I love where it is right now. It is starting to be massive and wonderfully warm to work under. Because it is in a tube, I keep thinking how nice this would look in a sweater, but nope a wrap it will be. I want to see a long swath of patterns, a sampler type of work. That has been on my wish list since I got my first Barbara Walker Treasury.
I am working on my 4th pattern right now, the utterly charming Doppelherz mit Fenster or Double Heart with Window.
I am only 2/3rds of the way through the first pattern repeat and in order to really see the double heart, I think there is going to have to be at least 3 repeats, possibly 5. The pattern works up wonderfully fast, that sea of purls setting off this very striking design.
I don't think I showed pattern 3 off. I did a small panel of a pattern called Band Stitch Number 2. This pattern band is a bare 4 inches in height. If that.
It's a little hard to see here, but once everything is blocked it will show up wonderfully. It is a simple column bordered by twisted stitches with a band of twisted stitches marching across to the other side. I did not choose to knit this small band so much as need to knit it.
I had tried to make my third pattern be wider pattern called Chain in Pieces. I did a round of it, and was off the place where I ought to have ended up. So I tried it again. And again. Each time a different number off. Once way over. I kept making errors in that first round of counting and it was driving me batty. I did make it to 3 rows of the pattern once and realized I was off on one of the repeats about halfway through, and that was when I cried 'Uncle'. The pattern clearly was not meant to be. Not yet anyway.
That was when the band stitch popped up. It looked simple. It was a very short repeat. I still had to start it twice. Lovely as it looks though when it is blocked out, by the time I made it to the end of the chart, I was ready to move on. It is cute but it did not pose nearly the challenge that the previous two patterns had, hence the short stretch. Doppelherz mit Fenster is much more interesting and I am much more absorbed in it while working on it.
And that is what I love about this project. When I am working on it, I am utterly engaged. There are learning curves to working this style that go far beyond the immediacy of knowing how to make the stitch. Even with the challenges, once you are fully engaged in working it, it flows so smoothly, progressing so staidly. It is a tricky thing though.
It might feel staid when you look back on your work. It might be a rather sedate looking style of knitting. It might be a very traditional form. It might look like a rather priggish, stiff kind of thing in a completed garment, but in my heart I will always know something very different went on.
It is the wildest adventure ride I have ever been on, and it is the most satisfying thing.
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