DesigKnit

Well, I’m definitely short on yarn. A lot short. And, of course, the store is out, and it’s a discontinued line. There’s probably some to be had on Ravelry, but I’m thinking that I might just play with some redesign on the fly to see if I can make it on the yarn I have. Nothing like knitting on the edge, right?

I found an extra skein of the green color (of course, as I wasn’t short on that one to begin with), and I have tons left of the pink used to make the flowers, so I’m thinking that I might make this a yoke sweater and switch back to colorwork at the end. Of course, yoke sweaters require different sleeves than non-yoke sweaters (what’s a “normal” cardigan-type sweater called? A gansey?). This means that I’ll be ripping back the sleeves a bit, which will give me a little more purple for the body. Not much more, but every round helps at this point. I’ll take a few inches off of the sleeves, join them for a raglan/yoke sweater, and work the decreases until I’m almost out of purple. When purple gets low, I’ll switch to green and do the rest in that, except for an inch or so around the collar to match the cuffs and hem. And yes, I will work a round or two of garter at the collar to avoid excessive rolling.

Of course, putting this plan into action involves thinking. And ripping. And I didn’t really feel like doing either this weekend. So, I didn’t. Instead, I did this:

The second picture is the actual color…the rest are all a bit too orange. I love the way this fabric works with the kaleidoscope quilting. It works up really fast, too, especially when your blocks are twice the size that the book recommends. I think that they’re the right size for this pattern, though. The brighter fabric has a smaller motif and will need smaller triangles, but this one works really well with the big blocks. That is a wonderful property in a fabric destined to be a king-size quilt.

The blocks are all sewn, so now I just need to arrange them, sew them all together, and do the finishing. Sometimes quilting feels like pretty instant gratification, compared to the stitch-by-stitch growth of knitting.