FFFO

[firecat]

I have a Finally Fucking Finished Object (FFFO), a version of Branching Out by Susan Pierce Lawrence on the Knitty web site.

I've had it on the needles since August or so.

I wasn't actively knitting it that whole time, but I had a very difficult time with it and probably knit about twice as many pattern repeats as ended up in my finished scarf. If this is "easy lace" (as billed on Knitty) then I'm not cut out to be a lace knitter.

(I haven't given up on knitted lace yet though.)

It's made out of some mystery yarn on a cone that I got in a Newton's Yarn Country sale. The yarn is soft, light and fluffy. It's not very elastic (and therefore not the smartest yarn to use for a first lace project. Oh well). My swatch was completely unaffected by the washer and dryer so I don't think the scarf is going to be "blockable" per se.

There are still a lot of mistakes—but most of them are relatively invisible, even to me. The one that isn't invisible (but I'm too lazy to fix) is that the first 1/4 of the scarf is "inside out." I noticed quite a while later that I had switched the right side and wrong side rows. It's still probably not noticeable to anyone but another knitter.

Design decisions as a result of mistakes department:

I hopelessly fouled things up around 1/3 of the way into the scarf and "fixed" it by knitting some rows of garter stitch and starting over. So then I knit another chunk of garter stitch 2/3 of the way along.




branching-out_03-04-07
Originally uploaded by firecatstef.



branching-out-full
Originally uploaded by firecatstef.

Comments

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

It's marked "tangy" on knitty, which is their pretty darn hard rating.

I like the use of garterstitch. It looks deliberate, and changes it from something old fashioned into something modern.

I find I have to be in exactly the right environment and headspace to knit lace. I haven't been in that headspace for, gasp, 20 years. I once in a while miss it, and would like to get back into it, but I have no idea how to find my way back to it these days.

[firecat]

Thanks. Yes on the environment and headspace. I was only able to work on this project alone, at night. Also, I made progress faster when I bought a little magnetic stand to put my chart on.

[tedesson.livejournal.com]

I found this nice tutorial on how to do hole-less short rows:

http://www.cosmicpluto.com/blog/?p=585

I used this technique on a sweater I'm working on:
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEspring07/PATTisabella.html
(yes, I know it's lace, but I've only done the back, which had a few eyelets. The front is yet to come!)

Knitty is the best.