But it’s not bad for a start. I finished the nupps on Friday night, and spent quite a lot of yesterday sitting in the garden, turning my chest redder than I anticipated and finishing the border. I was a little perplexed to realise that not only do the nupps (ten stitch repeat) not line up with the buds in the centre (six stitch repeat), the border is different again, with an eight stitch repeat. Perhaps it’s my slight ocd tendencies coming out, but I really like my shawl patterns to grow out of each other organically, this felt a bit as though three stitch patterns has just been stuck together somewhat randomly. It’s still pretty though, and I’m sure that when I’m wearing it no one will ever notice. Well, apart from one person (she knows who she is).
It goes nicely with my demin jacket, which is pretty much what I had in mind when I chose the colour.
Details – the pattern is Swallowtail, the yarn is Handmaiden SeaSilk in colour Stardust. I used 4.5mm needles, as I knit tightly, I did the pattern exactly as written and had a tiny bit of yarn left from the 100g/400m skein – not enough to get worried, but not much! It measures 65” x 27” after blocking.
The cats weren’t interested in this one, maybe it’s not woolly enough. Or perhaps it was just that they had a prior engagement to kill a stick.
Beautiful!
Are your cats growing?
Thank you! I wore it tonight, it’s lovely and drapey.
I don’t think they’re growing, but they probably need to run off some of their winter fat, they’ve not been out much recently, but they’re loving the warmed days and chasing each other round, so hopefully they’ll slim down!
That’s really lovely, especially those colours. I’ve just made one of those and had real trouble with the nupps. They were a sod to purl back through, and always came out looking shabby, so in the end I yanked it back and did a kfbfbf instead of the proper nupps, and that worked better for me. How did you get your nupps so neat?
Swallowtail was the first of my knits that my cat showed any interest in – as soon as it was washed and blocking, she went and sat right in the centre.
I was dreading the nupps, but in the end I found them okay – I knitted them as loosely as I could manage, then on the purl row I carefully slid all five stitches onto the point of my very pointy knitpicks needles and slid the other point into them, then knitted them very carefully! They were tedious, but it worked okay.
I knew you’d had trouble with a shawl, but I hadn’t clicked that it was Swallowtail. I would have thought that so long as you increased five stitches from one, it wouldn’t really matter how you did it – when you do bobbles you increase like you did, so it’s probably similar. Maybe one day I’ll do a comparison!
I did think that if I had been using pointier needles it might have worked better. With my Clover Bamboo ones I ended up with lopsided nupps where the yarnovers adjusted themselves to the point of the needle.
I’m planning to do the Myrtle Leaf Shawl from Victorian Lace Today next. (It was in issue 2 of The Knitter.)