04-09-2020

Yarn in Stash - ready to start KAL June 1, 2020.
Cascade 220 Superwash, Sage
Bullen’s Wullens Wool (handspun), Grape
Handspun is probably not superwash, so need to treat both as hand wash & dry flat.

06-06-2020

Finally cast on and did first couple rows last night. I was concerned at first that my handspun (purple) yarn was not consistent size match for the commercial (green) yarn. But I don’t think irregular size match should be much of a problem with this pattern. And these are the only two yarns in my stash that I have sufficient quantity to do the larger version. So I’m going for it!

06-09-2020

Darn it!!!!!!
Just finished 10 rows of ribbing for the large version. Unfortunately I just noticed that I have a freaking TWIST in the ribbing!!!!!!!
Good grief!
Just frogged it all and will restart tomorrow - probably switch to the smaller size - or somewhere in between…

06-10-2020

Got this going now. Got one charted pattern done. Since I had to restart anyhow I decided to make the smaller size but increased the CO to 160 stitches to make it a tad larger. My purple handspun yarn is a little thicker than the green but the pattern is working pretty good with it.

06-15-2020

Well, I’ve decided I have to frog this project. I do like the pattern and hope to make it some day when I get more appropriate yarns. There’s actually several reasons I decided to frog it after it sat in time out for a couple days:

1. My yarns are more of a weight match problem than I had hoped for - as I’m getting further into the handspun skein, it is getting thicker and thicker and really overpowering the green commercial worsted weight yarn.
2. I should have stayed with making the larger size but possibly doing fewer of the chart repeats. Even at three repeats vertically and a couple extra repeats horizontally of the smaller size, this is not a comfortable fit for me. It is already stifling too tall sitting around my neck.
3. As I got faster knitting the pattern, I inadvertently starting pulling the floats tighter, so by the time I finished the third repeat of the chart it was significantly tighter than the first completed chart.
4. And, the last straw, I found two places where i screwed up the direction of the 2-stitch twists, one Left twist and one Right twist. The first one bugged me, but the second one pissed me off. Bummer. They are visible in the most recent (top) photo.

06-17-2020

Starting over. Had plenty of the white yarn in my stash - just ran out to JoAnn’s to grab a contrast color in same yarn. BTW - employees at JoAnn’s totally not observing social distancing nor were any of them wearing masks = inexcusable!

06-20-2020

The creamy white and medium gray are looking good together. First complete round of the chart done. I think this yarn and doing the larger size will work out much better for me this time.
I also decided to firm the ribbing up by doing all the knit stitches as ktbl.

06-27-2020

Since I went with the larger version with 256 stitches around, I decided to only do 3 pattern repeats so this would not be too bulky.

Also, I found that the directions for transitioning from the chart to the “Upper Edge” seemed to be creating a leggy look to the Color A that didn’t match well with the transition at the “Lower Edge”.
It seemed to look more similar to:
Do the repeat of Row 1 (to get the 1x1x1 LC row done) but then skip the “Final Round
Then knit one full round on the smaller needles using only Color A (this eliminates Color B purl bumps).
I then went directly into the Ribbing with a ktbl as done in Lower Edge.