Letters
Saturday Con Sequences
Dear Ann,
Our blog’s meltdown on Thursday was quite dramatic, wasn’t it? It was the longest outage since we’ve been doing this, and a total surprise. We’ve been told it was the carburetor. Who knows? Triple A took its time picking us up by the side of the road, but we are back up, and patched up. Thanks to everybody for sticking around.
I’ve been coping with life, and the complicated knitting in my life, by starting a new project that I think has great potential, both for self-soothing and for autumn fashion flair. Get a load of:
Lori was inspired by Cecilia Campochiaro’s Sequence Knitting, a mind-blowingly inventive book about the power of simple repeating patterns to create gorgeous textured fabrics. There is something irresistible about these stacked stripes, alternating in columns of wrong-side and right-side garter stitch.
Sequences has an unusual shape, narrow at one end and wide at the other, and it comes in two sizes, a generous scarf (pictured) and an even more generous wrap.
I cast on in two shades of The Plucky Knitter‘s Bello Worsted, a gray and a chartreusey yellow that I thought looked fab together when the skeins were side by side.
But, knitted up in these narrow stripes…not enough contrast? (I should have taken a black and white photo first, I know.)
A little more Plucky foraging (woe is me), and I came up with Plan B. Enter contrast!
If I can get away from the keyboard for an hour this weekend, Plan B will get underway. If I can get away for another hour, I will sally forth on the New York City Yarn Crawl. Every year the shops think of more fun things. Highly recommended–stretch your legs!
Love,
Kay
Yay! You’re back!!!
It’ll be even easier to take a black and white picture of the 2nd set of contenders 😉 .
Hope the weekend is rejuvenating (even while you plug away).
xox
Enjoy your weekend full of fibery pursuits. I am wrangling four projects at present. I hope to finish at least of them before the premiere of the second season of Poldark on Sunday night. Of course, during said premiere episode and the current episode of Indian Summers which follows, I will be knitting away on one of the other three…
The book Sequence Knitting is absolutely brilliant. Every permutation of repeating stitch patterns over every multiple of stitches, searched, charted, and written out. I will be having fun with this book for a very long time.
So excited to see that you are knitting SEQUENCES! What a thrill. I actually like your first color choice! More subtle, but I bet if you kept going…. !!!
The yellow and dark grey would be good, too. I am interested to see what you think of the finished product. I knit a similar shape and could not find a way to wear it. Btw, I love your blog.
Will Olive be filming sequences for “The Bachelorette: Doggie Edition” on the yarn crawl?
Maybe you can blame the outage on iOS10 – everything is different!
Relieved to see that your newest knit-on-the-needles is Sequence, since that’s on my wish list ( as in ‘wish I had time to knit everything I admire’) so I don’t feel distracted, as when I drop everything to knit an Asne, a Breakover, or a Fort Tryon (one more row and then bind off, yay!).
Have fun on the yarn crawl – I’m trying to resist the gravitational pull, and to stay up in the burbs. Hard as it may be to believe, I really do have too much yarn. No, change that to enough yarn; you can never have too much.
I echo whoever said the chartreuse with the darker grey might work better – more contrast there, too!
My copy of Drop-Dead Easy Knits got here; alas, I couldn’t skip work to knit. But I have a question about the Star-Eyed Julep! The description in the book says that the sample showed the colors randomized. Was that just the background colors, with the star point the same color in each square? Don’t suppose you could show us the sample??
The background was randomized for one square of the sample and then they charted it out and the other 3 squares are identical. I would randomize all 4, of course!
The gold star is all one color but if you’re using a yarn that has several shades is the star color, that would be gorgeous I think. This yarn did not come in that many close shades.
Sadly the sample is on book tour with the authors….
Thanks, Kay! I’m not a blanket knitter usually, but this one is tempting me…..
I love Sequence Knitting. I just finished a blanket for my niece’s upcoming wedding using those alternating columns of knit and purl garter. 5 blocks of 45 sts each going across (each span of 45 sts using a divisor, like 15, 9, 5, or 3) and, 3 blocks of 60+ ridges going up, with the blocks going vertically (alternating with divisors/multiples of the block adjacent vertically) . Made the drudgery of blanket knitting easier to deal with.
Love.
Be still my astigmatism.
LoL !
At first I thought your second photo had a tonal filter on it, but then spied the bit of colored yarn in the back left corner, and colored brick in the back right corner. I guess you know there’s enough tonal contrast!
I hope you get out for the yarn crawl. Fall weekends need to be full of yarn. At our end of the continent, it’s Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival weekend. I’m off to teach today (and will use that tonal camera trick), and play tomorrow. Sunny and cool today, sunny and warm tomorrow!
Love that pattern. Going to be gorgeous …. are you going to do an edge of the green?
Me 3 on the chartreuse with the dark grey!
I totally agree about chartreuse and dark blue-grey being a smashing choice. I’m not a huge fan of Things Yellowish, but paired with that smoky color–yum.
THANKS SO MUCH for the NYC Yarn Crawl call outs! Hope you ended up on the crawl!