2-26-2010

While blocking the last sleeve of the cardigan, I cast on for another project. As if I didn’t have enough stockinette to deal with, I started Citron.

In exactly the yarn and colorway the pattern uses – Malabrigo Lace in “Lettuce”. I’ve lusted after this colorway ever since seeing Eliza’s Feather Duster in Handpaintedyarn.com’s laceweight. I’ve kept my eye on their website looking for it, but haven’t seen it in stock. Oh well, I guess it gave me a good reason to buy the Malabrigo instead.

3-2-2010

Well, it’s getting bigger. But it still just looks like a shapeless blob.

I keep thinking about the old Steve McQueen movie “The Blob“. But I think the one in the movie was red. My mother and I were watching that movie on TV one afternoon when I was in my early teens. It was a scene where the Blob was oozing under a door, and was a bit tense. My father had come downstairs, but we were so into the movie that we hadn’t heard him, and didn’t know he was standing behind us. He recognized the movie, and said “The Blob!”. My mother screamed and literally jumped out of her chair – she landed on the floor in front of it. When she screamed, I screamed. It was a good thing I was lying down on the couch, or I might have ended up on the floor too. My dad was so startled by us screaming that I think he nearly screamed. It was pretty funny.

I’m about three-quarters of the way done, unless I decide to make it bigger. I think I’ll really like this scarf, but I’m definitely ready to do something other than stockinette. The Gigantic Scarf of Boredom isn’t really all that bad to work on, because it’s 80 stitches. Knit knit knit, purl purl purl. It doesn’t take very long to do a row, so it’s a lot of back and forth. But Citron? When you’re doing 400-500 stitches in a row, it’s like knitting across the English Channel and purling back. The rows go on for…ev…er. At least I get a periodic break on the increase and decrease rows.

3-7-2010

Citron is finally done!

I thought it would be done days ago, but I had severe ruffle trauma. First I got to row 9 or 10 of the ruffle (out of 11 rows), and was wondering why I had SO MUCH YARN LEFT. Heh. Because when I was doing the increase row for the ruffle, I got interrupted by someone at the door. When I picked it up later, I forgot I was on the increase row. As a result, only the first third of the ruffle was actually ruffling. Oh yippee – a couple of hours knitting had to be ripped, and then all of those hundreds of stitches had to be put back on the needles.

The second time I got to the end of the ruffle, I still had quite a bit of yarn left, though considerably less than the first time. I had already decided to work the last 3 rows of the ruffle in garter stitch, so I decided to work 2 more rows and have 5 rows of garter stitch, using up a bit more of the yarn. I bound off, which took about an hour in itself. Whew! Finished!

But wait, there’s more. Flipping the scarf around my neck, I decided that the 5 rows of garter stitch didn’t really look good, and the ruffle was too long. So I ripped out the bind off (which was not fun at all – the yarn was really sticky), pulled out the extra 2 rows I’d done, put all 540 stitches back on the needles, and bound off yet again. This whole process took about another 2 hours, after I thought I was done. Sigh.

I didn’t want to wet-block it, because I was concerned about blocking out the ruching and ruffle. I didn’t really think it needed blocking anyway, but I did want to see if I could get a little more width, just to make it easier to wrap around my neck. I threaded a blocking wire through the top edge, and then used a water-filled spray bottle to spray the top edge of the scarf along the blocking wire – just enough to dampen the yarn and let it relax a bit. Then I stretched the top edge out along the blocking wire and pinned it in place. The rest of the scarf was just left alone.

I ended up with about 5.5 grams of yarn left over. It will be a nice insurance policy whenever I make something out of the other matching skein of yarn.

A few people on Ravelry said they were surprised at how small it came out, even though they matched the finished dimensions. I knew it would be small, but since I planned on using it as a scarf, that wasn’t a problem. But I will admit that calling it a “shawlette” is probably a bit of a stretch, except for very tiny people. It’s easy to add more repeats, but considering how tedious it becomes to knit, I’d suggest using thicker yarn and larger needles to make it bigger, rather than doing more repeats. Unless, of course, you don’t mind purl rows that go on forever.

Despite the fact that it wasn’t particularly fun to knit, I’m very happy with it. It’s a very cute and clever design, and what’s not to like about the Malabrigo?

However, I think I’m done with stockinette for a little while. I need a break. So what better project than a garter stitch scarf? I’ve cast on for another Baktus.

Modifications: Worked the last 3 rows in garter stitch. Bound off as follows: K1, * K1, slip the tip of the LH needle into the 2 sts on the RH needle and knit them together TBL. Repeat from *.