Saturday, April 08, 2006

Weedwacker cord and Basting Pins?

I'm not quite ready to try Rosemary's Circular Needles yet, but having a cable to transfer stitches on to sounds a whole lot better than putting them on a piece of yarn. And so, with 40 ft of cord, leftover plumber's tape, and some packing tape, I embarked on an adventure. If it ends with 1,232 dropped stitches, I will be mildly miffed with myself.

Having finished the main body of Frost Flowers and Leaves, I determined to connect the cord to one of the cables. Wonderfully enough, the cord I chose just fits inside one of my cable connectors, so I secured it with some tape, wrapped it, and nudged, cajoled, tugged, and otherwise manipulated one quarter of my shawl onto the cord. It looked nice.

Nice is pleasant, but when there's brand new edging to knit, the edging calls louder. After a few rows, Ι discovered that the seemingly regular edging isn't. Because of where the repeat was placed, the 'every 6 rows' stitch doesn't happen every six rows. Sometimes it happens after six rows, and the other half of sometimes it happens every 10. Yuck. I do hope it's an error. It sounded like a good question to have answered before I move forwards, so I decided to tempt fate (and 1232 dropped stitches) and moved the other 3/4 of my shawl onto the weedwacker cord.


With a few basting pins, I secured the corners (or something close to the corner, in the case of my 3" of edging) to various coverings on furniture, including our dog's blanket, and snapped a picture. This is *not* blocked dimensions (despite the 5 1/2' diagonal) It's the 'laid out somewhat flat' size. Blocking is going to be fun. Especially if I thread the weedwacker cord through appropriate holes and just pin that out. Flexibile blocking wire!!!

3 comments:

Denise said...

You are such a wild woman.

: )

Anonymous said...

Absolutely gorgeous!!!

Suzanne in NJ

Rosemary said...

Carolyn - your shawl is gorgeous! Hey - you gave me an idea! Were you aware that weed whacker stuff comes in varying thicknesses? I bet that the thicker stuff would make *perfect* blocking "wires!" What a great idea!