Friday, August 09, 2013

The Dangers of Improvisation and Acrylic Yarn

I finished up the yoga bag over the weekend.



It turned out pretty good! Definitely a quick knit, and almost deceptively so: I disbelieved the pattern when it told me to only knit it to 24" tall, since my mat was much wider, and almost kept knitting past the point. I didn't even consider the fact that it would stretch out once the mat was inside. Fortunately, I tried it out once it was getting close to the 24 inch mark.



It's not stretched in the picture (you try holding up a stretchy, lacy, DPN-y mess and get a good picture of it. Not easy!), but it only needed a few more rows knit at this point. So if you take a crack at it, that's a good thing to keep in mind.

I started $5 in Paris the same night I finished the yoga bag, and it's been interesting.



As you can see, this is proving to be a fast project, too. I've actually knit several more inches since I took the photo, and am well into the hip increases at this point.

The pattern is very basic, which ostensibly means there's lots of room for improvisation with it. Unfortunately, for me, that's turned out to mean a lot of trying to figure out what's going on, and flying by the seat of my pants, mostly so far as adjusting the shaping. I think the pattern calls for all the waist and hip shaping at the actual sides, but since I had to add extra rows of increases in the front for my chest, I just extended them from the front raglan lines. By the time I was done with those increases, it was time to start the waist decreases, so all of the shaping stitches have fallen in line with the front raglan as well. It's not necessarily an issue, and I kinda like the idea of princess-style shaping, but it remains to be seen how having all the shaping towards the front will affect the fit in the back. On a future knit, I'll probably split the shaping so that they line up with both the front and back raglan lines.

The other issue is, well, entirely my fault. Since the pattern is designed to be knit with acrylic, I decided to just pull some stash yarn. The blue is leftover Lion Brand Pound of Love, and for a plain-Jane acrylic, is rather delightfully soft and squishy. The white, on the other hand, is some anonymous junk that has long since lost its label, and is probably *gasp* a Super Saver. It is scratchy and gross and I am kicking myself so hard for not giving it a run through the wash before I started knitting. But, there's nothing to be done about it at this point. I can only hope once it's all knit up and washed it'll be less horrid.