The game: You are assigned a target. The pattern is released. When your target receives a finished hat, you’ve killed them. If you receive a finished hat before you’ve finished yours, you’ve been assassinated, and must send your unfinished hat to your assassin. They complete it and send it to your target, if, of course, they are not themselves killed. Last knitter standing wins.
My weekend:
Friday, I snag one of the remnant balls of KP Merino Style and swatch, as gauge has been decreed to be grounds for disqualification of a weapon (hat).
Saturday, the pattern is released. I have plans already to spend most of Saturday playing 1856. The good thing: Knitting and 1856 go together very very well. The bad thing: In driving to Acton, I lose an hour and a bit of knitting time. I finish long after the post office has closed.
Sunday, there is no mail, no FedEx, no nothing. I consider driving to my target’s house and delivering the weapon by hand. I decide that any target living north of Burlington is better dealt with by the USPS, and prepare the delivery.
Monday, my hat hits the mail. My target is going down. I get a message from my assassin warning me that she overnighted my hat and I’m going to be dead on Tuesday. I prepare real, from scratch, sharp cheddar macaroni and cheese as a last meal.
Tuesday, about 9am, a knock on the door. FedEx. I’m dead!
It’s a very lovely hat though.
Holy smokes it’s been a while. There were Christmas happenings,
and a trip to Gabon,
and Arisia,
,
and I suddenly have a new part-time job doing customer service for these guys, and I’m starting to get interview requests from graduate schools!
Life’s a little insane right now.
But, there’s been lots of knitting. (Long trips are good for that - not so many other things to fill one’s time with, and, as I’ve been discovering, fiber is lighter per hour of entertainment than books are. Hee.) First, however, is an older project. Remember the shrug I was making for Kris? Here it is blocking, looking like it has ridiculous orangutan arms.
A close-up of the diamonds pattern (from the wrong side, as it was blocking).
(A note: The previous two photos are the only ones *not* by Dan. All others are his, and are used under his license. Thanks babe!)
Shimmer, by Rebecca Hatcher, from the Winter ‘03 Knitty. It’s knit in Filatura Di Crosa Zara, superwash merino, lots of plies, black (cause it’s for Kris and that’s what she wears). Lovely, amazing forgiving yarn. The arms are knit in the round to the underarm, then joined to the flat back, and the whole thing is worked in rows with raglan shaping. The ribbing along the fronts and neck is added at the end.
Things I learned on this sweater:
- Superwash wool will grow when it gets wet.
- I knit more loosely back-and-forth than in the round. My purls are looser than my knits, and I need to go down a needle size to save my sanity.
- I knit really lossely in general, and if I want to get gauge, I need to go down a needle size (or two).
I found the pattern easy to follow, although the myriad comments about the frustration of joining round arms to flat back were entirely justified. That portion, immediately after the join, is a pain, and requires rather a lot of stretching of stitches. If this had been knit in something less forgiving, like a cotton blend, I suspect that stretching would have been much more visible. But it’s a very cute shrug, and I do like the lace across the back.
The shrug was seen “live” at Arisia, and totally made my weekend.
