Slow Sunday Stitching - September 18, 2022

 Things went better this week - I can't say A LOT better - there was still frogging happening to my knitting project.  But it was the "sampling to get to final design" kind of frogging.  I chose a lace for the perpendicular edging and adjusted the stitch count on the last garter row, ran a life line, then weighed my yarn.   I have 4.3 grams per repeat.   My first stab was the lace as charted, but it was obvious by  15 rows in (about a quarter of the way through the first repeat) that my chosen pattern was using up yarn at a crazy fast pace.   So I ripped it back.   This is why I put in a life line!   A life line is a second yarn - strong and smooth - that runs through the loops of an entire row and holds the stitches in knitting if you drop a stitch, or if you pull out the needle on accident / have a cable come loose, or like me - you may want to deliberately frog back without unknitting every individual stitch.

The pale green is the lifeline - it's 8/2 orlon (the size of #8 perle)

I fussed around with the pattern a bit, slimming it down from four sets of yarn over holes to two and then dropping out some extra depth and lost 5 stitches for every one of the 56 rows of a repeat.   The third try got me down to 4.0 grams per repeat.   

I will keep weighing my yarn after each repeat to be sure I stay on track, but I should hopefully have enough yarn with 3 or 4 grams left over.  Hopefully my math is right!  If not, I'm not sure what I'll do - discontinued yarn and all.

First repeat in its final form.  Pretty isn't it?

I won't be able to tell for sure until I block it, but it looks like it might 'ruffle' just a bit, which will be nice.  This color is so hard to photograph - it's coming across much greyer than in real life - at least on my monitor.   Overall, I am happy with this change.  The simpler geometric lace is a better fit for this textured yarn than the more pictorial leaf lace of the original pattern.

I also got to almost five hours on the Plaza Sewing Bag.   I finished off the Access Commodities building/Clock Tower.  I think it turned out very pretty.   I especially like the 'tile' on the second floor roof line - it's done in short vertical stripes using an over-dyed silk (Silk N Color "Halloween Confetti").  I deliberately manipulated the brighter colors in the sequence to mirror the two sides.

All of these buildings are along the far side of the street, becoming the 'background'.   In the center foreground is a horse and carriage.   There is one motif here on the right edge that has always bothered me.   It's a lamp post and as charted, the motif is almost as tall as the clock tower, which is the tallest building on our street.   In real life, the antique lamp posts are NOT three stories tall!   So I'm going to move it to the 'near' side of the street, where I hope it will reinforce the perspective a bit more and be much more proportional.  I think what I will do is outline the post, then do the horse and carriage.   And only if it all works out will I go back and fill in the post with the verdigris green. 

The gaps in the baseline of the buildings will be where the top edge of the horse and carriage overlap.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this "foreground" area will work out - after I check in with the SSS crew (link to current roundup).