I am going to cheat...

Greetings, and Dear Cynthia,

You probably remember Stitches Midwest, where I purchased two skeins each of two different Kauni colorways (and where you *ALSO* purchased Kauni yarn, but in a different colorway, to make the same sweater :-)

The night I got home from Stitches, I re-wound all of my Kauni skeins into "cakes," so that I could clearly see what colors lurked inside:Fun! Just a note...the two skeins I bought in the purply colorway were wound in opposite directions -- the one shown in the photo goes from gray to black to purple working from the inside out, whereas the second skein goes from purple to black to gray. That isn't going to matter, because the whole idea of the Kauni is that the yarn is sort of random and the colors present themselves how they will.

So, I started knitting the infamous Kauni Cardigan (which is totally THE CURE for anybody who might have lost the *knitting mojo*) , and was rather pleased with how things were going regarding the color pattern that was happening *UNTIL* I got to a point in which there wasn't really enough contrast to see the fancy shmancy colorwork -- In this photo, you can see that the stripe on the top looks like a messy blur instead of a row of squares:

In this next photo, you can sort of see the squares in the top row, maybe if you squint:

So, I decided to take out the last stripe and cut the yarn from the blue skein, skip a bunch of the darker blue yarn as it is coming out of the skein, and re-join it once it starts to get a little bit lighter to allow for more contrast with the black/dark gray. Did that make sense? I did some checking on Ravelry, and some of the sweaters there have areas with low contrast which I don't really care for, yet others have nice contrast throughout. I don't know if people are cheating by cutting out sections of color from the skeins in order to achieve a nice contrast throughout, but I AM GOING TO. So there.

A couple of other notes about this sweater/yarn/pattern:

1.) When I was casting on, I must have tugged the yarn too much, and it tore, so I had to re-start. Fortunately, I was only a few stitches into the cast on when that happened, but beware to not yank the yarn, it might be fragile.

2.) Cast on using the color which is going to be *purled* in your corrugated ribbing. I cast on with blue, and my ribbing is *K1 purple, P1 blue*. That way, you won't have an odd colored purl "bump" all along your first row of ribbing...

3.) THE SLEEVES! Yikes. Not sure how I am going to handle those, but I am definitely going to stray from the pattern. Several of the entries on Ravelry speak to the fact that there seems to be a lot of excess fabric in the underarm, so I read ahead in the pattern and it is quite clear why people are complaining about the sleeves... I think I know what I'm going to do to revise the pattern, and it is going to involve purling in colorwork, but only for a couple of inches. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right?! I'll talk more about the sleeves in my next post.

4.) There is also some discussion on Ravelry regarding the neck area being a bit generous, so I have to figure out if I'm going to stray from the pattern on that or not... Stay tuned :-) (What did we ever do before Ravelry?)

In the meantime, here is a sock fresh off the needles:

It is not just any sock -- it is Loretta's *first sock* :-)

I met Loretta in the library when she was bringing her grandson and I was bringing my son to story time there a few years ago. We started talking about knitting, and Loretta made a really nice hat. Fast forward to the summer of 2009, when I ran into her at the swimming pool and was able to convince her of the virtue of sock knitting. So, Loretta started her first sock more than a year ago, and then Autumn was upon us, and the sock went into hibernation. I saw Loretta again this past summer at the swimming pool, and she brought her sock back with her, and now it is finished! YAY! Way to go, Loretta! Excellent fortitude there, and the first one is the hardest! Loretta is definitely on the slippery slope toward being completely addicted to this whole knitting thing....heh heh...

Okay, so I have to do some ripping and make some color decisions on my Kauni Cardigan, so I'll ramble more later, probably again next weekend. By then I'll have my color contrast and sleeve dilemmas worked out, I hope.

Have a great week!

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)