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Mistakes are Made

There is a tendency on my part to highlight here only those things I make that are something I consider a success.  But be assured as in any creative adventure there are a lot of mistakes made as well.

The soon to be frogged Clapotis
For instance, Tena gave me a beautiful, oh what did Pantone call it, yes, Marsala coloured yarn.  (It is the name of the Pantone Color of 2015, but to many of us it might be merlot in colour.)  There are three 100% wool skeins.  From the start I could tell this wool had a high degree of stickiness, by which I mean it holds on to stitches well.  (The little lighter colour nubs also contribute to the stickiness.)  Why I decided it would be a good idea to make my first Clapotis (not the dummy ones I did this summer) is well below being clever.  It took me until the first small set of dropped stitches to determine it was not the right yarn for the job.  Say goodbye to it in this form; it is going to be frogged and turned into something lovely.  And I will be knitting an appropriate Clapotis at some time, just with a completely different wool.

The lovely orange roving spun in class this week with thread called out to me last night.  It needed to be used with the Noro blended contrasting roving also spun this week.  These small runs are perfect for little pretty Fair Isle patterns.

The combination I wanted to use
I scoured my stash and found a cream coloured BFL (Blue Face Leicester, another breed of sheep) leftover from my drop spinning class taken a few years ago.   Add another Tin Can Knits design called the Clayoquot Toque and a child´s size version using these spun wools was started.  I did a WPI (wrap per inch) measurement on my BFL yarn and thought the gauge was right.  But we had been instructed to make multiple WPI tests, especially on my not totally well spun yarn, and I did not.  After the first colour work section it became clear my gauge was off so it too was frogged.  (Sorry, no photo of that ill-fated first attempt.)


A good blocking will help get all these stitches lined up.    
I started the Clayoquot again this time with a cream coloured Cascade 220 wool and this created a much more satisfying result.  It too falls a bit short of perfection.  The contrast between my orange and yellow yarns isn´t as distinct as I would have liked.  It is much more subtle than I thought it would be, but then the orange is a strong contrast with the cream, perhaps a bit of subtly is appropriate.

So not everything knit here in Flagel town shows up in this blog; mistakes are made.  You see the good stuff.  And as for frogging things, at this point I find it is better to give wool a new lease on life rather than to trap it in a WIP (Work in Progress) pile.


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