Stole Survivor

All is not lost, and the Print O' the Wave Stole is back on track. I've fixed the hole of yarn barf -- the knitting version of norovirus.

After calming down, and after listening to everyone's sage advice, I realized this was a pretty straightforward, if nerve-wracking fix. I un-grafted the two pieces carefully. My original plan was to put one side directly back on a needle -- until I realized I was saving the side with the hole. So I just picked out the grafting yarn.

Once I had the pieces separated again, I set about identifying a good fallback position. The 11th row of the pattern has a distinctive 3-stitch decrease bordered by several groups of 5-stitch stockinette sections. For each side, I marked one of those 3-stitch decreases, frogged back to the row before, and then slowly removed Row 12 as I carefully put Row 11 back on the needles. I had a few minor mishaps, but was able to fix them.

So now, I have two pieces, one with 16 of the 17 pattern repeats intact, and one with 13 -- the side with the hole. Turns out it must have been a slipped stitch since the yarn wasn't broken. The dogs are no longer canines of interest in this case.

Shouldn't take too long to catch back up. Thanks, everyone, for the advice, encouragement, and sympathy. Onward.

 

Crashing Waves

I'm done with this stole earlier than I thought I would be.

I grafted yesterday and this evening without any incidents. Everything looked great. You can kind of see the grafting line on the left in the photo. But as I stretched the stole out to admire my handiwork, I saw a hole that looked bigger than this pattern's typical yarnovers. And, as I looked closer and did a little feeling around, it grew.

At some point, I must have dropped a stitch, and for some reason, I didn't catch it as i was working. At this point, I've already grafted the two halves and pulled out all my lifelines. I think the Print o' The Wave Stole has officially sunk. A whole month's worth of knitting, gone.

I feel numb.

Tension

A brief update on the stole. I spent too much of this gorgeous weekend working on it so I could say I made some progress this week. I don't seem to be able to squeeze in as much weeknight knitting as I used to.

The two sides are done! Now, I get to embark on the longest grafting sequence I've ever attempted. Just doing up a toe across 10 or 15 stitches can be pretty unnerving, so who knows what 80 will be like? Just longer, I keep telling myself. That's the only difference. Same thing, just more of it.

I'm a little concerned about maintaining the tension in lace. That's the thing with lace -- it has the opposite of tension. I'll have to remind myself to stay loose in more way than one. In re-reading the pattern, I was pleased to realize that the grafting is done with the live stitches, not using the provisionally cast-on stitches as I'd been assuming. So I get to put off unzipping those crochet stitches for a while, and all the tension that will likely create.

Deep breaths.

Second Wave

Just plugging away on the stole. I thought I'd check in, even though there's not much to report.

I have recently allayed a few fears I had about this project. One was that I would run out of yarn, but I got the 17 repeats of the main pattern on the first side, plus 2 repeats of the pattern on the second side completed with only 29g of yarn. I've still got 36g of a wound ball, plus 50g more unwound. I think I'm good there.

My other fear was that I'd made my first provisional cast on crochet chain too tight, and that it would make the stole gather in toward the middle. You can see what I mean with the pink on the leftmost section in the photo. But a few experts have assured me that if I can get those stitches back on the needle, I should be fine. In the meantime, I need to get back to knitting, and try not to think about the hundreds of stitches that will need to be picked up in the near future.

Yarn over and out.

Lace Stole

While digging around through my purposely scanty yarn stash, I found some blue-green alpaca lace-weight yarn that I got in a yarn swap a few years ago. It’s just been sitting around, waiting for inspiration. I didn’t have anything else immediately lined up, and since I’ve got a few lace projects under my belt now I thought I might be ready to tackle this. My previous projects have not been in lace-weight yarn, however, and this is turning out to be a whole new ball of wax.

First of all, those stitches with the big open holes are really slippery! I tried to do this on a pair of regular Addi Turbo circulars I already had, but had to go get a pair of pointier, less slippery lace needles. Things are better now, but I still feel like I’m on shaky ground. Yarnovers keep jumping the markers, and I have to carefully count between each one as I go. And I’m not getting a rhythm to the pattern. I’m still tied to staring at it, which is a bit tiring. Still, when I spread it out it looks about right.

I’ve done 3 of the 17 repeats for just one side. This is going take a bit longer than I originally thought.