It's Happening Again

I somehow find myself with Clapotis #4 on the needles. And this time with a deadline.

My aunt and uncle will be making the long, long trek from New Zealand to visit with us here in sunny (?) Ontario. I've known about this visit for a while now. Months, in fact. Of course, it was only two weeks ago that I decided I should knit a gift for my aunt. This is like all my school assignments, ever.

I decided to knit another clapotis. For some reason. Well, one reason is that I've been hankering to do up one of these in a variegated yarn. My biggest problem, though, was my colour choices. I haven't seen this particular aunt in many, many years, and so have no idea of her colour preferences. So I wanted to do something in an inoffensive, bordering-on-neutral colourway.

I tend to pick... unconventional colours and combinations. This I've been informed, both subtly and blatantly, though usually with love. So I dragged my friend Jen to the LYS with me after work one day so that she could veto as appropriate. I picked up many skeins, showing them hopefully to Jen, asking, "Is this normal?", and being told, "Nope. Not so much."



We finally agreed on a colourway called Marshgrass, full of tawny greens and highlighted with pinks and purples. It's a mercerized cotton, and I'm really enjoying it.

It's going pretty well, overall, after a couple of false starts. I had completed the increase section and was well into the straight rows, when I noticed I'd missed some repeats, and frogged the whole thing to start over.



Because I was using such a lightweight yarn, I had decided to use the smallest of the Denise set, which is a 3.75 mm. But I found that the yarn kept snagging on the join, so I decided that it was time for an upgrade. Maybe I was just looking for an excuse - I got my very first Addi Turbos. Lace, even. They're working great, but I think I have poor knitting technique, because the pointy ends are just tearing my fingertips to bits. I've finally developed enough of a callous that I stop breaking the skin, at least.

And now, I'm finally at a point where I think I can finish on time. A couple of day-long meetings and lots of tv and movie time have really helped.



My poor fingers needed a break from the torture of the lace needles, and so I finished off another little project over the weekend. And it was a lot of fun. But that's some stealth knitting, that will have to wait a bit to be shared. But you can see it on Ravelry, if you're around.