Double Helix

end game part deux

While working on the Circus Blanket, I had a bit of a squeaker with the last apple green stripe.  Specifically, I was six inches short with the working yarn at the end.  My tail from the beginning of the stripe was fairly long, so I wove it into working position and dispatched with the stripe.  That was enough excitement for me.

About ten days ago, I took all of the yarn to the lab, tossed each ball on the scale, and noted the weight to an accuracy of 0.1 grams.  I knitted a couple more stripes, weighed the relevant balls again, and evaluated the pattern.  Just as I suspected; not enough grey for the planned eight row stripe.

NEW countdown!

10 rows Copenhagen
4 rows orange
8 rows cobalt blue
6 rows pink
10 rows purple
4 rows navy (as of June 27, 2006)
8 rows gold (as of June 29, 2006)
6 rows grey (as of July 2, 2006)
10 rows orange (as of July 8, 2006)
4 rows navy (as of July 10, 2006)
8 rows dark green (as of July 13, 2006)
6 rows turquoise
10 rows Copenhagen
4 rows gold
8 rows navy

Now that you mention it ...

Colleen, thanks for the encouragement!

Dorothy, I must tell you, I have taken yarn to the lab so often enough that no one even blinks!

NFO

Have you noticed that the term UFO, for "unfinished objects," is a little limited?  Technically, this could apply to all works in progress (WIPs), but seems to refer more to things that have, at some point, languished in the Bastille.  Consider this:

One might call it a UFO, but I prefer to think of it as a "Nearly Finished Object."  True, I started it in January.  True, it languished while I tried to cram a whole sweater into the Olympics. Indeed, it languished a little more during the Olympics aftermath.  But patiently, it has looked on while I have kept it in reach but tried a little of this and a little of that. Truly, it has enjoyed almost daily attention for the past month or two.  But now, even with a good 15 or 20 hours of work remaining, it feels nearly finished.

Now that you mention it ...

Maryse, I'm knitting as fast as I can!  Oh, right, I should be knitting like that on just this project. 

Colleen, thanks for the compliments! 

Mafia, I'll try to arrange for you to see it in finished form before it goes to live in Philadelphia.  This one is going to have to be hand-delivered. 

Rebecca, believe it or not, this is roughly what I envisioned.  My idea was that by varying color in a non-repeating fashion, I would end up with something fairly unified, since the eye would not be able to easily break down the pattern into sections.  I've done this before, but not with such a broad and ranging palette.

endgame

The Circus Blanket is just about half-way done:

Please excuse the crudity of the model. I started with eleven colors, some full skeins and some not. Going into the knitting, I determined how many rows I could manage for each color. My striping philosophy was to use a fixed series for the stripe width (10, 4, 8, 6), to assemble the colors in a pattern that was essentially non-repeating, and to use all of the colors the same number of times. Actually executing the whole blanket this way would have required less reckless abandon. So here's where I am:

Color	Rows Done	Rows Left	New Stripes	Other Variations
navy blue	20	18	8-6-4	10-8	10-4-4
cobalt blue	12	26	10-8-8	10-10-6
gold	14	24	10-6-4-4	8-8-8
purple	12	22	10-6-6	10-8-4	8-8-6
pink	14	6	6
leaf green	12	26	10-8-8	10-10-6
turquoise	18	20	10-6-4	10-10	8-6-6
dark coral	14	22	8-6-4-4	10-8-4	10-6-6
grey	14	16	8-8	10-6	8-4-4
copenhagen	8	30	10-10-10	10-8-8-6	8-8-8-6
apple green	14	6	6

After figuring out what stripes I could with the yarn remaining, I needed to figure out what combinations of groups would yield the right number of stripes with the right widths. The balance is not quite right, but I can work with it; there's one extra 10-row stripe, one extra 6-row stripe, and one too few of the 4-row stripes. It is trivial to convert a wider stripe into a narrower one, so the numbers work out. But what about the colors? Continuing to wing the color sequence is ill-advised. It's time to plan the endgame. Here's what I've got to work with:

After pushing these around for a while, I got this:

And the final blanket should look roughly like this:

That should save lots of frogging and grafting.

traveling circus

Last week, our department had a retreat out on the cape. Naturally I took knitting; specifically this blanket, a gift for an impending nephew or niece. I had shown this to a friend of mine weeks ago, and I could tell she didn't really care for it. Recently, I asked her why. She said that the colors lacked balance. Perhaps she's right, but it's also the point of the design. Babies receive no end of well-integrated pastels and mid-tones. This blanket is meant to have a three-ring circus quality. For a newborn, it will also be much like a circus tent: 46 inches on all sides.

This just in: it's a niece!
Jordan was born around 1 am today, March 21, 2006.
So much for the psychic abilities of my mom, sister, and I, who were all convinced it would be a boy.