Genius

I’ve been knitting since I was six year old… or so.
In my family among many knitters the two woman closest to me (my mom and my paternal grandma) were very good, in fact great knitters…
Also I’ve done my fair share of knitting. Simple stuff, and also more complicated things.
There are techniques I find very interesting, top down raglans or magic loops are some of those.
I’ve seen very impressive knits, Celtic cables, Fair Isle I am awed by.
I’ve seen many patterns I find pretty, intriguing, gorgeous…
But only a handful of times in thousands of patterns I think with my mouth fallen open: this is truly genius. When I keep thinking, “how the hell did she think of that?”

Lately I came across with two patterns like that. One of them is the felted clogs, and the other is the tangled yoke…

I am not getting into the felted clogs now, deeper than to mention that Bev who though out all those short rows and their placement must be a true genius.

TYC doesn’t look like much at the first glance, though the beige colored tweed and the deep ribbing looks verrrry nice… But those “horizontal” Celtic looking cables… those are genius. They are not difficult (especially if one can count up to ten, and know the different between her right and left), but the original idea… Simply genius.

The whole thing started with the thrift store found yarn, Rowan Fox Tweed. The thing literally screamed that it wants to become the famous TYC. Regardless of the fact that it is a totally different gauge...

I had 9 skeins, 450 grams... I knew it will be a close call, but I am ever hopeful...

But it was not to be. Thankfully my earlier trips to the store resulted in some odds and bits of tweed, or tweedy looking yarns and there was a skein that was very close. I used it on the inside neckband, and the button band (it was just about enough for the buttonhole band), and call it a design element.

One of my favourite part is the wood buttons, and the mother of pearl buttons I used for backing of them. I know this technique well from my dressmaking years, but wouldn't have thought of it, if Lene of Dances With Wool wouldn't remind me... I love MOP buttons, and tickles me to know that even inside where no one will see it there is bit of luxury (they are not, but I think of them as such :-))

The yarn was a totally different weight (DK instead of sport), so getting gauge was out of question. I did swatched, washed and blocked it (which also showed that it will soften considerably), counted and measured, and started off with the stitch numbers for a smaller size.

The garter rib gave an interesting structure to the cuff. Though as a many I also found the number of stitches originally in the pattern giving huge sleeves, so I recalculated them

By the time I got the end of the cables I saw I won't have enough to do the whole back. Besides I wanted a lower, more open neck-line, so I skipped the short row. Recalculated the decreases.

This project was a major frog-fest, I frogged parts of it more time than I care to count, but all of was because of my stupidity. I frogged the ribbing on the waist, because I messed up the side decreases, the sleeves, because of the sizing, the cable parts, because of my inability to count and differentiate between left (leaning) and right (leaning cables), the the neckband... well that was because I was impatient worried and annoyed about running out of yarn. First I used a different one, for the inside part, but I didn't liked it, and found the other ball, that was much-much closer colorwise.