WIP: Progress report on the Clapotis

The clapotis scarf is knitting up nicely. I am now about 3/4 done with the straight row section. So far I have dropped 9 stitches and now have 9 ladders of varying length running diagonally to the edges.

Clapotis - Straight Row Section

The straight row section is supposed to be complete after 12 repeats of the 12 row pattern. However, the instructions also say that if you want to make your scarf longer, you simply knit more repeats of the straight row section. So, I when I finish three more repeats, I will need to decide if the scarf will be long enough, or if I need to add some more length. The 12 row pattern for the straight rows is really fairly easy to knit and it doesn’t take too long to complete one repeat. I am thinking that I’d like this scarf to be a little longer than the 55 inches stated in the pattern, but will see.

The scarf is really soft and has a nice drape. So far, I’m happy with how it’s knitting up.

Related Post

The Roomba Ate My Socks!The Roomba Ate My Socks!

Roomba
I have a Roomba – which is a small robotic vacuum cleaner. You are supposed to be able to contain it to a single room using little devices called “lighthouses”. I really like this little guy for frequent vacuuming of my kitchen. So, the other day, I turned it on and left it to run around the kitchen while I did some things in my office.

Well, it escaped the kitchen and headed off into the living room – where my two at a time socks using magic loop project was laying beside my recliner (I’d left them there the night before) …AND…the Roomba ate my socks!

I heard this weird little sound coming from the living room and went to investigate – and there I found the Roomba thrashing about entangled in my 40” circular needle and the yarn from one of the socks. (I was so traumatized that I forgot to take a picture.)

After turning the Roomba off, it took me several minutes to remove the yarn from around the various moving parts and then deal with the fact that the circular needle had somehow ended up wrapped around one of the wheels. Eventually, I succeeded in extricating my circular needle – but it was a close call, as I had begun to consider the possibility of having to cut the cable. (WHEW!) Fortunately – one sock was still on the circular needle. The other, however, was laying in the middle of the floor – off the needle and minus its ball of yarn. I tenderly picked up this wounded creature and set it aside to recover from all the trauma.

I discovered that the lighthouse that should have prevented Roomba from going into the living room wasn’t working (dead batteries). Once I replaced the batteries, the darn little thing worked just fine and stayed in the kitchen where I wanted it to be.

Socks_BackTog
Happy News! – I was able to frog the wounded sock back to a point that I knew where I was in the pattern and then pick up the stitches and reconnect the yarn to the sock as I reknit it back to where it had been before it was attacked by the Roomba. It is now back on the same circular needle with its brother.

FO: Multnomah Shawlette in Crazy ZauberballFO: Multnomah Shawlette in Crazy Zauberball

Knitted shawlette using Multnomah pattern

I took a little knitting detour last week and knit up the Multnomah Shawl in Zauberball Crazy yarn. Colorway is Fliederduft, which is loosely translated as “lilacs”. I had allocated this yarn to a pair of socks as part of the “10 in 2010” projects at the beginning of this year. However, after looking through many examples of socks knit with Zauberball Crazy in the Ravelry projects, I decided that I really didn’t want to knit this yarn into a pair socks. So — I switched to a shawl and ended up doing the Multnomah pattern by Kate Flagg.

The shawl was done in garter stitch until I had 265 stitches and then I started the feather and fan pattern and did 9 repeats. This pattern is a fairly quick knit. I was able to finish it up in a week and that was even with needing to frog back a couple of rows in order to have enough yarn to bind off.

Final size of the shawl — it’s actually a shawlette — was 15.5 inches by 58 inches.

Multnomah Shawl knitted in Zauberball Crazy

I am pleased with the result. It’s an nice size for a decorative scarf/shawlette and I think the striping of the yarn is shown off to better affect than it would be in a pair of socks.

Zauberball Crazy is a self-striping, marled yarn. Which means that it stripes, but because the two plies of the yarn may be different colors, you get a somewhat “tweedy” appearance in many of the stripes. It’s a unique yarn. It is a fingering weight, superwash wool and nylon yarn and the fabric is soft and drapes nicely after blocking. I did find that the yarn had a tendency to split occasionally and there were spots where a tuft of yarn from one of the plies would stick out — these were easily removed. I might be tempted to try another colorway — but not certain what project I would use it for.

The Multnomah Shawl pattern is a very popular pattern on Ravelry and there many knitters who have made larger shawls, so when I knit this pattern again I plan to knit a larger one. The pattern is free and available for download from Ravelry (must be Ravelry member) or on Kate Flagg’s website.

I have finally figured out how to share information from my Ravelry project pages, so I am linking to this project details on my “Z Crazy” Multnomah Page.