And thus, the fact that it's been more than 36 hours since the new Harry Potter was released and I do not yet have a copy in my eager hands is a demonstration of some bizarre... I don't know, weather event, or something.
You see, here's the problem.
The Canadian versions of the Harry Potter books are the British versions. While in the abstract I'm all for that, all my other books are the US editions, which are a different size, and completely differently illustrated.
Due to a certain completist mentality (whenever I pass that bookshelf, I'm a bit annoyed that my copies of Dorothy L. Sayers' books are from at least four different editions), I MUST have the US edition. And that means ordering from Amazon, and waiting for international shipping.
Augh! I have seriously been checking my account on amazon.com far more frequently than is strictly speaking sane, watching for it to have been shipped. It now has. So now... more waiting.
Anyway.
Now, the title of this is slightly challenged by the big knitting project of the second half of my trip, the frost flowers cardigan. I know I put up one picture, but here are a few more, with discussion of how I made it.
For most of its knitting, this was a pretty easy project.
As others have commented, frost flowers is a pretty easy to remember pattern; for all that it looks really complicated, it's really just a four row repeat that's shifted every three repeats.
But that simple repeat pattern really does create a cool fabric.
(By the way, the color in the big pictures is much truer than this detail picture. No clue.)
For all that it's simple and easy to memorize, though, I used really fine yarn. No, really.
See?
I did make one concession to its thinness. I doubled it.
But, still, that's basically doubled crochet cotton (except this was "Lenok," 80% cotton, 20 % linen, that same yarn I used for the little bag).
I apparently wrote NOTHING down for this, and completely made it up as I went. But, to the best of my recollection, I cast on 212 stitches (that's 6 pattern repeats, plus four stitch bands of garter stitch on both edges, for a bit of a facing). I just worked the pattern straight up for four whole repeats. (I think. It might have been four and a half.)
Then, I started the sleeves, which I knit flat at the same time. If I'd had another long circular, I'd have done them in the round at the same time, but, well, I didn't.
I started with 36 stitches for each--that's one repeat, plus a single knit stitch at the beginning and end of every row. In retrospect, I'd have done a couple of stitches at the edges, and kept them stockinette, not garter stitch. But, there you go.
I knit half a pattern repeat (12 rows) without increases, and then started increasing into those first and last knit stitches. I think I increased every six rows, but I can't quite figure that out from looking at it. I knit them for four pattern repeats, by which time they were a tiny bit shorter than I thought they ought to be, which was actually sort of a plan, since every time I've done a raglan sleeved sweater, I've ended up with too-long sleeves. So, hah.
(An aside. See Ziti on the chair?! He was sleeping when I started taking these, then woke up and popped up his head, and then started flipping around. He's doing better).
In order not to drive myself insane, I realized I wanted to do the raglan decreases with the pattern the same on both sides of every "seam." So, when I joined the main body and the sleeves, I actually had to fudge the joins a little bit. It's normal to put a few stitches for the, well, armpit, on waste yarn (or to bind them off) when you're bringing these parts together, which I did. I just didn't take off the same number from body and sleeves. I think I did six from the body, and four from the sleeves, figuring I'd want to pick up a few stitches near the joins to close any holes, and that this would work well for that. Which it TOTALLY did.
Basically, all through the pattern there are columns of reverse stockinette between the two elements of the pattern. I used those columns for the basis of the raglan shaping, with mirrored patterns on each side.
I did the raglan decreases following the pattern changes for I think one (or one and a half) patten repeats, and then just kept going in the section I was on when the number of stitches got to the point that I couldn't do a full repeat of one of the patterns (the flowery bit takes more stitches than those vertical open passages, and so there got to a point where It would have been edges of vertical with a center of stockinette, which seemed silly).
I kept the garter stitch edges, and when I got to the point that I though the sleeves were done, I just did a few rows of garter stitch all the way around (still with decreases) to finish it. And then I bound off, did the sleeve seams, and sewed in a lot of ends... and that's that.
The hardest part was figuring out how to join the sleeves to the body. Once I realized I could be take off different numbers of stitches in order to keep the pattern consistent, though, that became really, really easy. Keeping track of the pattern with decreases and increases (in the sleeves) was a little tough, but by that point I'd knit it so much that it was much less difficult than I'd expected.
So. There it is.