knit a clapotis

I thought I wanted a smaller one, because I don’t like wide stuff, so I bought what I thought was sock yarn. It’s lace. I’m using ones. This may never be done.

I read about Kate Gilbert’s infamous “Cleoptis” scarf in Interweave Knits magazine, there wasn’t a photo of it there, so curious as I am about a scarf that earned a name so big in the knitting community in 2005, I just had to see what all the chatter was about.

I ordered cheap yarn from Knit Picks, it is very nice. The colors are fall colors, a little garish, but I think it will work up nicely, and they fit me, so there.

Hmmm, there is no edge to the pattern. There is no edge? I got to the increase rows, and I ripped it all out and added 4 garter stitches to the end of every row. There.

Hmmm… I also decided to work the stitch to be unraveled in reverse… in other words, I knit it on the purl side, and purl it on the knit side. That way I don’t need stitch markers.

Also, how come the stitch next to the to-be-unravelled stitch is not twisted on the purl side? I decided to twist it, even though the pattern doesn’t say to.

Does anyone think those last two changes will make a significant difference in the finished clapotis??

There are others that I want to make and give to folks before doing this for myself. Blame Ravelry.com, where I’m getting huge number of ideas and am adding dozens of projects to my queue…

There’s a sweet gal who really needs a comfort shawl soon, so things for myself have moved to the bottom.

found in my stash has been assigned to it. Of course,t he maroon is on a cone, so I could make 400 clapotis out of it…

Finally! Hooray! Done done done done done!

$20 added to the fund… I’m at about $100 now. Go me!

I’m about halfway through with my clapotis. I can’t recall if I’m 4 or 5 balls of yarn in (but I only have 9, so that’s as far as it goes. :-) I think I got three pattern repeats done on it, which is the most I’ve done in one “sitting” (not really one sitting, but before I put it down for another project) since starting it. The mohair/addis thing is manageable if you just keep messing with it.

So, at the rate I’m going, I think I probably have only another 6-8 hours of knitting to go on it. It’s a shame it’s not really a very portable project; it’d be nice if I could knit on it while commuting. Oh well, I really should finish my current socks, I guess.

I am knitting my clapotis out of Brown Sheep handpaints, which is a lovely but mohair-heavy yarn, on Addi Turbos, which has of course the lovely flexy cable that’s so nice to use, but … oh my GOD, the combination of mohair + Addi Turbos is slippery! It makes me crazy, every time I pick it up, the darn thing wants to slip back off the left needle onto the cable and it’s such a pain to get it to slip forward to knit, without bunching it up in my left hand and then dropping stitches off (at least it’s mohair, so you have to kind of work to get the dropped stitches to fall—although, that’s ironic to claim as a benefit, since it’s a clapotis…). I can do about four rows at a time before it drives me nuts and I put it down.

If I ever get through this project alive, I will never put mohair on addis again. :-)