so i wanted to try entrelac, and, coincidentally, wanted to knit a scarf to go with my new coat, out of some really lovely Valley Yarns yarn i bought this year at Stitches Midwest. i found this tutorial a few days ago while browsing ravelry for projects that people had knit out of yarn i have in my stash, for ideas, and thought oh hey! beginning entrelac project == scarf == perfect! so this evening, i fetched out a pair of #8 needles, my two balls of yarn, and cast on.
the ravelry description of the tutorial remarks that it is “masterful.”
my ass.
i cast on and knit the foundation triangles easily enough — i love doing short rows, so that’s fun, and plus i can knit backwards now so it’s not completely maddening. but on the second row — i knit the instructions all the way across, and came up with… triangles, not diamonds. ???
so i figured, oh, i obviously did it wrong, ripped back, went back, started again, got the same result, reread the instructions, thought it meant that maybe you make the triangle then you go back over those triangles and add more triangles on top (thus completing the rectangles), though that was not how it looked from the pictures, tried that, … got this:
so at that point, i threw up my hands and went back to Teh Intarwebs to find a better tutorial. one that perhaps lies less…. i still like the idea of entrelac for this scarf, so i just have to find better instructions. oh well. i was really hoping to make a start on this project tonight… dang. i found this tutorial, which seems clearer, so maybe i’ll give that a shot tomorrow.
(at least in the mean time, my newfound skill at knitting backwards may help me finally, finally finish the Boring Scarf.)
in other, more successful news, i spun up and then navajo-plied about half of that braid of red roving from my SP:
it turned out pretty well, i think! it is a DK-weight, and fairly even. it looks more purple than the roving did, but i like it a lot — it turned out as a slightly violet maroon. and this amount spun up to a little over 200 yards. i’m not sure what i’m going to do with it. we’ll see how much the rest comes out to, i guess.
my Montana Wheat sock, with yarn and pattern from my SP, is also coming along nicely:
the pattern is actually very easy — and it got easier once i stopped knitting with a deathly tight gauge. (the last things i knit, two pair of Dashing, are knit out of worsted weight yarn on slightly small needles, with a tight gauge. i had a death grip on the needles most of the time i was knitting those!) the yarn is, also, absolutely magnificent. it’s soft and fuzzy and the colors are mind-blowing. it’s a little too dark to see the pattern very well, especially with my camera, but i’m pleased with it. i’m about 4 rows from starting to turn the heel. it’s weird… i might actually finish a sock some point in the near future! i’m not sure how i feel about this…
the ripple continues apace:
and just to wrap up this three-day weekend, i dyed up some sock yarn:
gotta go hang that up to drip-dry over the bathtub before i go to bed, then hopefully i can wind it up into (regular-sized!) skeins in a few days after it all dries. then maybe someone out there should watch her mailbox because i think what she needs in her life is more sock yarn…. but that is all i am going to say on that!
