Old News

Deadline knitting isn't good news for the blog, which I why I have some old news to share today.  I worked up a design for some stranded knitting awhile back, and knit up a swatch, but never got around to posting photos.  As you can see, the colors in my paper pattern are definitely not quite accurate, and--I was a little surprised to see--the motifs look taller and narrower in the swatch.  The boxes on the paper pattern are stitch shaped-- wider than they are tall-- so apparently the stitches in the swatch are more square than I thought they would be (and in fact the gauge is 12 sts/11 rows to 2 inches).  I wonder if this is typical of stranded knitting or whether this means that the tension on my floats is too high?  (Anyone?)

As for the colors, I like the combinations in  both of the large motifs-- the orange and the blue/green bands-- and I like them both with the narrow motifs.  But I don't think I like the large motifs together:  the bright orange and the muted green just don't do it for me.  And I've already used up a precious ball of that green to make swatches for a submission to Vogue Knitting*, so that is the band that will require major color re-mixing.  Once I re-mix the colors, redraw the motifs so they don't come out so vertically stretched (especially the lower one), and fiddle with the background bands so they blend more subtly, I'll be ready to try another swatch.

Could take awhile.

*WHICH they accepted for their Fall 2008 issue; woohoo!