set (the small set in the top picture) and sent me a picture on November 12.  I thought it looked great and in my response I asked her if that beta set needed a good home and that I would be happy to provide it one.  My yarn arrived this past Thursday, December 5.  Once I finish Tea Rose I'll start working on this one.  The modifications to turn it into a cape should be straight forward.  I wonder if I should add beads...

Pattern:  Mayan Garden by Kitman Figueroa
Yarn:  The Unique Sheep Luxe in Mayan Garden