St. Brigid Wrap

Recipient: Moi
Designer: Me with a hefty dose of redacted cables by a Scottish designer
Pattern: St. Brigid
Source: Other people's good-quality project photos
Due: whenever
Colours: Blue
Yarn: Knitting Fever Angora Extra, supposedly Aran weight, 70% angora/25% wool/5% nylon
WIP status: Two rows in; on hold

2008-Sep-16

This project right here pretty much sums up me as a knitter.

About two weeks ago, the chill of autumn began making its way into the weather, and I was completely unprepared because I haven't got a transitional (read: spring/autumn) jacket. In the interests of saving money, and because I am trying to snazz up my wardrobe wherever possible, I decided that knitting myself a wrap was in order, using the shape of the Chunky Highland Wool Wrap but something else for the actual pattern.

I've been drooling for some time over the cables in the St. Brigid sweater pattern by a certain Outer Hebridean designer whose name dare not cross my keyboard. :) So I redacted them, put 'em together in such a way as I thought would give me an 18-inch width, and got going, using some royal purple Emu Superwash DK that I had 7 balls of in my stash thanks to a Knitters Attic sale last year.

Unfortunately, once the first ball ran out I only had about five inches done...


(It's actually much more purple than this in real life.)

...and since the wrap as I planned it would require a total of 94 inches, it was pretty clear that my remaining six balls weren't going to cut it.

So I went looking for something else in the stash that I had enough of.

Enter my 19 balls of blue Angora Extra, which I had acquired during a ridiculously good online sale at the studio. This is supposed to be an Aran-weight yarn, although when you feel it it seems like fingering or sport. However, the label says 4 stitches per inch, and I got the distinct impression from reading other people's projects with it on Ravelry that it would "bloom" like crazy...so I assumed it would be Aran-weight, and removed two cabled braids from the pattern I'd worked out.

And oh...my...GAWD. This yarn is AMAAAAZING. It's sooo soft. You know that scene in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where Ford and Zaphod are admiring the black ship? The dialogue goes something like this:

Ford: And feel this surface!
Zaphod: Yeah...hey, you can't!
Ford: I know, it's just totally frictionless!

That is exactly how it feels when you touch this stuff. It's absolutely gorgeous, I'm completely in love with it. The cables looked awesome knitting with it, too, not too fuzzy at all.

Once I'd knit through the first ball, though, the logic centre of my brain was telling me that I should really confirm that it would indeed bloom as expected. So I did up a swatch and soaked it in Eucalan for about half an hour.

No bloom.

Like, maybe a little bit of horizontal expansion that was really just the cables relaxing out, but the yarn itself bulking up? Nada.

Cursing viciously, I ripped out the whole thing (alas, I did not take a picture before doing this) and re-cast on with enough stitches to put the two missing cable braids back in. I finished two rows, went to bed, and didn't get a chance to work on it for a few days.

During that time, I discovered a spring/autumn jacket in my closet.

It's a gorgeous jacket that I'd forgotten all about...one of my dad's cousins visited us this summer and had bought this jacket for herself as part of her trip (which included some sightseeing in Alaska, I believe). She no longer wanted the jacket and didn't want to haul it back to Australia with her, and so she gave it to me. It's gorgeous, warm, classy, and fits me perfectly, and I love it.

Unfortunately, I'd also forgotten all about it. Had I remembered it, I could have avoided this whole wrap fiasco entirely. However, I am clearly an idiot, and an knitting-enthusastic one at that, and so we have the saga that you have just finished reading.

I don't quite know what I'm going to do with the yarn now. I love it desperately and absolutely want to make something with it (something for me, dammit), but don't know now what it should be.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see what comes to me.

Labels: stbrigid