The Passage of Time, Knitting Edition.

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In an effort to keep myself on-track, I've been photographing the progress on my Kauni cardigan, every morning.  I enjoy seeing the slow growth of the knitting and the gradual changes of the color of the ball of yarn.

The above photograph is from my first day of knitting. I am a dedicated swatcher.  I know that many knitters eschew the practice of making sample swatches, but I find it essential. I genuinely enjoy spending the time figuring out what size needle work best with the yarn I'm using.  I love experimenting with stitch patterns.  I reckon that I'm going to spend so many hours on my project, that I'd do well to start methodically.   I think this discipline comes from working as a scenic artists.  We scenic sample extensively, so that we know what works, and what doesn't.  To my way of thinking, it's much wiser to fail on a small scale, and use those failures to figure out how to approach the actual project.




Day Two.  I cast on with "waste" yarn, that I plan to remove later in the process.  I knit a few rows in a knit-five, purl-one pattern, and then joined it onto a big circle. This was my attempt at not screwing up, and accidentally creating a mobius strip.  Did I succeed in this?  Of course not. But the use of "waste" yarn allows me to do a trashy-but-effective fix, and get things sorted out for the actual project.




Day Three. I've started including the balls of yarn in the photos, because it's fun to see how their colors change. 




Day Four.  Knit knit knit knit knit.  You can see that I've gone through all of the yellow yarn, on the background color, and have transitioned into a pale green.  This, for me, is really stinkin' fun!  The joy of this yarn is its slow, slow color gradations. 




Day Five.  Danger ahead!!!  Do you see how the color shifts abruptly, on the green ball of yarn? There's a knot in the yarn, and the gradation has been disrupted.  I'm going to have to remove a great length of yarn, in order to get to the same place in the color progression.

Let's hope I can maintain this momentum, and not "lose the thread" of this project.  As I figure it, I've already knit fifteen thousand, four hundred and eight stitches, and I've barely started.

Comments

Gothknits said…
Ouch on the knot in the yarn. That is why I now rewind all my project yarn before I start. I've had this happen too many times. On the Gaia shawl the one skein of Noro had two knots. I charted the color changes in each section and figured out in what order to use each mini-ball.
I've had them knot it in reverse before as well.
It is a beautiful start and hope the fix is easy.
Lisa said…
You're even more methodical than I.

Scenic artist knitters represent!
cath said…
I love how this is looking. More pictures please (assuming you've had time to work on this since this post). I also work a few rows flat and the join, to try to avoid twisting--and find that I fail nearly as often as I succeed. crazy.

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