Sunday, July 15, 2012

All garter, all the time

I've been working through a lot of garter stitch lately. I started by knitting up a new design, only to find I didn't like the way I was doing Fleegle's no-purl garter-in-the-round method. I could still see an obvious patch, covering a couple of stitches on either side of the yarn change. I suspected it is my technique rather than the method that is failing me here. So I practiced on some spare yarn, but I'm still not happy. Rather than admit defeat, I decided to bury my head in the sand for a bit, and go knit something that is a pure celebration of garter stitch.


There's no need to identify this beyond the photograph, is there?
Yarn: 70g/240m of the light purple (MC; Araucania Ranco Solid); 50g/170m of the dark purple (C1; Louet Gems); 60g/230m of the red (C2; Cherry Tree Hill Supersock Solid)
Needles: 4mm Addi Turbos
Pattern: Need I even say it? Color Affection, of course, by the talented Veera Valimaki

Notes: All three yarns are from the stash- and I'd had all of them for upwards of three years- so, yay, deep stashbusting!


I followed the directions as given, except I did kfb increases rather than m1 increases. I made sure to twist my colours- this kept the edge neat, but you can see the carrying yarn at the edge as a different colour to the stripe it is next to- I could not really improve this. I also managed to block the shawl into an almost perfect crescent moon shape, rather than the asymmetrical check-mark-ish shape in the pattern schematic.



It's great pattern, a simple but ingenious shape with short rows, and even though those last rows are looooong, it did not make me hate garter stitch.

Now, back to "work". Anyone with hints or tips on Fleegle's garter-in-the-round method, I'm all ears!